COMPLETE

SCIENCE FICTION

Anatoly Dneprov

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 Complete
Science Fiction

Anatoly Dneprov

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 Anatoly Dneprov is the pseudonym
of professional intelligence officer
Anatoly Petrovich Mitskevich, a
Russian science fiction writer,
journalist, one of the leading and
original authors of the ―third wave‖ of
Soviet science fiction (SF) of the 60s.
Anatoly Mitskevich was born on
November 18, 1919 in the city of
Dnepropetrovsk (the origin of the
author’s pseudonym is connected with
this). He graduated from the Faculty of
Physics of Moscow State University in
1941, but then war invaded his life.
During the Great Patriotic War,
Mickiewicz carried out assignments from the Main Intelligence
Directorate of the Red Army, served as a codebreaker at Rommel’s
headquarters in North Africa, and then worked in Italy. When the
surrender of Nazi Germany was signed in Karlshorst, officer Mickiewicz
was the translator of Marshal G. Zhukov. After demobilization, he began
to engage in scientific activities, worked at the USSR Academy of
Sciences, at the Defense Research Institute, and became a candidate of
physical and mathematical sciences. Such a biography could not but affect
the writer’s work, which contains anti-war themes, the theme of the
scientist’s responsibility for his discoveries. At the center of his works,
Dneprov always placed some amazing invention around which, as they
now say, ―drive‖ and ―action‖ develop.
Dneprov published his first SF story late, at almost forty years old
(―Shipwreck‖, 1958). Soon the short story ―Suema‖ (1958) appears - one
of the first works about intelligent robots in Soviet science fiction. It was
Dneprov, in a number of works, who was one of the first in Soviet science
fiction to present to the general reader the entire range of technical and
social problems that cybernetics and intellectual electronics brought to the
world. In his magnificent story ―The Crabs Walk Across the Island,‖
Dneprov applied the laws of Darwinian evolution to Von Neumann’s
self-replicating automata. In 1960, these works will be included in
Dneprov’s first book - a collection of science fiction stories and short
stories ―Maxwell’s Equation‖, which immediately puts him among the
leading Soviet science fiction writers. The title of the collection comes

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from the story ―Maxwell’s Equation,‖ in which a person’s brain is used as
a computer against his will.
In the early 60s, Dneprov left science for the editorial office of
Tekhnika-molodezhi, where he worked as the head of the SF editorial
board, a scientific editor and scientific reviewer, and was a member of the
editorial board of the journal. At this time, the author's attention switches to
molecular biology and the problems of manipulating human
psychobiological functions. This is the subject of one of Dneprov’s best
stories, ―The Clay God‖ (1963), which tells about the replacement of the
carbon atom at the heart of the chemical structure of a living organism with
silicon. A new race of super-soldiers - silicone cyborgs - is being created at
a secret training ground in the Sahara. The stories ―The Fifth State‖ (1961)
are written in a similar vein, where scientists are trying to create a living
cell; ―Stanlu Farm‖ (1964) and ―Tragedy on Paradise Street‖ (1961), where,
practically for the first time in Russian science fiction, a description of
clones is found. Developing the topic of engineering biology, the writer
comes close to the next problem - the possibility of targeted intervention in
the sphere of emotions and consciousness. His approaches are very diverse.
From the stories ―Jar without a sticker‖ (1964), ―Head for Rent‖ (1965),
―Man for the Archive‖ (1967), ―Prophets‖ (1970) you can learn about the
―neutrino theory of thinking, the chemical nature of memory, the electronic
nature nerve impulse." The short story ―The Formula of Immortality‖
(1962) is a fan of original (for its time) SF ideas and hypotheses: a complete
recording of the human personality (for subsequent reproduction and
transfer to another planet), obtaining children in artificial equipment,
changing the ―development program‖ of a person written in DNA - with the
aim of eliminating old age and death. Dneprov is no stranger to pamphlets
(―The World In Which I Disappeared,‖ 1961) and humorous stories (―The
End of ―Red Chrysanthemum,‖ 1963; ―Interview with a Traffic
Controller,‖ 1964). The mechanical ―heroine‖ of the humorous short story
―Suema‖, imagining herself as a woman, demands appropriate respect from
the male inventor and with a scalpel is going to ―find out‖ how her creator’s
brain works.
The last decade of his life, Dneprov worked at the Moscow Research
Institute of Introscopy (1967-68), the Institute of Economics and
International Relations, and lived in Moscow. During these years, Anatoly
Dneprov became increasingly interested in the problems of time. This is
evidenced by the article ―Time Flows Forward‖, the stories ―Where the
River Ends‖ (1966) and ―Funny Baobab‖ (1970). Everything is subject to
time, including human life. Only the memory of his descendants is beyond
his control. Anatoly Dneprov, his science fiction and popular science

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works are remembered and known to this day by both Soviet and foreign
readers. Friends called him ―our Mitz.‖ This expressed respect for his
talent, trust in his erudition, and a tribute to his boundless kindness and
sense of camaraderie.
Compilation based on materials by V.I. Rabinovich, Vl. Gakov, A.
Sinitsyn, D. Baikalov, ―In Memory of a Comrade‖ by the editors of the
magazine ―Technology for Youth‖, etc.

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 CLAY GOD

1. DESERT
It was here that I saw a mirage for the first time.
The horizon quivered and writhed in the hot air. Sometimes a huge
lump of light yellow earth suddenly broke off from the sandy sea and hung
for some time in the sky. Then the fantastic sky island descended, blurred
and merged with the desert again.
With each passing hour, the heat grew stronger and the endless sands
looked more and more bizarre. Through the swaying hot air, as through a
crooked glass, the world seemed disfigured. Shreds of blue sky cut deep
into the sandy ocean, sand dunes rose high up. Often I lost sight of the
barely noticeable contours of the road and looked warily at the driver.
The tall, silent Arab stared intensely into the hot distance with inflamed
eyes. His thick black hair was covered with gray dust, the dust was on his
swarthy face, on his eyebrows, on his lips cracked from the heat. It seemed
to detach itself from everything and become one with the car, and this
detachment and merging with the roaring and moaning engine somehow
gave me confidence that we were on the right path, that we would not get
lost in the mad dance of yellow and blue spots that surrounded us on all
sides as we went deeper into the desert.
I looked at the chauffeur's parched lips, and I was thirsty. I suddenly
felt that my lips were also dry, my tongue became hard and clumsy, sand
creaked on my teeth. I dragged my travel bag from the back of the car to
the front seat and took out a thermos. I drank two mugs of cold moisture in
one gulp, which here in the desert had an unusual, almost unearthly taste.
Then I poured another mug and handed it to the driver:
"Drink...
He did not take his eyes off the road, only pursing his lips more tightly.
"Drink," I repeated, thinking he couldn't hear. Then the chauffeur
turned his face to me and looked at me coldly.
"Drink!" I handed him the water.
He pressed the pedal with all his might. The car jerked abruptly, and the
jolt spilled water onto my knee. In bewilderment, I continued to hold the

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empty mug for several seconds. It seemed strange to me that he refused
water.
It was an excruciatingly long time before the desert became hilly again.
The road rut disappeared completely, the driver deftly drove around the
high dunes, looking for hard ground with his instinct, now and then
shifting gear to the front axle so that the car did not get stuck in deep sand.
Obviously, he had to overcome this path many times. It was almost four
o'clock in the afternoon, and there was no more than an hour to go to the
destination.
When I was told about this road in Paris, in a small mansion on the Rue
de Chantillon, I decided that they were just scaring me, not wanting to hire
me. A tall, skinny American, William Bahr, told me at the time:
"Do not imagine that you are being offered an earthly paradise. You
can't think of a worse hell. You will have to live and work in real hell,
away from everything that we are used to calling human life. I don't know
exactly where it is, but I know it's somewhere at the end of the god's
world, in the most desolate desert imaginable."
"Maybe you can tell me at least approximately?"
"Approximately? You are welcome. Somewhere in the Sahara.
However, in Agadir you will be met and taken where you need to go. I
don't know anything else. If you want, agree, if you want, you can't."
I remembered the announcement I had read the day before in the Rue
Dübek:
"Young, no fightA laboratory chemist is required for work outside
France. Outstanding opportunities in the future, after the completion of
research. Cash and other rewards are possible. Unique specialization.
Recommendations are not mandatory. Knowledge of German is desirable.
Address: 13 rue de Chantillon.
I agreed, followed by an advance of two thousand francs, then a short
farewell to my mother, documents that for some reason were given to me
at the American consulate, then the port of Marseilles, Gibraltar, a storm
in the Atlantic, Agadir, and here I am, in this endless sea of sand.
The sun was burning with an orange-red light when suddenly,
something appeared from behind the jagged horizon line that wasn't a
mirage. The car ran into its rapidly stretching shadow. Sinking into the
deep sand, it approached a bright red stripe that gradually grew above the
ground, turning into an endless fence. It ran north and south, and its
boundaries were lost behind the sand hills. The whole desert seemed to be
divided in half by a wall of mud, and in the centre of the wall was a dark
square, which, as we drew nearer, took the shape of a huge gate. The fence
was very high, barbed wire was stretched along its crest in four rows. At

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regular intervals, high poles with electric lamps towered above the wire.
The lamps glittered with blood-red stars in the rays of the setting sun. At
the gate, to the right and to the left, two windows could be distinguished.
We drove up close to the wall, and I remembered the words of William
Bar: "At the end of the world..." Maybe this is the end of the world?
"It's here," the driver said hoarsely, slowly crawling out of the cab.
For a few seconds he stood crouched, rubbing the knees of his stiff legs.
I took my few belongings from the car—a suitcase of linen, a bag, and a
stack of books tied with twine—and walked toward the gate. They looked
like a giant envelope, sealed in the corners with steel seals - bolts.
The driver went to the right window and knocked. A dark brown face
instantly appeared in it. A quiet conversation ensued in a language I did
not understand. Then a faint hum was heard, and the gate slowly opened.
Behind the wall, I expected to see something like a city or a village.
But, to my amazement, there was a second wall, as high as the first. The
driver returned to the car, turned on the engine and slowly drove into the
gate. I followed. The car turned right and drove along the corridor formed
by two walls. It was already completely dark here. Near the gate there was
a large clay annex, at which stood sentries in military uniforms, with
carbines at the ready. The one I was passing craned his neck, looking at
my luggage.
So I walked behind the car for about five minutes, until we stopped at a
small door in the second wall.
The driver got out of the car again and knocked. The door immediately
opened, and a man appeared on the threshold,
"Come in, Monsieur Pierre Myrdal," he said in the purest French and
stretched out his hand to my things. — Let's get acquainted. My name is
Schwartz.
I obediently entered. A car roared behind him. The Arab driver
remained behind the fence.
"We don't have many formalities," Schwartz announced as we
approached a small canvas tent. "Please, your diploma, the letter from Mr.
Bar, and your water."
"So what?" I asked.
You probably have Water in a thermos or in a bottle?
"Yes...
"That's what you have to turn in."
I opened the bag and handed him the documents.
"Why do you need my water?"
"A precautionary measure," he replied. "We are afraid that some kind
of infection will get here with the water. You know, here in Africa...

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 "Oh, I understand!
He disappeared with my documents and a thermos, and I looked
around. Right in front of me stretched three long barrack-type buildings.
Further, to the right, I could see a three-story house and next to it a
building that looked like a tower. Behind the buildings stood out a light
strip of hedge, and behind it I saw something that struck and even
frightened me: the tops of unusual palm trees. They seemed bright scarlet
against the purple, almost purple evening sky. I would never have
believed that these are palm trees. But their crowns, their carved wide
leaves, their corrugated trunks were very characteristic. Yet the color of
their leaves was too scarlet. The same as the color of the sun-painted
barracks. "An oasis of scarlet palms," I thought.
Here in the desert, the evening lasts only a few minutes. Then,
suddenly, pitch darkness sets in. The barracks faded, the scarlet palm trees
disappeared, and everything was plunged into darkness. It immediately
became cool. Electricity flashed, an endless row of electric lamps along
the hedges.
Schwartz came out of the tent. He had an electric torch in his hand.
"Well, that's all. Now I will take you to your room. Sorry you had to
wait a bit. It is not very pleasant after a tiring road.
He took my suitcase, and we walked slowly through the deep sand to
the long buildings.

2. MAURICE POISSON
"Unfortunately, after graduating from university, we are all like that,"
Maurice Poisson said lazily. — It takes a long time before we realize that
there are no boundaries between different scientific disciplines now. It
turns out like this: the university course exists on its own, and the practice
exists on its own. And all because the university is dominated by old
conservatives, like Professors Pereni, Weiss and other of our luminaries.
"They are not only ours. These are the luminaries of all science. France
is proud of them," I objected, looking at the instructions for the quartz
spectrograph.
Poisson came early today. According to the schedule, our work began
at eleven in the morning. He came at nine, as soon as I started breakfast.
I stopped reading the instructions and looked him in the face:
"Tell me, please, what are we doing here?" It's been a week since I've
been living between these two clay walls, and I still don't understand
what's going on here. I am worried about the unknown. No one has ever

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really told me why I came here.
Maurice smiled sadly and went to the window. He looked somewhere
in the distance and, as if to himself, spoke:
"You have been here for a week, and I will soon be three months. If you
think that I can answer all your questions, then you are deeply mistaken. I
don't ask them to myself. What? He turned to me. "However, I can give
you one piece of advice: take care of your nerves. Do not think about
anything that is beyond your responsibilities. You are a laboratory
assistant - good. Now you need to study spectrophotometry and learn how
to do chemical analyses by means of physical optics.
"Yes, but I'm a chemist!" You see, a chemist!
He shrugged his shoulders and turned back to the window. For no
reason at all, he suddenly asked:
"Have you noticed that all the optical devices here are from Carl Zeiss's
company..."
— Yes.
"Zeiss is a good German optical company. Remember how at the
university we fought for the right to do practical work on the Zeiss
microscope.
Poisson, like me, had graduated from the Sorbonne University only a
year earlier. He majored in physical chemistry
I didn't know him before I met him here. He was introduced to me on
the third day of my arrival.
He was originally from Rouen. He didn't ask me anything about Paris.
At first, he was dry with me, with emphasized importance. In between
classes, we talked about science in general.
"So, now you know how this device works. I ask you to tell us the
method of spectral analysis in order.
I closed the instructions and, as I had once done before the professor at
the exam, began:
"First, you need to turn on the hydrogen lamp and use a condenser lens
to project the image of the quartz window onto the entrance slit of the
spectrograph. Then close the diaphragm, place a cuvette with the liquid
under study between the slit and the condenser, insert the cassette into the
spectrograph camera, open it, open the aperture and make an exposure.
Then close the diaphragm, move the hydrogen lamp, put a voltaic arc with
iron electrodes in its place, move the plate in the cassette by one division
and expose the light of the iron arc. After that, develop the plate, dry it and
photometry it.
— Why is it necessary to exhibit an iron arc? He asked, lounging in his
chair and closing his eyes.

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 — To compare all parts of the spectrum with iron lines whose
frequencies are known.
"Who knows them?" Do you know them?
"Me?" Not yet. They are here, in this catalog.
"That's right," he said. - Learn to read the spectrum of an iron arc from
memory. It's not very difficult. You need to remember only some two
hundred digits. They say that Graber does not like it when people look at
reference books when working.
I nodded my head and after a minute asked:
"And who is he, this Graber?"
Maurice walked around the room several times, then for some reason
opened the analytical scale on the table and lightly touched the gilded cup
with his finger. Instead of answering my question, he suddenly asked:
"Do you drink alcohol?"
I didn't answer. Putting the instructions on the table where the
spectrograph stood, I went into the next room. Here, in ten cabinets
located along the walls, there were chemical reagents. When I was first
shown the place where I would work, I was most struck by the abundance
of reagents.
These were the best reagents I had ever heard of, a huge amount of
inorganic and organic compounds from the firm of Kolbaum, Sherring,
Farben Industry. According to my calculations, there were about five
thousand jars and bottles of all sizes and colors, neatly arranged in
accordance with the accepted chemical nomenclature. In a separate metal
cabinet, from which a wide chimney rose, solvents were stored - organic
liquids of various classes. I opened this cabinet and quickly found ethyl
alcohol.
"Do you drink diluted or so?" I asked and handed him alcohol in a
beaker with a volume of a quarter liter.
"And you?" However, it's too early for you. Give a glass of water.
Poisson drank the alcohol in large gulps and, without taking a breath,
clung to the water. His face turned red, tears flowed from his eyes. He took
a few deep breaths.
"So you're asking who Graber is?" Ahem! This is a difficult question.
In my opinion, Graber is a talented chemist. And not only a chemist. He
must be well versed in both physics and biology. They say that this man,
looking at everything the way I am looking at you now," Maurice stared at
me with rapidly cloudy eyes, "will immediately tell you what the
concentration of sodium chloride is in your blood, how much pepsin is
released in your stomach because you moved your finger, how much the
concentration of adrenaline in your blood has increased because you,

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Graber, were afraid of him, what endocrine glands started working in you
when he asked you how much the oxidative process in your brain had
accelerated, when you began to think about the answer, and so on and so
forth. Graber knows by heart the entire complex chemical laboratory of
the human body.
"That's very interesting," I said,
feeling a little sorry for Maurice. After drinking alcohol, he faded,
shrunk, turned into a pitiful, lost man. I wanted to suggest that he go home,
but suddenly I thought that when he was drunk he would be more willing
to answer the questions that worried me.
— This is very interesting. However, do his scientific talents have
anything to do with what I will have to do?
"Hahaha!" Maurice laughed and shook his head. Coming very close to
me, he whispered in my ear; "The fact of the matter is that Graber
probably wants to make a cruel joke. Ha ha! I guess what he wants to do...
However... shhhh... I don't know anything. Nobody knows anything. And
anyway, why this stupid conversation? Hear? No questions asked! I'm
going to rest, and you'll take the trouble to take the absorption spectra of
your heelsand solutions of organic substances. Any you want. Tomorrow
I'll come and check...
With these words, Poisson, swaying and touching the corners of the
tables, walked unsteadily out of the laboratory. I looked after him for a
long time.
The day after my arrival, Schwartz told me what he called "the daily
routine." I had to live right there, at the laboratory. It was not supposed to
leave the room unnecessarily. I was allowed to walk three times a day, and
even then only along the barracks where I lived. An hour in the morning,
two hours at noon, and an hour in the evening.
It was almost a prisoner regime. Breakfast, lunch and dinner were
brought to me in thermoses by an Arab wrapped from head to toe in white
burnus. I was quite sure that he was either deaf and dumb, or did not
understand a word of any language except his own, or had strict
instructions not to talk to me. All the questions that I could have, I had to
solve with Schwartz. He visited me regularly twice a day, and sometimes
more often. Always very amiable, cheerful, he inquired about my health,
asked if I had written letters to my parents and acquaintances.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Myrdal," I suddenly heard his voice above my
head.
"Good afternoon," I replied dryly.
"So, they say you've mastered spectral analysis, haven't you?" He asked
good-naturedly, sitting down in an armchair and lighting a cigarette.

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 "N-I don't know. I haven't tried it yet.
— In any case, everything is in order with your theory. I shrugged my
shoulders. Poisson must have reported to him on my progress.
"I would like you to demonstrate to me how you are going to perform
spectrophotometry of solutions.
Without saying a word, I pulled a cylindrical quartz cuvette out of the
drawer. Entering the preparatory, I took the first vial I came across from
the cupboard, poured a little substance into the palm of my hand and threw
it into a flat-bottomed flask. Then I poured water from the tap. When the
mortar was ready, I began to fill the ditch. At that moment, Schwartz
laughed softly and said,
"That's enough, Myrdal. Everything is very bad. You don't have to
continue.
"But nothing has been done yet!" "
My dear chemist," he replied with the same infinitely amiable smile,
"you have already done everything to make your analysis useless.
I looked at him angrily.
"N-nh," he drawled thoughtfully. "Poisson seems to be a poor
instructor. Very unimportant. He touched his lower lip. "Do you want to
know why your analysis is no good?" First, you poured the reagent on
your hand and stained it with this. After all, your hands are dirty. Don't be
offended, they are dirty in a chemical sense. The slightest traces of sweat,
salts crystallized in the cells, dust settled on the hands - all this, together
with the reagent, got into the solution. Next, you did not weigh the
reagent. You don't know how much of it you've taken. And without
knowing the concentration of the solution, it is impossible to judge the
absorption spectra. Next, you dissolved the reagent in tap water, and it is
also chemically dirty. You did not wash the ditch. Do you realize how
many mistakes you made in one minute?
He laughed and patted me good-naturedly on the shoulder, and I,
utterly destroyed, felt the flush flood my face.
"Well, nothing. At first, it happens. But I beg you, do not do this in the
future. After all, you have a very responsible job ahead of you in the
future, and if you do the tests, Dr. Graber Dolwives believe in them.
Understand?
— Yes.
"Now let's get to know each other for real," he went on in the same
cheerful tone. "My name is Schwarz, Friedrich Schwarz, a doctor of
chemistry from the University of Bonn. I am in charge of this laboratory,
and you are my laboratory assistant. You will work under my guidance,
and I hope you will work well. Now work out what Poisson told you, but

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only cleanly. On each spectrophotogram, put the name of the substance,
solvent, concentration of the solution, exposure time, time of development
of the plate. I'll check it out tonight. Goodbye bye.
Dr. Schwartz, still smiling, headed for the exit.
Suddenly he stopped and said:
"By the way, I forbid you to give Poisson alcohol. I forbid you to drink
too. If you feel like drinking, tell me. Here we have wonderful cognacs:
"Martel", "Napoleon", whatever you want.

3. "SCIENCE REQUIRES SOLITUDE"

The world I found myself in was not as vast as it seemed to me at first.
At a distance of about a kilometer to the north of my barracks there was a
fence separating what I had dubbed "an oasis of scarlet palms" from the
territory of the institute. In reality, the palm trees were not scarlet, but they
were not green either. During the day, the color of their leaves seemed
orange, almost the color of sand.
From conversations with Poisson, I learned that the main entrance to
the institute was located in the northern wall, at its northeast corner.
Through this gate, various cargoes, materials, fuel for the power plant and
water tanks arrived at the Graber.
At least four buildings housed chemical laboratories. In two one-story
barracks right in front of the main entrance, Schwartz's laboratories were
located, a little further north there was another laboratory and another one
near the wall of the "oasis of scarlet palms". Poisson worked there.
Characteristic tin pipes towered above the roofs of the barracks - hoods
from the rooms where the research was carried out.
The three-story brick building in the southeast corner of the property
was the residence of Graber himself. To the right of the building there was
a water tower.
More than three months had passed since I arrived, but my
acquaintance with the grounds was still limited to the two barracks run by
Dr. Schwartz. Besides me, he had only two other employees at his
disposal - a German named Hans, and an Italian named Giovanni Sacco.
Both of them worked in the northern barracks and never came to see me.
The entire northern barracks was a synthetic laboratory. Some chemicals
were made there. There, together with Hans and Sacco, Dr. Schwartz also
lived. I lived alone.
Day and night, sentries armed with carbines walked slowly through the
territory. They served in pairs and walked around the territory along some
very difficult route.

14
 I rarely saw anyone on the grounds. The south was especially deserted,
although smoke poured out of the chimneys during the day, and at night
the windows sometimes glowed. An asphalt road ran along the eastern
fence, and trucks often drove up to the water pump or power plant along it.
On the same road, people sometimes appeared, wrapped in white burnoos.
They were workers from local residents.
Except for Schwartz and Poisson, I did not communicate with anyone
for a long time. I met Hans and Sacco when I came to the northern
barracks with the results of the analysis, but each time they immediately
left, leaving me alone with the doctor. Poisson came to see me himself,
and very rarely after the incident with alcohol. I came mainly to take some
reagent or give me a drug for analysis. He was always silent, thoughtful,
and, as it seemed to me, a little drunk. I had the impression that he was
upset about something, but he didn't want or couldn't say what.
However, soon after my arrival, I made another acquaintance, or rather,
an acquaintance. True, I have never seen her in person. This acquaintance
took place as follows. One day, when I was lying in bed for some reason,
the phone suddenly rang. Since no one had ever called me before, I
jumped up as if scalded and grabbed the phone. Before I could say a word,
a woman's voice was heard:
"Mr. Myrdal, it's time to go to work. "The woman spoke French, with a
very strong German accent. "You're late for work, Herr Myrdal. It's ten
minutes past nine.
I looked at my watch. My watch showed only thism...
"Mine have only seven," I said in confusion.
"You didn't check your watch. Always call me after eight in the
evening. I will tell you the exact time.
"How can I call you?"
"Just pick up the phone.
"Okay, thank you. I will do so. By the way, what's your name?
— Einzig.
Subsequently, I had to use the telephone often so as not to go to Dr.
Schwartz once again, as well as in cases when it was necessary to inquire
about the fate of Poisson's tests, to whom I was not allowed to go.
I picked up the phone and called who I needed. "Please," Einzig said,
and I was connected. Once, instead of Dr. Schwartz, an Italian man picked
up the phone. In very broken German, he began to quickly tell me that the
amount of silicon I had found in the preparation was too small and that the
analysis needed to be repeated, and that I...
Then we were separated. I began to shout into the receiver to be
connected again, but Einzig's voice said with marked politeness:

15
 "You are to talk only to Dr. Schwartz on these matters. He is not there
now.
After that, for some reason, I wondered where the wire from my phone
went. It turns out to be down, under the floor. The electrical wiring was
also underground. I tried to guess where the telephone switchboard was.
Probably in the three-story building where Dr. Graber lived.
During my time at the Graber Institute, I learned a lot. I was now able to
perform qualitative and quantitative chemical analysis very
professionally, and with much greater accuracy than at university. In
addition to the usual reagents for the detection of chemical elements, I
used sensitive organic indicators, I mastered many physical methods of
analysis, which I previously knew either only from books or from one or
two practical experiments on obsolete equipment. I mastered colorimetric,
spectrophotometric, spectral, X-ray diffraction and potentiometric
analyses. Dr. Schwartz insisted that I should carry out the latter with
special care.
— You must determine the concentration of hydrogen ions in solutions
with a high degree of accuracy. After all, you just have to feel it to the
third sign," he taught.
For a long time, I could not understand why it was so important. Only
later, when tragic events played out here in the desert, did I understand the
meaning of all this...
From the laboratory where Schwartz lived, I was given either solutions
or crystalline substances for analysis. Poisson, as a rule, brought me ashes.
He was burning something in his laboratory, and I had to determine the
composition of what was left. Sometimes he brought solutions. But these
were not the crystal clear solutions that came from Schwartz. Poisson
solutions were almost always very cloudy, with precipitation, and
sometimes smelled unpleasant. As he handed them to me, he insisted that I
shake them thoroughly before I placed them in the potentiometric cuvette
or in the cell of the nephelometer.
Once I could not stand it.
"Listen, Poisson! "Once Dr. Schwartz rejected my analysis only
because I poured the reagent on my arm. And you literally bring slop.
Look, for example, there's a real log floating in a test tube, or a piece of
skin, or god knows what! No matter how much you chatter, this dirt will
either get or not get into the analysis. And I'm sure that with that accuracy,
the catYou can get different results.
"Make sure that this tissue gets into the analysis, especially the
qualitative one," he said and left.
I wrote down the results of each analysis on a special form, indicating

16
all the data: what chemical elements are included in the preparation, their
percentage composition, absorption bands of the substance in the
ultraviolet and infrared parts of the spectrum, scattering coefficients,
concentration for solutions, type of crystal structure for solids and
crystalline substances, concentration of hydrogen ions, and so on.
In the beginning, I did all the work automatically, without thinking
about what its meaning was or what it was for. I was simply fascinated by
the huge variety of information about matter obtained by modern methods
of research. It was nice to learn about some pinkish powder, that the
molecules of the substance in it are arranged in a strictly cubic order. This
was indicated by X-ray diffraction analysis. The fact that this is an organic
substance in which there are methyl, hydroxyl, carboxyl and aromatic
groups, that there are double and triple bonds, was evidenced by
spectrophotometric analysis. The fact that the substance has an acidic
reaction was indicated by potentiometric analysis. That the molecules of
matter include atoms of silicon, aluminum, iron, and so on, I learned from
the results of emission spectral analysis. Sometimes there was so much
data that I freely wrote the chemical formulas of the compounds studied.
I was able to finish the chemical analysis by writing the formula of the
substance only for the drugs that came from Schwartz. As for Poisson's
analyses, they were as cloudy as his solutions. It was a huge pile of all
kinds of chemical elements, groups, radicals, ions. They had everything.
Spectral emission analysis of ash yielded such a huge number of lines that
only after many hours of study of spectrograms it was possible to write
down all the elements that were found there.
But after several hundred analyses, I suddenly made a discovery:
whether I was getting pure substances from Schwartz or "dirt" from
Poisson, I almost always found silicon. Silicon in combination with other
elements appeared annoyingly in almost all cases. Sometimes it was part
of an acid residue, then a radical of an organic compound, then it was
found as a complex ion in combination with other elements... I said
"almost" because there were several analyses in which silicon was not
detected, but another element of the fourth group of the periodic table was
found there – germanium.
It was an important discovery, and I made it completely on my own.
But it did not bring me one step nearer to the answer to the question that
occupied me; What are the Germans doing here? As a chemist, I knew the
properties of silicon and its compounds. I mentally went over many of
them in my mind, and they were almost sure that they could not be of
much interest. Silicon compounds are sand, these are various solid
minerals - quartz, granites, spars, this is glass, liquid and solid, these are

17
materials for cutting tools like carborundum. Silicon is a variety of silicate
products – brick, porcelain, earthenware... All these things have been
known for a long time. Was it worth climbing into the desert to secretly
study silicon compounds?
In the end, I decided to talk about it first with Poisson and then with
Schwartz.
The conversation with Poisson simply did not take place. Nand asked
why silicon was almost always present in his analyses, he suddenly knitted
his brows, then, as if afraid that he might be overheard, whispered:
"Look around. There is sand everywhere. Sand dust can easily get into
the preparation. And it is known that even insignificant traces of silicon
are easily detected.
It was said in such a way and so emphatically that it almost meant,
"Don't be an idiot and don't ask inappropriate questions."
I didn't ask him about it anymore, because I realized that he was lying.
There was a lot of silicon in his preparations. He didn't pour sand into the
test tubes on purpose!
The conversation with Dr. Schwartz turned out to be more interesting.
Once I brought him a stack of tests. When he looked at one of them, I said,
"I'm not quite sure about that.
"Why?" He looked up at me with his light blue eyes:
He was always in the habit of chewing the tip of a match when looking
at something. He did the same now. But after my remark, it seemed to me
that his face, always calm and self-assured, suddenly became alert.
"I didn't find any silicon here," I answered, keeping my eyes on him.
"Silicon?" And why do you think that he must be present here?
"I find it, as a rule, in all the drugs that you give me. We work with
silicon compounds, right?
I asked the last question, trying to seem as indifferent and calm as
possible, although for some completely incomprehensible reason my heart
was pounding violently. Some super-instinct told me that I had just
touched on something that was a terrible secret.
Suddenly Schwartz laughed loudly:
"God, what an idiot I am! And all this time I have made you agonize
over the question, what compounds are we dealing with? And I should
have told you this from the beginning. Your work would take on a
completely different meaning. Laughing to his heart's content, he wiped
his watery eyes with his handkerchief and said calmly but cheerfully:
"Well, of course, of course, we are engaged in the study and synthesis of
organosilicon compounds. We deal with organic silicon compounds.
That's all. This is all our work.

18
 I continued to look at him with astonished eyes, as if asking, "Why
here, in the desert?"
However, he also answered this unspoken question:
"You know, organosilicon compounds are very little studied. Those
that have been synthesized so far have no practical significance yet.
However, the future seems to belong to them.
Dr. Schwartz got up and walked over to a large bookcase. He took out a
German chemical journal and handed it to me.
"Here, take and read Dr. Graber's article on organosilicon compounds
here. The professor dealt with these formations even before the war. Now
he continues his research in the same direction. Why here, and not in
Germany? This is quite clear: true science requires solitude.

4. HURRICANE
Six months later, my life entered a monotonous rut. Winter came. Now,
after sunset, it became so cold that I did not want to go out for an evening
walk at all. The electric stove did not warm my room, so when it got dark,
I immediately crawled under the covers and read.
It was during this period that I noticed that work was in full swing in the
southern laboratory. Smoke poured out of the chimneys of the barracks
around the clock, the windows glowed all night long. And one day, when
my working day was over, a tall blond man in horn-rimmed glasses, with a
porcelain jar in his hands, suddenly ran into the laboratory. For a moment
he stopped in the door, as if rooted to the ground.
"Excuse me, please, I need to see Herr Schwartz," he finally babbled in
German, smiling in confusion.
"Mr. Schwartz has gone somewhere. Probably to his laboratory," I
replied also in German.
I was there. And this is so urgent, so urgent...
"Maybe I can help you?" I asked.
"I don't know, I don't know..." He pressed the jar to his chest. "I was
sent by Dr. Graber... A full analysis of this must be done immediately.
"That's my part," I said, and held out my hand to him.
The German jumped away from me and backed away to the door.
— Are you allowed to work on Isolde Two? He whispered, covering
his precious jar with his palms.
— Of course! I lied brazenly, thinking that now was an exceptional
opportunity for me to learn something very important. — Of course. I am
admitted to the works "Isolde - Two", "Siegfried - Zero", "Freedom",
"Lorelei", in general to all the works of the cycle "Clay God".

19
 A kind of reckless inspiration came over me, and I came up with
ciphers of works unknown to me with the speed of lightning. He hesitated
and asked timidly:
"Are you a German?"
"Lord, of course! Can a foreigner be admitted to these studies? I come
from the Saarland," I kept lying, and only one thought drilled into my
brain: "Hurry, hurry up, give me your damn jar, otherwise it will be too
late, otherwise Schwartz will come."
"Then take it." Only I must be here. So I was ordered...
"Good. I know the order! He handed me a white porcelain jar with a lid
on it.
— What needs to be determined? "
The concentration of hydrogen ions, the amount of silicon, sodium and
iron.
"Is that all?" I asked cheerfully.
"That's it. Only, please, hurry...
In my laboratory, a bright electric lamp burned under the ceiling. In
addition to it, another, without a lampshade, stood on the desk. I walked
over to it and opened the lid.
I was struck by the smell of the liquid there. I shook the jar slightly and
froze, shocked, looking at how a thick red mass flowed down the
snow-white walls.
It was blood.
"My God, why are you so late?" This is sample seventeen or
forty-two... It differs from yesterday only in the concentration of hydrogen
ions... If the analysis is not done quickly, the blood will coagulate!
I looked up at the German with staring eyes, continuing to squeeze the
can. I suddenly felt that it was warm, warmer than it could be heated in my
hands.
"Are you sure... that it will curdle? I said at last in a hoarse voice,
slowly approaching the German.
He backed away, staring at me with his huge blue eyes. So we walked,
very slowly, he backing up to the door, and Two steps away from him is
me, convulsively clutching a porcelain jar.
"Now tell me," I said through clenched teeth, "whose blood is this?"
"You're crazy!" He shrieked. "Have you forgotten?" The series "Isolde
- Two" is rabbits, rats and pigeons! Rather, you...
And I laughed. I don't know why I was so frightened of this blood, why
it made such a terrible impression on me. Rabbit blood! Ha ha ha! What a
miracle! And I thought...
"Oh, yes, of course! I exclaimed, laughing, and slapped my forehead

20
hard with my palm. "And I thought it was a series of...
"Is there a series in which..." the German suddenly interrupted me and
in turn went at me... His face was distorted by hatred and contempt. The
pretty and youthful face instantly became scary...
It is difficult to imagine how this unexpected meeting would have
ended if Dr. Schwartz had not burst into the laboratory. He flew in like a
whirlwind, furious and furious. I have never seen him like this. All his
good-naturedness, courtesy, and courtesy disappeared. Even on the
threshold he shouted in a voice that was not his own:
"Get out! Get out of here! How dare you climb here without
permission?!
I thought that all this applied to me, and was about to answer, when
suddenly Dr. Schwartz ran up to the German and hit him in the face with
his fist. The man, covering his eyes with his hand, jumped to the window,
and Schwartz caught up with him and hit him again.
"Damn pig, where's the drug?!"
The German did not answer. His face was glistening with sweat.
"Where's the drug, I ask you, you scoundrel!"
"I have it, Herr Doctor," I said quietly in German, handing the porcelain
jar to Schwartz.
Schwartz turned sharply to me. He didn't seem to notice my presence
before, but then he stared at me with staring eyes:
"What right did you have to take this drug?" He roared. "Oh, you
French pig...
He swung, but I managed to cover myself with my hand, and the blow
fell directly on the porcelain jar. The blow was strong, the jar flew out of
my hand, hit the wall above my desk and shattered to pieces. A huge red
spot spread on the wall, dark streams, quickly swelling, ran down. Blood
spattered the whole table, all my papers.
A few drops fell on the electric bulb, and crimson splashes bubbled on
the red-hot glass.
For a moment there was a dead silence. Our eyes were fixed on a spot
on the wall. I was the first to recover:
"Forgive me for taking up this matter, but the analysis, as this
gentleman said, was very urgent...
"Urgent?" Schwartz said, as if he had woken up. "Oh, yes, urgently...
"The rabbit has just been killed, Herr Schwartz," the blond German
babbled.
"Yes, just now. The blood was still warm, and it was necessary to
urgently determine the concentration of hydrogen ions...
— Yes, yes. Gosh darn! And I thought... That scoundrel Hans told me...

21
Phew, what nonsense..
Schwartz went to the table and began to wipe the electric bulb with a
handkerchief. Then, having calmed down completely, he smiled and, as
always, good-naturedly and cheerfully looked first at me, and then at the
German:
"Damn me! But I think I overreacted. It's all the scoundrel Hans. It is he
who should be beaten. But don't be angry with me, Myrdal. And you,
Fröhlich. After all, in your childhood, you probably got into trouble from
your father, who came home in a bad mood. AlongBelieve me, I want
good things for you. Come along, Fröhlich... I myself will apologize to Dr.
Graber for spoiling the sample. We will repeat it tomorrow. Forgive me,
Myrdal, once again. Lie down to rest. It's too late. Good night.
Schwartz waved his hand in greeting and left the laboratory with
Fröhlich, whom I never met. Fröhlich continued to press his hand to his
broken lips.
Left alone, I stood for a few more minutes in front of a table covered in
blood. Everything was mixed up in my head. I heard Dr. Schwartz's wild
abuse, Fröhlich's timid and surprised voice automatically repeated to
himself: "Isolde is two", "Isolde is two"..." Then I turned off the light and
went into the bedroom. I didn't want to sleep at all. Lying on my back, I
stared into the darkness and continued to think about everything that had
happened. Is it really the fault of Schwartz's bad mood? Or maybe
something else? Why did he attack Fröhlich so violently? Why did he
suddenly cool down so suddenly? What did Hans say to him?
I turned to the other side. The wind was rising in the desert, and grains
of sand were furiously hitting the window. In the next room, a gusty wind
howled in the chimney of the fume hood... The wind grew stronger by the
minute, and soon the windows of the laboratory shook and rang. The sand
hissed in every way, trying, swaying, to scratch a crack in the walls, break
into the house and cover everything. I raised myself up on my elbows and
looked out the window. It was pitch dark. Sand dust covered the sky like a
thick veil. A hurricane was beginning, a sandstorm. During such storms,
thousands of tons of sand fly into the air. Sand tornadoes rush across the
desert, drawing new mountains of sand into motion, turning day into
night, night into hell...
Suddenly, among the whistling and hissing, some strange sounds
reached my ears... It was like scratching, grinding, crackling... With every
second it was heard more and more clearly. I got out of bed and went to the
window. The scratching sounded very close now. I leaned against the
glass, peering into the impenetrable darkness and expecting to see
something incomprehensible and mysterious, which aroused both fear and

22
curiosity in me. I was waiting for someone's terrible face to emerge from
the streams of furiously rushing sand and cling to the glass on the other
side... And suddenly I realized that the creaking and scratching did not
come from outside, but from within, that the sound was born here, in the
laboratory, in the next room!
I rushed to the door and threw it wide open, At that moment the
grinding was especially loud. As if someone is trying to insert a key into a
keyhole in the dark!
I fumbled along the wall and turned the switch. The spectrophotometric
room was immediately filled with light. Everything was the same here as
it was an hour ago. But the strange sound was heard quite clearly. Where
did it come from? I walked slowly between the tables and appliances,
approached the fume hood, and finally found myself in front of a large
metal door that covered a step-down transformer. On the gray cast-iron
door was painted a white skull and two bones, crossed by a red lightning
bolt. It was written in German: "Attention! High voltage!"
Yes, the sounds were heard from here! Someone tried to open the door
from the opposite side. But who? Isn't there a transformer?
I stood there for quite a long time, staring at the image of the skull in
confusion, until the grinding of metal suddenly stopped. The lock clicked,
and the door opened ajar.
At first, I saw only a dark crack. And then the head of a man poked
through the crackIn the 19th century, the Communist Party I almost cried
out when I recognized Maurice Poisson.
Pasha's eyes met, and he made a sign to me to turn off the light. I
flipped the switch and felt my way back to the door. I didn't see Maurice,
but I could hear him breathing heavily. Then he whispered,
"You don't have anybody?"
— No, I don't.
"Believe me, I'm an honest man, and I can't stay here any longer."
"What do you want to do?"
"Run."
"Where?"
"To flee from here to France. To tell everyone everything...
"Can't you get out of here just like that?"
— No, I don't.
"How are you going to escape?"
"That's my business. I don't have time to explain. What time is it now?
I glanced at the glowing dial of my watch:
"It's a quarter to two.
"In seven minutes, they'll be far away...

23
 "Who?"
"Sentries." Here's what. Take this key. It will allow you to learn
something. Just don't walk on the right gallery. Go straight. Climb the
steps up and open a door like this. I think they won't find a person in my
place until a month from now. During this time, you will have time to
learn everything.
"How can I help you?"
"Three things: glasses, a bottle of water, and a glass of alcohol. I'll drink
alcohol now.
"I don't have anti-dust glasses. I have working glasses. By the way, why
don't you enter the room?
"Wait. It is impossible to enter you so easily. Give me glasses. Now I
can't do without them. Sand.
I went back to my room and took my glasses from the table. Then I
groped for a bottle with a screw cap and filled it with water. Poisson drank
a glass of alcohol and washed it down with water from a bottle.
"Okay. It seems that this is all. And now take me on your back and
carry me to the outer door. If everything is calm there, I will go out.
"On your back?" You? I was amazed.
You will carry me. Otherwise, they will know that I am with you. Turn
around.
He put his arms around my neck, I put him on my back and carried him
to the exit.
When I opened the outer door, a cloud of sand violently pounced on us.
For a few seconds we listened to the howling wind. Maurice touched me
on the shoulder.
"It's time." Farewell. Don't forget that you are French and human. Lock
the door in the transformer box. Farewell. Soon everything will become
clear to you...
He bent down and dived into the moaning darkness.
I went back to the laboratory, turned on the light, and locked the door of
the transformer box.
On that terrible night I could not sleep. Only in the morning did I fall
into a heavy, nightmare-filled sleep. I was woken up by a furious phone
call.
"Myrdal, you sleep like a dead man!" I heard Frau Einzig's harsh voice.
"Why aren't you at work yet?" You don't sleep at night and wander around
the laboratory like a sleepwalker, but that's your business. And if you
please, get up for work on time.
"God, what time is it now?"
"It's two minutes past ten.

24
 "Yes, but it's so dark...
"Although it's not part of my job, I can tell you that it's a hurricane
outside," she replied in a sarcastic tone and hung up.
I quickly dressed and went to wash my face.

5. RAT
Poisson's strange appearance in my laboratory and his escape caused
confusion in my soul. Everything happened so unexpectedly that for
several days I could not come to my senses, constantly remembering all
the details of this event.
With his escape, nothing changed at the institute. Neither Dr. Schwartz,
nor Frau Einzig, nor the sentries showed that anything unusual had
happened. Everything was as usual.
I still received a large amount of organic and inorganic substances from
Schwartz for analysis. Only the "dirty" drugs that Maurice brought me
were gone.
With his disappearance, I lost the only interlocutor with whom I could
conduct informal conversations.
Nor did I see Fröhlich again, and Dr. Schwartz began to treat me more
dryly and more formally. He stopped talking to me about things that had
nothing to do with work. Often, studying the results of my tests, he
became irritable and captious. There were times when he ordered me to
redo or repeat the tests. I noticed that in all these cases the analytes were
thick tar-like liquids, somewhat cloudy in the light. These substances had
an enormous molecular weight, sometimes more than a million, and a
complex molecular structure in which I detected saccharide and phosphate
groups and nitrogenous bases with the help of an infrared
spectrophotometer. I did not detect silicon in these substances, and it was
this circumstance that seemed to me to make Dr. Schwartz irritable and
nervous. One day I ventured to ask Schwartz what these strange
substances were. Without turning his head in my direction and gazing
intently at the data written in the column, he answered:
"RNA.
After that, I began to recall everything I knew about ribonucleic acids
from the organic chemistry course. Unfortunately, I didn't know much.
These acids are a specific biological product, and they are mentioned only
in passing in ordinary textbooks of organic chemistry. I found almost
nothing about them in the little reference literature and magazine articles
that I had at my disposal. Ribonucleic acids are the main chemicals that
make up the nuclei of living cells. They are especially abundant in rapidly

25
multiplying cells and in brain cells. That's all I remembered. However, I
knew for sure that silicon was not part of ribonucleic acids, and Schwartz's
nervousness was completely incomprehensible.
By the end of winter, I had a lot of work to do. Now almost all analyses
concerned either ribonucleic acids or substances similar to them. Silicon
has completely disappeared from the lists of elements. Schwartz turned
from a self-satisfied and good-natured scientist into an evil investigator.
He did not speak, but growled. As he looked through my notes, he
furiously threw the papers aside and muttered obscene curses. Without
any embarrassment from me, he jumped up, ran into the next room, where
the Italian Giovanni worked, and, confusing German, Italian and French
words, attacked him with curses. It became clear to me that the Italian was
a synthetic who had to push silicon into ribonucleic acid at all costs. He
made a huge number of syntheses, each time changing the temperature,
pressure in autoclaves and flasks, and the ratio of reacting substances.
Sacco shouted that he had followed all the instructions of the Signor
Professor exactly, but it was not his fault that the silicon did not attach to
the ribonuclein moleculeacid.
Once, when Schwartz attacked Giovanni with another stream of
swearing, I could not stand it anymore and intervened.
"You don't dare treat a man like that!" You accuse him of not being able
to alter the laws of nature at your whim! I shouted when Schwartz swung
his fist at the synthetic.
Schwartz was stunned for a moment, and then jumped to me:
"Ah, and you're here, French pig?" Beat it!
My eyes darkened with rage, but I restrained myself and did not move.
Through clenched teeth I strained:
"You are not a chemist, but a brainless rubbish if the synthesis carried
out under your leadership does not give the desired results.
Dr. Schwartz turned pale as a sheet, his eyes almost popping out of their
sockets. Choking with rage, he was ready to tear me to shreds. At that
moment Giovanni came up to the doctor from behind. The Italian's eyes
flashed with hatred. Schwartz was a tall, broad-shouldered man, stronger
than any of us, but he would not have dared to speak against the two. He
swung to hit me, the Italian grabbed his arm.
"Just a second, signor," he hissed. For a few moments Schwartz stood
between us, looking at one and then the other. Then he said:
"Remember this day well. Remember forever. Now get out!
After this stormy scene, I slowly returned to my laboratory.
During my life in the desert, I have taken walks on the sandy sea more
than once. I am used to the monotonous landscape. I knew everything here

26
to the smallest detail. From the first day of my stay at the institute,
everything here was unchanged and frozen, and only black smoke poured
out of the chimney of the southern laboratory, now stronger, then weaker,
and the surface of the sand, depending on the wind, was now covered with
small ripples, then wrinkled by rows of frozen waves. The sand in the rays
of the sun was cream-colored, and on especially hot days it acquired a
slightly bluish hue, as if it was covered with the thinnest shiny film, in
which the sky was reflected. And everything around was covered with
sand, on which here and there were rare traces of people, traces that
quickly disappeared.
Everything in me was boiling with anger. I cursed myself, then
Schwartz, then the whole world, mainly because I didn't understand
anything. Until now, I did not understand the meaning of the work of the
Graber Institute. I did not understand why Schwartz was furious when he
did not find silicon in ribonucleic acid. I did not understand why Poisson
had fled from here. I didn't understand why the lab was hiding in the
desert. In general, I did not understand anything, and this drove me to
despair.
"Silicon, silicon, silicon," I drilled in my head as I walked slowly
toward my barracks, stepping on the hot sand. Here it is, silicon. Silicon
oxide in huge quantities, scattered across the vast deserts of Africa. There
is as much of it as you like. But he lives his own, independent life. There
are strict laws where it can be and where it should not be. It is an element
with its own character, like any chemical element. In accordance with the
structure of its electron shell, it behaves in a certain way in chemical
reactions. It readily attaches to some substances and does not attach to
others. And is Giovanni to blame for this? But why silicon? If Graber is
interested in organic silicon compounds in general, then why is it so
necessary for him to squeeze silicon atoms into a molecule of a
biochemical product?
Approaching the laboratory, I suddenly stopped dead in my tracks.
In front of the door to my barracks, I was surprised to see Valyaa dead
rat near the steps.
Her appearance was so unexpected that I could not believe my eyes and
lightly hit the gray lump with the toe of my shoe. Imagine my amazement
when I felt that I had touched something as hard as a stone.
I looked around. One pair of sentries stood far away, on the north side,
and the second was almost next to me. In accordance with the accepted
order, they stood motionless and looked in my direction.
After a moment's hesitation, I bent over the rat and began to carefully
tie the shoelace on my shoelace. A few seconds later, I straightened up,

27
holding the rat in my arms, and entered the laboratory.
At first I thought that the animal had dried up in the sun. Such a thought
occurred to me because, as soon as I touched its long tail, it easily broke,
like a thin dry branch. However, her body did not have the wrinkled
appearance that is found in dried animals. The corpse looked more like a
scarecrow stuffed with something very hard. The rat's fur was as tough as
bristles.
"Who could have planted such a scarecrow at my door?" I thought.
She appeared this morning, while I was at Schwartz's. Could it be that
someone came to my door during that hour? But then the footprints would
be visible in the sand. So... But the stuffed rat could not have appeared
here by itself, could it? Without coming up with anything, I took a scalpel
and tried to stick the point into the rat's abdomen. But it was as impossible
as if I had wished to pierce a stone. The tip of the knife scratched
helplessly on the surface, tearing off a thin layer of wool. An attempt to
cut off the leg ended with the fact that it simply broke off. I examined the
place of the bummer, and found that it glittered like polished wood.
Convinced that I would not be able to cut this effigy or corpse, I placed it
on the heavy slab on which I usually burned preparations for the analysis
of ashes, took a hammer and struck with all my strength. The corpse split
into several large pieces. The surfaces of the split had a shiny glassy
appearance, with patterns in which it was easy to guess the sections of the
internal organs of the animal. In bewilderment, I turned the wreckage in
my hands. Even if we assume that this rat was specially made of stone and
a skin was stretched over it, then why was it necessary to reproduce its
internal structure so carefully?
No, this is not a stone model of a rat. This is a real rat that was alive, but
for some unknown reason turned into a stone rat. And the only thing I
didn't know was whether she petrified after running to the door of my
laboratory, or...
After a moment's thought, I picked out a small piece from the wreckage
and ran to the spectrograph. A bright arc flame flashed. On the
spectrogram I saw what I had expected: among the great number of
different lines, which belonged mainly to iron, there were thick black lines
by which silicon was easily recognizable.
The rat was really made of stone.
This discovery suddenly illuminated the meaning of all my work in a
completely new way. I understood why silicon was so intrusively detected
in my analyses. I vaguely guessed that the mud that Poisson brought me
was probably the result of burning or grinding stone animals like the rat I
found. Maurice's hint that Dr. Graber was going to play some trick on

28
biochemistry looked new. It became clear to me that the Germans were
trying to push silicon into a living organism. But why? After all, this is not
why to make stone effigies? And for what?
Twilight fell, and I continued to sit lost in thought. The more I thought,
the more I was lost in conjecture.
My head was clouded by the tension. I felt that if I didn't understand the
meaning of all this in the near future, I would go crazy. Now I could not
ask Schwartz a direct question. I must keep my find a secret. It was
necessary to look for some other ways to solve the riddle. And then I
remembered. The key! The key that Poisson gave me on the night of his
escape!
I hid it then under the heavy rail on which the spectrograph stood. Now
I found it and, like the greatest jewel, squeezed it in my hand. I walked
resolutely to the door of a gray box on which was a human skull between
two bones, crossed out by a red lightning bolt.
No, you can't do that. This is not an easy walk. This is a dangerous
expedition for which you need to prepare for a long time and carefully.
My every move in the laboratory is being watched there, at Graber's. Frau
Einzig knows everything about my every step. Before I go on a journey to
find out the secret, I must protect myself.
I stepped away from the gray door and put the key under the rail again.
I put the rat fragments in a jar and hid them in a cabinet with chemical
utensils. Then I went to bed.
That night I dreamed of motionless stone idols with their hands folded
on their chests.

6. "OASIS OF SCARLET PALMS"

The fact that Frau Einzig was watching my every step from the
telephone exchange became clear to me soon after I arrived at the institute.
It wasn't just that she woke me up when, for one reason or another, I woke
up for work. There was other, more obvious evidence. One day, when the
working day was over and I went to my room, she called and reminded me
that I had forgotten to turn off the water in the darkroom. As usual, with
marked politeness and snideness, she said: "Monsieur Myrdal, you seem
to think that you are in Paris and that the Seine flows outside the window
of your apartment." The next time she asked me who had come to see me,
even though I had no one.
"Then tell me, please, what did you just do?"
"I moved the drying cabinet to a new place, closer to the sink," I replied
in surprise. "What's the matter?"

29
 "I see," she croaked and hung up. So, in some incomprehensible way,
she was able to follow what was happening in the laboratory. I thought
about this for a long time and came to the conclusion that perhaps Frau
Einzig had a board with a plan of my laboratory hanging before her eyes,
on which, like a railway dispatcher, warning lights were lit to show where
I was and what I was doing. It was necessary to understand the alarm
system.
All the heavy instruments and cabinets in the laboratory stood on a
stone foundation, unconnected with the brown linoleum that covered the
floors. When you walk on this linoleum, it feels like stepping on a soft
carpet. Undoubtedly, the floor was arranged in such a way that every time
a person stepped on it, it slightly bent and somewhere shorted the
electrical contacts. There were probably several contacts, because the area
of all rooms, and especially the spectrophotometric room, was large and it
is unlikely that the pressure on the floor in one place could be transmitted
to the entire surface.
One day, when I was relatively free, I armed myself with a screwdriver
and began to crawl along the walls, lifting the edges of the linoleum. Soon
the search was crowned with success. When I lifted the flooring right by
the window, I found that a fine copper mesh was attached to the back of
the flooring, which was probably one common electrode. When I lifted the
linoleum even more, I found that it was lying loosely on low, springy
brackets, between which small round plates were attached to the wooden
boards. As soon as you pressed on the surface of the linoleum, the springy
brackets bent and the mesh touched one of several copper electrodes. On
the dispatcher's board, the plan of my laboratory was studded with electric
bulbs. She had the opportunity to see not only where I was at the moment,
but also where I went and who came to see me. I understood why Poisson
had asked me to carry him through the laboratory to the exit in my arms.
Otherwise, the telephone operator would have raised the alarm!
In all rooms of the laboratory, the alarm system was built according to
the same pattern. However, the fact that I understood this simple electrical
diagram did not solve the question of how I could leave the laboratory
unnoticed. Of course, I can short-circuit a few electrodes somewhere and
thus give the warden the impression that I am sitting still. But she will still
see that I am moving around the room, and she will immediately raise the
alarm. After all, the screen will show her that there are not one, but two
people in the room! And then a thought struck me. Without thinking twice,
I stretched out in the middle of the room and slowlycrawled on his
stomach. Then I lay motionless for a few minutes, waiting to see what
would happen. And it turned out exactly what I expected. The phone rang

30
abruptly. I grinned to myself and continued to lie there, mentally enjoying
the fact that I had made Frau Einzig go crazy. The phone rang a few more
times, and then crackled continuously. I was sure that if I had lain on the
floor for a few more minutes, the whole institute would have been brought
to its feet. I stood up abruptly and picked up the receiver.
"Where have you gone?" I heard a familiar voice.
"Have you gone?" I haven't gone anywhere," I replied in a surprised
voice.
"Then tell me what tricks you're doing there."
After a moment's silence, I said with feigned admiration:
"You know, madam, your powers of observation amaze me. I was
really doing stunts just now. I climbed onto the laboratory table and tried
to remove the curtain from the window, on which several kilograms of
dust had accumulated. If the table hadn't been attached to the floor for
some idiotic reason, I'd have done it very simply. And now I had to...
"Enough talking!" She interrupted me sharply. "Tomorrow I will send
you a man to replace your curtains.
So, now I could move around the laboratory unnoticed. To do this, it
was necessary not to walk, but to crawl on your stomach. This suited me
quite well.
There was not much left. It was necessary to make Frau Einzig think
that I was in the laboratory at a time when I would not be here.
After examining my bed, I found an electrical contact in the spring
mesh. When I lay down, the mesh bent and touched the longitudinal metal
bar, isolated from the rest of the body by porcelain bars. It was enough to
connect the net and the crossbar with wire, and Frau Einzig would think
that I was sleeping. Now that the alarm system had been solved, it
remained to think over the details of his future journey along the path that
Poisson had once taken.
I will have to close the contact in the bed while I am lying on it. Then I
would have to slide down from it to the floor and crawl about ten meters to
the transformer box. Here I will have to perform a complex gymnastic
exercise: crawl into the box without getting on my feet.
The door to the box was about half a meter above the floor, and it was
impossible to reach it while lying down. I thought for a long time about
how to do this. This was the most crucial stage of the entire trip.
For several days I carefully prepared for the upcoming campaign. The
preparation consisted in the fact that I practiced sliding out of bed so that I
could lie on the floor with my whole body at once. Having previously
closed the mesh of the bed with a metal bar with wire, I crawled around
the laboratory at night, trying to make sure that this was a reliable method

31
of transportation. It really was like that, because there were no alarm
signals. During this time, I thought about how to crawl unnoticed through
the door of the imaginary transformer box. To do this, you will need to
first open the door and throw a rope loop through it. If you grab it with
your hands and rest your feet on a massive cabinet with chemical utensils
standing nearby, you can crawl through the door without getting on your
feet. One night I did this exercise as well. With great difficulty, I lifted
myself from the floor and climbed through the narrow door. There was a
smell of musty warm air from there. Lowering my feet, I felt that they
touched the stone steps that went down. ZatI performed the opposite
operation: with the help of the same rope and wardrobe, I again sank flat
on the linoleum and returned to my bed.
So, we could go.
For the hike, I chose a quiet, windless night, when the moon was full
and illuminated the desert with a transparent calm light. I sat at the
window for a long time, peering into the moonlit silence that reigned
around me. The silvery sand dunes looked like smooth sea waves, frozen
in a photograph. Lights were on in the windows of the southern laboratory,
and the windows of the building where Graber lived were glowing.
Exactly at ten o'clock in the evening, everything will be dark there too.
The light will be on only in one window, where Frau Einzig is on duty. It
was her that I had to deceive tonight. I did not know what this journey
underground would give me, but the desire to uncover the mystery was
very great, and I decided not to deviate from my plan.
At last the lights began to go out, and at ten in the evening everything
was plunged into darkness.
Then I picked up the phone. A moment later, Frau Einzig's voice was
heard:
"What's the matter, Myrdal?"
"I have a request for you. Something overwhelms me with sleep, and I
am unable to finish my urgent work. I ask you to wake me up tomorrow at
six or seven o'clock.
"All right, I'll wake you up," she said.
"Good night, Frau Einzig.
"Good night."
A few seconds later I lay down in bed. I lay there, trying not to move, as
if afraid to scare someone away.
"It's time," I whispered to myself half an hour later.
I fumbled in my pockets, checking if everything was in place. There
was a key to the door, an electric torch and a box of matches. In the other
pocket was a knife. I hid a piece of rope in the pocket of my dressing

32
gown, in case there, at the opposite end of the underground path, I had to
do the same exercises as here.
Slipping my hand under the mattress, I tied the net tightly to the metal
bar.
It seemed to me that I made the way from the bed to the transformer box
very quickly. However, a glance at the glowing dial of my watch showed
that I had crawled through the laboratory in twenty minutes. It was the
beginning of twelve.
When I found myself inside the cramped vestibule, sweat rolled down
from me. At the door, I waited a few seconds to make sure that the first leg
of the journey had gone well. Then I climbed a few steps, closed the door
behind me, and turned on the flashlight.
A stone staircase led along a sloping gallery with concrete walls and
ended in a small platform from where a narrow horizontal pipe began. I
stuck my head into it and lit it with a flashlight. It seemed endless. At a
distance of about five meters from its beginning, a row of iron hooks
began, on which cables and wires lay. They supplied electricity to the
laboratory, as well as telephone communication and alarm systems.
Looking closer, I immediately distinguished an electric cable from a
telephone cable. The telephone was in blue isolation. And in the thick lead
cable, apparently, there were many thin conductors that branched out
under the floor and connected to copper contacts...
A pair of wires were now carrying a false electrical signal to the control
room that I was asleep. At this thought I smiled.
It was difficult to crawl, because the iron hooks clung to the clothes
every now and then. I had to stop and make complex movements with my
hands to unhook myself. The pipe was not designed to to travel through it.
The farther I crawled, the more stale the air became, and at last it
seemed to me that it had disappeared altogether. I stopped and lay
motionless for a few seconds, swallowing the hot stuffiness with my
mouth wide open. Then I crawled on, making stops every five to ten
meters.
According to my calculations, the pipe went directly to the east. If so,
then I had to crawl at least one kilometer - the path is not small. But I
hadn't made it halfway when I felt that my strength was leaving me.
Multi-colored spots floated before my eyes, my ears were ringing, my
heart was beating unevenly, as if in a fever, then it seemed to stop
completely.
"I won't crawl. We need to go back"...
Crawling into the chimney, for some reason I did not think that there
might be a need to return. Only now did I realize that this could not be

33
done. The pipe was narrow, and it was impossible to turn around in it. It
was possible to step back, but it was even harder. I tried to crawl like this
for a few meters and stopped. My dressing gown and shirt were pulled up
over my head, and the metal hooks clung firmly to my clothes. To get rid
of them, we had to crawl forward again.
Finally, I was exhausted and froze in absolute darkness, somewhere in
the middle of a narrow and stuffy concrete pipe, under a thick layer of
sand. "But Poisson somehow went this way!" I whispered breathlessly,
and mentally answered myself: "Yes." So what's the matter? Forward,
only forward...
I turned on the light and crawled forward again, stopping only to
unhook another hook.
I was almost losing consciousness from suffocation and terrible
exertion, when suddenly I smelled what seemed to me to be fresh air. I
stopped and, illuminating the walls, saw that there was another channel
branching off from the chimney. This branch was somewhat wider, and all
the wires and cables went into it. I guessed that they led to Graber.
"Crawl straight," I remembered Poisson's words.
Here I lay for a few minutes and caught my breath. Then I looked at my
watch, and my chest felt cold: it was two o'clock in the morning. If I
continue to move at the same speed, I will not be able to get back in time.
I turned off the light and, working with both hands, began to move on.
Finally, my head buried itself in something solid. I lit a flashlight and
saw that I was at the bottom of a well, similar to the one under my
laboratory. A steep stone staircase climbed up...
As I inserted the key into the keyhole, I felt as if Graber's guards were
already standing outside the door, ready to grab me. I was so accustomed
to the confinement of the laboratory that the very thought of leaving it
terrified me. It seemed to me that my absence had been discovered a long
time ago and the alarm had been raised. But I did everything as I planned.
Let it be what happens. I quietly turned the key and opened the door.
It was a large oblong room with wide and low windows. The moonlight
did not hit them, and I realized that they were facing east. In the middle of
the room stood the silhouette of a structure reminiscent of the furnace of
ancient alchemists: on four thin supports a conical roof with a chimney
reaching into the ceiling. There were wide tables by the windows, and on
them I saw pots with plants. Their leaves and stems stood out clearly
against the background of silver windows.
For a long time I stood motionless at the open door and listened. Not a
single rustle, not a single sigh or rustle. The air was musty. It seemed that
there were no people in this room for a long time...

34
 By the light of the lantern I found that the floor was plank.
"This room is not controlled," I decided, and without thinking twice, I
left the drawer. The room looked like a greenhouse. What towered in the
middle turned out to be an ordinary stove on which metal vats stood. The
pots on the tables were indeed with plants. But even in the semi-darkness,
I realized that these are extraordinary plants. Their leaves were not green.
By the light of the electric torch, they seemed yellow.
I could not resist and, approaching one of the pots, touched the plant
with my hand. The stems and leaves were tough, like rough leather. When
pressed, they easily broke with a quiet crack.
Everything that grew here was just as hard and unnatural. Under the
leaves of one of the plants, I noticed some fruits that were hard and dense,
although they looked like tomatoes. I pulled a knife out of my pocket, cut
the stem, and hid the trophy in my pocket.
The clock showed fifteen minutes past four when I went to the door in
the right corner of the greenhouse. The door was ajar. I did not
immediately realize where I was when I went outside. The building stood
in the corner of a vast garden enclosed by high walls. They diverged at
right angles and hid behind tree trunks. I recognized these trees: palm
trees, the same ones I had always seen when I left the laboratory.
No doubt, it was an "oasis of scarlet palms". However, now it looked
more like a huge cemetery with very few trees.
In front of me, tall, stone-enclosed beds towered above the surface of
the sand, and some shrubs grew on them. The pre-morning breeze began,
it grew stronger with every minute, but the leaves of the plants were
completely motionless.
This silent sand field with lifeless vegetation seemed ghostly and
unnatural in the rays of the setting moon. There was no feeling of
freshness, no smell of greenery and flowers, no moisture and decay. I
slowly wandered between the beds-graves, and it seemed to me that not
real shrubs grew on them, but some artificial ones made of a strange dry
and hard material. I touched the leaves and stems with my hands several
times, and always instinctively withdrew my hand, because they, hard and
hard, gave the impression of dried corpses.
I walked through this amazing garden as if enchanted, forgetting the
difficult path I had traveled, not thinking about how I would return back. I
was at a loss to understand how and for what purpose this terrible,
unnatural flora had been created, which had no boundaries in the
moonlight and which was so reminiscent of a cemetery in the desert. I was
suddenly seized by an oppressive feeling. A dead garden in the desert, tall,
grave-like beds, distant silhouettes of palm trees, deep sand and a slight

35
rustle in the motionless foliage created the impression that I was in the
other world, in the land of the dead, in the afterlife of plants...
The magnifying glass descended above the horizon and almost touched
the fence separating the oasis from the rest of the world. I decided it was
time to go back. As I entered the deep shadow cast by the fence, I suddenly
heard sounds that resembled distant gunshots. They came from
somewhere to the left. I listened. Indeed, a few single distant shots, and
then "ta-ta-ta-ta-ta" - as if a machine-gun burst...
Moving all the time in the shadows, I finally came close to the place
where the wall under thecorner went to the east. The shots and
machine-gun fire were now more audible, and I stopped, wondering what
might be going on behind the wall. I walked slowly along it, tormented by
curiosity, and came upon a gate. It was locked. Again, in the silence of the
night, I heard "ta-ta-ta-ta-ta" and then a distant voice, reminiscent of a
child's crying... "Are they really shooting behind the wall"? The shots
stopped, and no matter how long I waited, they did not happen again.
I don't know how long I stood near the gate when suddenly it creaked,
and I instinctively jumped to the side and hid behind a low, leafy tree.
I did not see the door open, for the shadow in the corner was very deep,
and the moon sank still lower above the horizon. I stared intently into the
darkness and could not see anything for a long time. Only after a few
agonizing minutes did I notice something gray moving very slowly along
the wall towards the greenhouse. It was a man. Or rather, I guessed that it
was a person. The gray silhouette moved in strange jerks, stepping heavily
on the deep sand.
I stood in my hiding place, afraid to move, following the gray shadow
along the wall with my eyes. Who is he? What was he doing there, behind
the wall, at this hour of the night? Why is it going so slowly? Then the
thought flashed through my head like lightning: "He's going to the
greenhouse! All ways of return will now be cut off!"
Stumbling over some heavy and hard fruits, I quickly walked through
the beds, moving parallel to the stone fence. Soon the gray shadow was far
behind, and I was standing at the door of the greenhouse.
From here I could see that a slow man was pushing a huge garden
wheelbarrow in front of him. The faint creak of its single wheel was heard.
I resolutely entered the greenhouse and headed for the coveted door.
It became completely dark here, and I had to turn on the electric torch
several times. At the moment when I went down, I could hear the sand
rustling outside the windows under the weight of heavy steps. Then I
closed the door behind me and turned the key silently.
The way back through the pipe seemed much shorter to me.

36
 7. ROBERT FERNAND
Early one morning, Dr. Schwartz brought to me a man whom I had
never seen before. He was an elderly, tall, broad-shouldered man with a
shock of black curly hair on his head.
— Meet me. This is Monsieur Fernand, our biochemist," Schwartz
announced.
Fernand looked at me with squinted, short-sighted eyes and smiled
slightly.
"Good afternoon," I said,
"good afternoon," he replied in French with a subtle foreign accent.
"Dr. Fernand will perform the functions that Maurice Poisson used to
perform," Schwartz said. "I hope you'll make friends.
He nodded to me and went out. Fernand placed a tripod on my desk
with test tubes filled with the cloudy liquids I knew, and began to walk
around the laboratory in silence. He stopped at the instruments, his shaggy
head bent low over them. I followed his movements, trying to guess who
he was and what he was. For some reason, it seemed to me that he was not
French. In order not to betray my curiosity, I began to sort the test tubes,
and he kept pacing around the room with his hands behind his back and
not touching anything. He just looked.
— Do you need complete analyses or only spectral ones? I asked in an
indifferent tone.
"And how are you supposed to?"
— It depends on what is required. I don't know what you need.
He thought for a moment, then replied,
"Do a full analysis first.
I nodded and began to use drug number one.
"Do you mind if I watch you work?"
"If you like it, please," I replied without any enthusiasm.
In my mind I decided that this Fernand had been assigned to me as a
spy. I went to the preparatorium, filtered the solution and put a piece of
paper with sediment to dry on the electric stove. I poured the solution into
a quartz cell and returned to the spectrograph. Fernand followed me
relentlessly, bowing his head low over my hands. This began to irritate
me.
"Now I'm going to exhibit the spectrum, and you can rest," I said in
German, trying to pronounce the phrase as caustically as possible.
"Thank you," he replied to me in the purest German.
"That's how it is: a German," I decided.
The transformer of the hydrogen lamp hummed, I installed the cell in

37
the holder and sat down next to the spectrograph. Fernand sat down at the
table. We were silent for a few minutes.
– Aren't you afraid to burn your face with ultraviolet light? He
shook his head.
"I'm used to it. Ultraviolet rays do not affect my face.
I looked at his face. For a German, it was too dark. This confused me a
little.
"Have you been here for a long time?" he asked.
"Yes, a long time ago," I replied and turned away.
"Are you from France?"
— Yes.
"Do you manage here?"
I looked up at him in surprise.
"Does this have anything to do with the case?"
"Excuse me," laughed Fernand. — This, of course, is idle curiosity.
Excuse me," he repeated.
After that, he no longer followed me. He sat leaning on the table, his
eyes closed, lost in his thoughts. When I began to take the third test tube,
he suddenly got up and left the room without saying a word. Through the
window, I saw him go around my barracks and, stepping widely on the
sand, went to the southern laboratory. Halfway through, he was stopped
by sentry, and he showed him a pass. The sentry trumped and stepped
aside.
"An important bird. He walks wherever he wants."
He returned only in the evening. He looked a little anxious and tired at
the same time.
"Are you ready?" he asked.
— A long time ago. Here, on the letterheads, everything is written. He
stared at my notes in silence for a few seconds, and then looked up at me
with his short-sighted eyes.
"In my opinion, it is useless work," he said somewhat vaguely. "I don't
know. Dr. Graber and Dr. Schwartz know better.
Fernand shrugged his shoulders:
"I do not understand at all why it is necessary to turn quite decent
rabbits into stone rabbits. Who needs stone tomatoes and bananas instead
of good juicy tomatoes and bananas?
I became alert and looked intently at the pego. In all the time I have
been here, no one has spoken to me so frankly about the affairs going on at
the Graber Institute. Maybe this is a provocation? Maybe the Germans
suspected that I already knew too much and just wanted to find out how
much I knew? I pressed my lips tightly together and said nothing.

38
 "All right. Good night," said Fernand, and went away.
For several days he did not appear. During this time, an event took
place that was destined to become decisive in this whole story.
One evening after work, I called Frau Einzig to compare notes. She
picked up the phone and, pronouncing the familiar "hello", suddenly
stopped talking to me. Instead of her voice, I suddenly heard several
voices. The conversation was not very intelligible, hurried, but very soon
its meaning reached my consciousness. Someone informed Frau Einzig
that a radiogram had been received about the arrival of the high authorities
at the institute. In this regard, something had to be done, something had to
be hurried, someone had to be sent for. The date of arrival has not been set
exactly. Einzig hung up the phone, and I didn't hear anything else.
The next morning, running around began on the territory of the
institute. I saw Schwartz hurrying from his laboratory to the southern
laboratory and back several times, several men in white coats jogging
from the southern laboratory to the Graber building, and workers rushing
back and forth along the road along the eastern fence.
On this day, they forgot about me.
Shortly after lunch, however, Fernand appeared in my room. At first
glance, it was clear that he was very excited, and I was not even surprised
that he did not bring any drugs for analysis.
"What can I do for you?" I asked mockingly, realizing that the Germans
were alarmed by the arrival of their superiors.
Fernand smiled guiltily and said very simply:
"Wow, I ran too far! I decided to rest with you...
"Rest?"
— Yes. Do you mind if I sit with you for a few minutes?"
I shrugged my shoulders and pointed to a chair. He sat down and said,
"Please, if Dr. Schwartz comes, tell me something about your work. It
will look like I came to you on business,
I looked him in the eye carefully. All this began to make me angry. I
asked,
"Do you think I'm a hopeless idiot and don't understand what this
comedy means?"
"Comedy?" He even stood up. "I don't think it's a comedy. Maybe for
you, but not for me...
"Monsieur Fernand, let's make an agreement: if you have been
instructed to keep an eye on me, then do it it's somehow smarter...
He lowered his head, rubbed his forehead with his hand, and laughed
softly:
"Damn it! But that's right, what right do I have to trust you? No...

39
 It seemed strange to me that he should say that. He behaved very
directly.
After a moment's thought, he suddenly spoke again:
"Good. Let's be honest. I have no other choice. Just answer me one
question. It may seem strange to you, but for me it is important. Agree?
"It depends on the question," I said warily.
"Do you like France?"
While I was thinking, he looked at me with wide-open black eyes,
radiating some deep spiritual heat... I suddenly felt that this was not the
person I had thought he was.
"If it's so important, I can say yes.
"I believe you. Listen up. He whispered: "I am not Fernand, and I am in
danger.
We were silent for a long time, looking at each other. He looked me
straight in the eyes, and in them I found nothing but sincerity...
"Who are you then?" I whispered.
"You'll find out in due course." But I'm not German. And not a
Frenchman...
"Let's go to the X-ray room." We
went to the X-ray laboratory, and I turned on the device. The room
became noisy. Fernand leaned over to me and said:
"I have come here on the basis of the documents of a certain Robert
Fernand of the Munich Research Center. After the war, this Fernand was
sentenced to hard labor for life for medical and biological experiments on
prisoners of war. However, with the help of his Western colleagues, he
was soon released and took the important position of medical adviser to
the current government in Bonn...
"Yes, well, and you...
"It was not for nothing that I asked if you loved your homeland. The
fact is that my homeland is here...
"Here?" In Africa?
"Yes, here, on this very earth. We have long been worried that the
Germans are entrenched here. They were helped in this by the overseas
friends of our current government. But it's time to put an end to this.
Fernand pronounced the last words decisively, like an appeal, and
straightened up to his full height. I suddenly felt ashamed of being
European.
"Wait a second, Fernand. . . ." or like you... But as far as I know, Graber
only conducts scientific research.
— Scientific? He leaned sharply towards my face. — Robert Fernand
also conducted so-called scientific research on people. He froze them

40
alive, he poured lead salt solutions into their veins to get unique X-rays,
he...
"Is it possible that Graber too?.. I exclaimed in horror.
"N-I don't know, I don't know... Actually, I was here to find out
everything. There are some rumors among our people...
"Which ones?"
— I will not repeat them. You need to check it exactly.
"How can I help you?" I asked, taking his hand. The idea of the
anti-human nature of the work of the Graber Institute came to my mind very
often, but I drove it away from me, not believing that in our time science
could be engaged in something vile and criminal. Now that Fernand had
expressed this idea clearly and clearly, I knew that I would certainly become
his assistant if I did not want to become an accomplice to the crime.
"How can I be of use to you?" I asked again.
"All right, listen," he whispered. "Soon a group of military men from
the Joint Staff will arrive to inspect the Graber Institute. In addition to the
military, there will be representatives of two research firms: the American
Western Biochemical Service and the German Chemische Central.
Actually, this is the same company. They began their activities in our
country by importing soap and lollipops. Both appeared in the same
package, but with inscriptions in English and German. So, representatives
of these two companies will come to inspect and at the same time show the
generals their, so to speak, African economy, to get acquainted with the
successes and achievements of Dr. Graber. You need to get to the tests.
"What trials?"
"Graber will demonstrate the results of his work.
"Where?"
"Probably in the park, behind the wall.
"So what do you need to do?"
"We need you to be tested.
"Me?" You are laughing! They let me out of this barracks three times a
day for a walk: fifty steps to the right of the door and fifty steps to the left.
You know that the territory is watched by sentries.
"Yes," he sighed heavily, "I know. And nevertheless, it must be done.
I remembered my journey underground to the "oasis of scarlet palms,"
and a vague hope stirred in my mind.
"Well, suppose I think of something." Maybe a miracle will happen and I
will be able to get to these tests, although I don't even know where they will
be. Well, what about you? After all, you need to hide. You need to run. If the
representatives of the company come and see that you are not Fernand...
He shook his head slowly,

41
 "I can't run. I must not be seen by them. Even if they demand me,
although I hope that there will be no need for me.
We were silent for a long time. Then I asked,
"Do you seem to move around the grounds quite freely?"
— Yes. Regarding.
"Where are you allowed to go?"
"Everywhere, except for the Graber residence and this strange park
behind the wall.
"Do you mean the 'oasis of scarlet palms'?"
"Scarlet?" Why scarlet? These palm trees are dirty-sandy in color.
I laughed:
"I came up with the name. On the day of my arrival, they were painted
bright red by the rays of the setting sun.
"I don't have access to the fence, although my laboratory is adjacent to
the wall behind which there is an oasis.
I was surprised. Did Poisson not have direct access to the greenhouse I
visited? However...
"Listen," I said, "there's a plan. You can get into the garden. But keep in
mind: the building behind the wall is inhabited and I do not know who
lives there. In the time left before the arrival of the military, you must
reconnoiter everything thoroughly. If you can figure out where Graber's
accomplishments will be showcased, I'll try to do something.
"And how can I get to the oasis?"
I turned off the X-ray machine, and we went out into the laboratory.
"By the way, what's your real name?" "
Call me Fernand for the time being," he answered, smiling.
I was ashamed of my naivety.
We came to a box hanging on the wall, on the lid of which there was a
skull and two bones, crossed out by a red lightning bolt.
"Do you have it in your laboratory?" He
nodded his headouch.
I went to the spectrograph, pulled the key out from under the rails, and
opened the drawer. Fernand looked inside and whistled lightly.
"Do you understand?" He
nodded his head.
"Just consider this.
I locked the door, led him to the wall, and lifted the edge of the
linoleum. He saw the metal contacts and nodded quickly.
"I know that," he whispered. "This is in all premises where foreigners
work.
"But Poisson—"

42
 "When Poisson was running, he damaged the alarm somewhere. With
my arrival, it was decided not to restore it.
"How do you know all this?" "We have another friend here..."
"Who?"
"After." And now give me the key.
I handed him the key, and he shook my hand firmly.
"So, if you want me to help you, learn as much as you can about it. We
will develop the final action plan on the eve of the tests.
"Good-bye."
"Good-bye, Monsieur Fernand."
A day after my conversation with Fernand they stopped bringing me
food, neither in the morning, nor in the afternoon, nor in the evening, did
an Arab appear with thermoses, and I, completely hungry, telephoned
Frau Einzig. There was no answer for a long time, and when she picked up
the phone, her voice was harsh and irritable. She preceded my question:
"You will not die, Myrdal!" We are all in this position. I want to eat no
less than you, Wait.
Instead of dinner, I went out for my "walk", wondering why the Graber
Institute was suddenly without food. As I walked to Schwartz's barracks, I
was about to go in to talk to the doctor about this unexpected turn of
events, when suddenly the door opened and Giovanni Sacco, an Italian
synthetic, jumped out onto the sand. His black eyes expressed rage.
"Signor, are you starving too?" Sacco looked around and made a barely
noticeable sign to me to come closer.
"Hunger is only half the trouble. Soon we will have to die of thirst...
"Why?" Have they stopped carrying water?
He smiled wryly.
— The fact of the matter is that it is not. Everything is fine with the
water. But only drink it...
"What?"
Giovanni shrugged his shoulders. Then he spoke quickly, rapidly,
confusing French and Italian words;
"It's all about the water... It seems to me so... These Arabs have not
drunk it here for a long time... Otherwise, why would they flee from here...
And now there is not a single native here... Everyone curses the water...
It's all about her...
I looked at the Italian in bewilderment. Suddenly his face twisted, and
he turned abruptly and disappeared behind the door. The rustle of sand
was heard behind him. Dr. Schwartz came up to me with quick steps.
"Weren't you informed that the walks were canceled?" He said to me.
— No, I don't. And why?

43
 "Don't ask questions, and go home!" he commanded.
I was indignant:
"Listen, doctor! I do not seem to be your countryman or a soldier, and
you have no right to give me orders. I'm here for freelance. I don't want to
be with you, and that's it!
Schwartz smiled contemptuously;
"Unfortunately, I do not have time now to explain to you what right you
enjoy. Do that. what you are ordered. For now, we're in charge here.
On the word "we" he put an emphasis.
"For how long?" I quipped.
"About that some other time." March to your barracks! In the
laboratory, I thought a lot about what Giovanni had told me. At ten o'clock
in the evening, the door opened, and Fernand appeared in it, smiling, with
a large package in his hands.
"Are you still alive?" He asked cheerfully and winked at me.
"Hardly. He ate the last crust of bread.
"Here, be satisfied." I've been instructed to bring you dry rations. Hot
food will not be soon.
He put the bundle on the table and walked around the laboratory,
whistling a popular song.
I greedily pounced on dry biscuits and smoked sausage. After
swallowing a few pieces, I asked:
"What are you so happy about?"
"How—what?" To what has begun!
"What has begun?"
— Something that had to begin sooner or later. Graber's workers fled.
There are no cooks, no servants, no porters, no stokers. The drivers left,
except for the German water carrier. Local residents declared a boycott of
the professor's household. The strike began!
"And why all of a sudden?"
Fernand came up to me and, squinting his eyes, said:
"Schwartz assured me that it was all a matter of superstition. But I
know that this is not the case.
I stopped chewing and stared at her. He sat down on the edge of his
chair and lit a cigarette.
"They say that a rumor has spread among the local Arabs that the
Europeans living behind this wall have been sent down to earth by the
devil himself! Living and working together with white people behind the
wall is like blaspheming Allah. So they left.
"Is that what Schwartz told you?"
Fernand nodded his head.

44
 "He's lying. Do not believe a single word.
"And I don't believe it.
"By the way, the Italian Sacco from Dr. Schwartz's barracks has just
hinted to me something about water. You know, there was such a case. As
I drove here through the desert, I offered the chauffeur a glass of water/He
refused, and with such indignation!
Fernand pondered.
"Water or not water, there's something wrong here. Everything will
become clear when you visit the tests.
— Have you given up on this idea?
— On the contrary. I have come to you to clarify our plan. Let's think
about how you can get to the trials.
I smiled. This man spoke to me as if he had been at the institute for at
least as long as I had, and he had only lived here for a few days!
"I'm listening to you.
"Well, yesterday afternoon I visited your 'oasis of scarlet palms'. Do
you know what it is?
I nodded my head.
"Have you been there too?"
— Yes, I was.
"Great. Then it will be easier for you to explain. The entrance to the
oasis lies through the kitchen...
"What kind of cuisine?"
"The one in the middle of which there is a stove, a huge stove," Fernand
explained.
"And why do you think it's a kitchen?"
"Because I've seen a clumsy, broad-shouldered man cook food in
cauldrons and then take the cauldrons away behind the fence on the right.
It's about fifty steps from the kitchen.
"And I took the kitchen for a greenhouse!" I confessed embarrassedly.
"It looks a bit like a greenhouse. There are indeed tubs and pots with
petrified plants, but the main purpose of this room is the kitchen.
"And have you seen how food is cooked and fried there?" I laughed.
Cook, or kato his, some clumsy, deaf and dumb creature. It was not
very difficult for me, opening the door of the transformer box, to watch
how and what he was doing. I saw him cooking a meat dish. He was
chopping down the carcass of either a pig or a sheep soaked in a vat of
thick black liquid with a crooked steel broadsword. When his brew boiled,
the room was filled with such a stench that I had to close the door and go
down a few steps...
We fell silent. Fernand read the question in my eyes and answered it

45
with a slight shrug of his shoulders. Indeed, how could one say for whom
the food was prepared?
"When the cook, loaded with cauldrons, left the room, I came out of my
hiding place and conducted a reconnaissance. Now it is clear to me how to
get into the test site, where the main objects of Graber's experiments are
located.
"How?"
"About thirty paces from the gate there is a palm tree, right next to the
wall. Its crown rises high above the wire fences, and the branches extend
into the forbidden territory. You need to climb this palm tree and jump
down...
"The fence is about seven meters high. The crown rises to a height of
about ten meters. Don't you think this method of penetration is a bit risky?
Fernand smiled:
"No, I don't think so, considering that the sand here is deep and soft.
You just need to be able to spring your legs and immediately fall on your
side. Have you ever skydived?
I shook my head.
— No, I don't. But it doesn't matter. I will do as you suggest.
— There is no other way.
"Then we will act in your way.
— Now the most important thing. I am sure that on the day of the
arrival of the military, no one will disturb you. I don't think these soldiers
are interested in how you perform your spectral and X-ray analyses. They,
of course, will be interested in the main result of Graber's research.
"Which one?"
"I don't know. You must see this with your own eyes. So, on the day of
Chief Graber's arrival, you should sit near the window and look attentively
in the direction of my laboratory.
Fernand took me by the hand and led me to the window.
"There, on the outermost window, I'll put a crucible and light a piece of
paper in it." As soon as you see the flames, go down to the box and crawl
along the pipe to the scarlet palm trees. I'll meet you in the vestibule under
the kitchen.
I asked:
"How will you know that it is time for me to go?"
"From my laboratory, I can see better what Graber is doing. I'll know
when he'll start making preparations in the trial area to receive
distinguished guests.
"Well, I see," I said, "but I'm afraid that the plan may fail, and then it
may be bad for me and for you."

46
 Fernand put his hand on my shoulder and said:
"You must not think of defeat. You should only think about winning.
This is your duty. I can assure you: we are not alone in the fight against
Graber...
I grinned bitterly and whispered,
"Nobody knows anything about him.
Fernand laughed softly:
"Oh, don't think so! Don't forget, the locals fled from Graber! I can't
believe that they will so easily agree to the devil settling in their native
land. Allah does not like this very much! He added cheerfully.

8. "DAMN YOU!"
Early in the morning I sat down at the window of my bedroom and
began to look at the black strip of asphalt road that stretched along the
eastern fence. Everything around seemed to have died out. Even the
sentries disappeared somewhere. Smoke did not pour out of the chimneys
of Graber's residence, as usual.
When the sun rose high over the palm trees, I saw a closed car quickly
roll along the asphalt road, followed by a second one. Both cars rounded
the brick building of Graber's residence and disappeared around the
corner. A minute later I picked up the phone.
"Yes," said Frau Einzig's harsh and angry voice.
"Would you be so kind as to put me in touch with Monsieur Fernand?"
And in general, I ask you, Myrdal, not to disturb anyone with calls
today.
"Why?" I asked in surprise. "Is it Sunday?"
"Don't ask stupid questions. Such is the order.
She hung up the phone, and I breathed a sigh of relief. It means that the
time to act has come. Just not to miss the signal.
About ten o'clock I saw a bright orange flame in the window of the
barracks where Fernand was. It appeared for a few seconds and then
disappeared. A few minutes later it reappeared, and I resolutely crossed
the room. Near the concrete pedestal of the spectrograph, I picked up the
linoleum and put a piece of tin under it. After that, I lay flat on the floor
and waited. This went on for about five minutes. There was no call. This
means that the alarm system is closed reliably.
As before, I crawled to the metal box with the image of a skull and
climbed into the dungeon. This time I made it all the way to the oasis
much faster than before. Now I knew well how to crawl so that clothes do
not cling to cable hooks. I tried in every possible way to save my strength

47
and therefore did not make any unnecessary movements, I breathed
deeply and rhythmically. Soon a light flashed ahead. At the end of the
journey, Fernand was waiting for me.
"Get up." You can get back on your feet here," he whispered.
He helped me, and we were silent for a few seconds.
"So far, so good," he whispered at last. "About ten minutes ago, the
whole company, led by Dr. Graber, went to the test site. There is no one in
the greenhouse. So go there. When you are in the garden, try to go behind
the first row of beds. There are some shrubs growing there, and if
necessary, you can hide behind them. Well, as for your actions on the test
site, it depends on you. I don't know what and how is located there...
"Good. What should I do?
"Look. Just look. If everything becomes clear to you, look for a way to
retreat.
He shook my hand firmly and gently nudged me on the shoulder.
"It's time," he said. "It's too bad that they started the review in the
afternoon.
"Yes, it would have been easier at night.
"By the way, keep in mind that another important event is to take place
today. It's good for us...
"An event?" What?
— More on that later. So, let's go.
Fernand illuminated the steep staircase to the greenhouse, and when I
opened the door, he turned off the light and, crouching, slid into the recess
to the right.
In the greenhouse I stood blinded for several minutes. Then, when my
eyes became accustomed to the bright light, I saw that on the tables, and
along the windows, and next to the huge stove, there were tubs of plants,
the leaves of which were pale yellow. By the shape of the leaves, I
immediately recognized lemons, banana palm, tomato bushes. The fruits
had a dirty gray hue. The sun was high, and this fantastic greenhouse was
bathed in dusty light. In the far corner were tanks of disgusting brown
liquid. The sand in the tubs was damp, and there were spots of some kind
of white coating along the edges. Obviously, the plants were watered not
with ordinary water, but with some kind of solution.
I went out into the garden and ran over the first row of rectangular
graves.
The oasis was fenced, like the entire territory of the institute, by a high
clay wall. To the right of the kitchen the wall was much higher, and in the
corner where it rested against the western fence was a small gate.
I walked toward the gate, occasionally looking around. Silence reigned

48
all around, such as never happens in a real garden, with green plants and
trees. The sun was burning mercilessly.
As I walked around one of the sand graves lined with pale yellow
bushes, I noticed that rust-corroded metal pipes rose above the sand level.
Pipes were sticking out in all the beds. Apparently, they watered all this
strange vegetation with their help.
Than?
I put my finger into the pipe, extracted a drop of cloudy liquid, and
tasted it on my tongue. His mouth burned with something bitter and
burning.
"Alkali! Concentrated alkali? Probably caustic potassium..." – I
thought, spitting out bitter-salty saliva.
I was about to run across the next gap between the beds when I heard
voices from behind the gate. Someone was talking loudly, and the
conversation was sometimes interrupted by bursts of laughter. As much as
I could, I rushed to the palm tree near the wall and hid behind its trunk. A
minute later the gate opened, and six people came out into the garden.
At the head of the company was a small man with an uncovered head,
in white trousers and a light shirt with a wide open collar. Next to him
walked a tall German in an officer's uniform, whom I immediately
recognized as Dr. Schwartz. Then I saw a woman with glasses, a
wide-brimmed hat, and four other people, two in U.S. military uniforms
and two in civilian clothes.
The man with his head uncovered and his shirt open was Dr. Graber. I
guessed it at once: he confidently walked between the beds and gave
explanations to his companions in English.
"That's what we feed them. The situation turns out to be complicated. It
turns out that it is not enough to redo them. We need to remake all of
nature – plants, animals, everything! — for their nourishment! The diet
should correspond to the new biochemical organization.
One of the officers picked a cucumber from the garden and took a bite.
"Damn it, it's bitter!" And hard as a sole! He shouted, spitting away.
— Of course. But this is exactly what they need. If they are put on a
regular diet, they will have to be sent to a museum...
— And how long did it take you to breed this farm? The American
colonel asked.
— Yes. Almost five years. To my surprise, after the introduction of the
catalyst into the root system, the palm trees turned into organosilicon in
just two years. We had to tinker with their feeding. Now they give very
good coconuts and bananas. We serve them for dessert.
Everyone laughed again.

49
 "There's a kitchen over there. We made one of them a cook, and he
copes with his task brilliantly. At the same time, he performs the duties of
a gardener.
"Are they all vegetarians?" Or you sometimes feed them stone meat, or
whatever it's called...
— Yes, they get silicate proteinsTo do this, we keep rabbits, sheep,
some poultry... True, there is a lot of fuss with this material. Each
individual has to be remade separately... If I manage to solve the problem
of silicon nucleic acids...
"Well, I see, Mr. Graber," said the American colonel. "Let's go back."
There, apparently, everything is already ready. So, the solution to the
problem of heredity rests on silicon nucleic acids, which are not yet
working, right?
Everyone disappeared behind the wall, and I did not hear the
continuation of the conversation. I was thoroughly alarmed, but I did not
yet have a very good idea of what had alarmed me.
When the voices subsided, I wrapped my hands around the trunk of the
palm tree and began to slowly climb up. The tree was covered with a thick
layer of rocky bark, which was easy to lean on with your feet. With each
passing second, I climbed higher and higher until I was at the level of the
wall. Two rows of barbed wire ran along the wall. At last I reached the
crown. The stiff leaves scratched his face.
Behind the wall there were two buildings that looked like garages or
hangars. Everyone entered the large hangar except Graber. He turned back
and disappeared into a small hangar. Soon some people stretched out from
there with a slow, heavy gait. They walked in single file, one after the
other, barely moving their legs. They looked very strange. Their shoulders
were excessively broad, and they walked with their heads bowed. It
seemed as if these people were carved out of heavy stone. At the side of
the line, Graber walked with a long cane and alternately poked it at one or
the other. Sometimes he shouted some guttural words, but strange people
did not pay attention to him. They walked and walked, hiding behind the
wide door of a large hangar. There were about fifteen of them, all in light
trousers, bare to the waist.
When I saw this procession, I suddenly understood everything. My
breath caught in my throat with rage. Forgetting about the danger, I
crawled over the wall on a palm branch, hard as metal, and jumped down
into the deep soft sand.
I lay motionless for a few seconds, then crawled to the entrance to the
large hangar. The room was lit only by small windows under the roof, and
after the bright sunlight I could see nothing for the first minute. Booming

50
voices were heard, then I saw a pile of some boxes in the corner and hid
behind them,
"The first test is not so indicative," Grabber said loudly. "Please, Mr.
Ulbree, take that metal rod and hit any of them."
Strange people stood in one line in front of a small pool in the middle of
the hangar. Their faces were colorless, meaningless. They were not
people, but stone statues, bulky mummies created by the inhuman genius
of Dr. Graber. My heart was pounding wildly. But I did not yet understand
why this monstrous experiment was staged.
"Should I beat him like that?" Ulbrey asked, weighing a heavy metal
stick in his hand.
— Of course. Imagine that you have an ordinary wooden log in front of
you. Let me show you.
Graber took the rod from Mr. Ulbree, walked over to the line, swung it,
and struck one of the men on the shoulder. My eyelids hurt until my eyes
hurt. A dry knock was heard, as if the blow fell not on a human body, but
on something hard...
"Now let me try."
I opened my eyes and saw how the guests took turns taking an iron rod
and striking at the motionless human statues.
"And this onetonal! one civilian exclaimed.
"It hasn't completely replaced carbon with silicon yet," Graber
explained. "In a week, he'll be like everyone else.
When the beating was over and the guests talked to their heart's content,
expressing their admiration for Dr. Graber's achievements, the second
series of tests began.
"Physiological processes in their body are extremely slow," Graber
explained. "For them, the normal ambient temperature is something about
sixty degrees above zero. If the temperature is lower, they are cold. They
begin to feel the heat at three hundred and fifty degrees. Here we have a
pool with a heated solution of caustic potassium. What's the temperature
here now, Frau Einzig?
"Two hundred and seventeen degrees," the woman answered.
"So here she is, Frau Einzig," I thought.
See.
Graber went behind one of the men and began to poke him between the
shoulder blades with his club.
"And what do you do to move them?" The German general asked.
– High voltage electrical discharge. They do not like the current at a
voltage of more than seven hundred volts. Here I have a battery and a
small transformer in my pocket.

51
 The man he was urging slowly approached the smoking pool and
jumped heavily into the liquid. Then there was a hideous, inarticulate
hoot.
"They really like to swim here," Graber explained. "Now we will drive
everyone here, except for this one, which has not yet been fully formed.
One by one, everyone jumped into the pool. The hangar was filled with
the hum of inhuman voices. A thick, red-hot liquid foamed, and silicon
creatures swam clumsily in it.
"They liked it so much that you can't kick them out of here!"
— It's very easy to do. Now we will fill the pool with a cold solution,
and they will come out on their own. Frau Einzig, turn on the tap.
A minute later, leaning heavily over the edge of the pool, the stone
people began to climb out of the chilled slurry. From their bodies, acrid
steam rose into the air. Someone in the room coughed. The American
backed away and crossed to the opposite side of the pool.
"I wonder if they can move in fire?" If, say, you need to go through a
burning building or through a burning forest. You know, there, in Russia,
we had to deal with such a necessity during the war.
It was a German general, short, old, with glasses.
— They can. We did experiments, and it turned out that our best
specimens were able to stay in the flame for up to fifteen minutes. They
could withstand more, but their blood begins to be saturated with carbon
dioxide, and insoluble silicon carboglulin is formed in it, which clogs
blood vessels.
"Well, fifteen minutes is not so little.
"And what else will you please us?"
"The last thing I want to show you is their bullet resistance.
"What?"
"You can shoot at them.
"And this is not theirs...
— No, I don't. However, this does not apply to everyone. Bullets are
completely safe for established, so to speak, elderly specimens. Schwartz,
please install a machine gun on the other side of the pool.
I watched in horror as my "patron", Dr. Schwartz, went to the far corner
of the hangar and soon returned with a light machine gun. He walked
around the pool and took aI set up the machine gun very close to the pile of
boxes behind which I was hiding. Meanwhile, Graber was driving two
people to the opposite side of the pool.
Up to this point, it seemed to me that the silicon creatures were
completely indifferent to what their tormentors were doing to them.
However, it was now clear that this was not the case. As soon as the

52
machine gun appeared, the formation stirred, disintegrated, some began to
step back, a dull moo was heard...
"They're afraid!" Ulbrey exclaimed.
— Yes. It hurts. But, of course, it is tolerable. Here. Now you can
begin.
I almost completely leaned out of my hiding place and stared with wide
eyes at the terrible shooting. At first, Schwartz fired several single shots.
Those who stood against the wall shuddered sharply... One of them raised
his hand and covered his chest. The other took a few steps to the side.
"Now give me your turn," Grabber commanded. Schwartz pulled the
trigger. Shots thundered in a fractional sound. The people at the wall
shook and groaned. I squeezed my eyes shut. At this time, an articulate
voice was heard. Someone in the line said slowly, as if with an effort, in
German:
"Damned...
The shooting stopped. And then the voice became even clearer:
"Damned beasts... Fiends... Damn you...
"Who is that?" The German general asked loudly.
"It's a brand new specimen," Graber announced cheerfully, "One of our
former biologists, Fröhlich. Remember, I reported to you. He decided to
organize a riot here.
Fröhlich! Fröhlich! The same Fröhlich who brought me rabbit blood
for analysis. Then he was beaten by Schwartz. And this is what they have
done to him now!
"Damn you.. Fröhlich groaned. A general came up to him and struck
him in the face with an iron stick with all his might.
"Damn you," the German continued to say. It was scary. A German
general was beating his mutilated compatriot! And he continued to repeat
the words of the curse with inhuman persistence.
At this time, Graber's loud laughter was heard.
"You see! You beat him, and he doesn't care! What is it, eh? After all,
such people can resist anything!
"Come on, put him against the wall," commanded the brutal German.
"Give him a good burst so he knows!"
"You shouldn't. It hasn't fully hardened yet. His body is not yet dense
enough.
"To hell with him. Put! The general ordered, wiping his sweaty face
with his handkerchief.
"Damn you," groaned Fröhlich.
"Against the wall!" There is no need to stand on ceremony! The
German insisted.

53
 "Perhaps it is not worth it, Mr. General," remarked the American
colonel.
"Against the wall!" You Americans must learn to be cruel, or we will
never win the war! "In a week, he'll be like everyone else," Graber
explained.
"Damn you...
"Against the wall!"
Graber shrugged his shoulders regretfully and, approaching Fröhlich,
began to push with the rod. He walked slowly towards the wall, and I
noticed that there was still something human, alive in his posture. He
walked with his heavy head raised as high as he could, his motionless eyes
burning with hatred.
My eyes darkened with rage and indignation, my body was covered
with cold sweat, my heart pounded like a heavy hammer in my chest.
Without noticing it, clenching my fists, I stepped out of cover.
"Fire!" The German Ge shoutedDr. Schwartz.
"Damn you," groaned Fröhlich. I jumped out of my seat and threw
myself at Schwartz. I grabbed him by the throat, threw him on his back
and, dragging him away from the machine gun, began to hit him in the
face.
I don't remember what happened next. Shots were heard.
Someone shouted. They ran up to me, hit me on the head...

9. FAILED REBELLION
I woke up with a sharp pain in my right arm. Opening my heavy
eyelids, I saw someone's fingers right in front of me, holding a huge
syringe, which was slowly filling with blood. The other hand squeezed my
elbow. I looked up and saw a woman sitting on the edge of the bed. It was
Frau Einzig.
Noticing that I was awake, she said sharply:
"Don't move, Myrdal, or the needle will break."
"A needle?" I asked, thinking nothing.
See, I take blood from a vein.
I tried to pull my hand, but it leaned on me with her whole body and
strained through clenched teeth:
"Damn you! Do not move, otherwise it will be bad! I stared at the
cylindrical vessel in her hands. Einzig deftly pulled the needle out of her
vein and placed a piece of cotton soaked in iodine on the wound.
"Now squeeze your arm at the elbow, tighter."
She brought the syringe to her eyes. I followed her movements, and

54
gradually the pictures of the nightmare I had recently seen and
experienced began to be restored in my memory.
"What do you want to do with me?" I asked.
I take your blood for examination.
"For what?"
She turned her thin, bloodless, pointed face to me and replied with a
grin:
"To know where to start.
The room where I was lying was small, bright, with walls lined with
white tiles. It resembled an operating room. Through the wide window he
could see the blue sky and to the right the edge of a gray concrete wall.
Einzig went to the window and sat down at a small table with a glass lid,
on which there were vials of solutions, test tubes in racks, nickel-plated
boxes with tools. She poured my blood into several test tubes, and the rest
was thrown into a glass cuvette. She lowered two electrodes into it, from
which the wires stretched to the black ebony box.
— Do you measure the concentration of hydrogen ions?
"You're guessing!" She replied caustically. "Although I hate to bother
with the filthy blood of the French and Arabs.
— Apparently, you liked to tinker with the blood of your compatriots,
for example, with the blood of Fröhlich?
Frau Einzig jumped up from her seat and, bending over me, hissed:
"He couldn't have been a real German! Otherwise, he would never have
committed such meanness! He wanted to start a riot at the institute
because of a petrified cretin! These are only French, Arabs, blacks,
Russians and others...
I did not understand what was more here - fanaticism or pathological
cruelty. In front of me stood a woman-beast, a participant in the most vile
and filthy crime.
"Someday, Frau Einzig, will you feel bad, oh bad.. I groaned and turned
to the wall.
I suddenly felt disgusted to look at this reptile with curled colorless
hair, with a skinny flat figure, with a pointed mask instead of a face.
Einzig giggled and left the room. I heard her roll a table with flasks and
tools in front of her.
After a while, I got out of bed and went to the window. It was the last
floor of what I used to call "Graber's residence." On the right there was a
water pump, and directly you could see a fence, behind which there were
two hangars - a small and a large one. There, Graber demonstrated his
stone monsters.
My head was still aching from the blow, and I returned to my bunk.

55
There is a lot to think about. You need to decide what to do next. It is
necessary, nTo the end, to prepare for the inevitable fate.
The meaning of the work of the Graber Institute became very clear. I
remembered Poisson once saying, "I think Graber wants to do something
in biology..." In biology? No. In life itself, Graber creates an entirely new
organic world, animal and vegetable, in which silicon plays the role of
carbon. He learned how to create organosilicon plants. It creates
organosilicon animals. It got to man. He managed to create stone freaks,
who, according to his plan, should become ideal soldiers for a future war.
So that's why the laboratory was created in the desert! There is a sea of
sand, vast oceans of silicon oxide, an analogue of carbon monoxide. Just
as carbon dioxide is necessary to nourish grass, flowers, trees, so silicon
oxide is necessary to nourish silicon plants. Stone plants are needed to
feed stone animals. Animals and plants together serve as food for stone
robots...
Here, in the desert, far away and in secret from people, a silent stone
world was created.
It was difficult to imagine a more terrible and more criminal application
of a scientific discovery. But it was even more difficult to imagine how to
fight against all this.
Why was the rat I found petrified? She was dead, something about her
alteration was wrong. What do Einzig's words mean that Fröhlich felt
sorry for the "petrified"? Was one of Graber's test subjects petrified? Had
he turned into a statue?
Remembering the wild demonstration in the hangar, I suddenly thought
that the same fate awaited me as Fröhlich, like everyone else. The thought
made me feel terrible. How do they do it? Why did Frau Einzig take my
blood for research? How does it all start?
I tossed and turned restlessly, terrified of what awaited me, until I heard
the key click in the door. I sprang to my feet the moment the door opened
and Dr. Graber himself appeared on the threshold.
He smiled broadly, went to the window, took a stool and sat down
opposite me.
I thought that right now everything would begin. I turned into a lump of
tense muscles to the limit.
"Don't be afraid. Your time has not yet come, Myrdal," Graber said.
"I'm not afraid of you. I hate you," I wheezed.
"It doesn't matter, my dear colleague. When you are like everyone else,
you will have different feelings. He burst out laughing. I stood up to my
full height.
"Don't do anything stupid, Myrdal. You know that I can easily cope

56
with you. Better sit down and let's talk like a scientist to a scientist. To be
honest, most of those who work for me are not as smart people as they
seem. For example, your supervisor, Dr. Schwartz, is a typical
representative of the dogmatic school. You must have a more lively mind.
"Why did you suddenly decide to compliment me?" "
I say this because you are a really inquisitive person. At the risk of your
life, you have made your way into the most intimate part of my household.
You have made a long and tiring journey through the sewer pipe. You're
not afraid to sneak into the test hall. And all for what? For the sake of
satisfying your curiosity, isn't it?
I stared at Graber in silence, thinking intensely about what he was
getting at.
"You remind me of my youth. When I seriously thought about the
problem of creating an organosilicon world, I neededaccurate information
about the chemical composition of the blood of various animals. To my
surprise, I didn't find much in the books. And what I found was of no interest
to me. And then I began to do the tests myself. If you only knew how many
cats, dogs, rabbits, pigs, sheep I have exterminated! I needed to know exactly
what the chemical composition of the blood of these animals was during
sleep, when they were beaten, when they were caressed, when they were
angry... But now the pets were finished. It would seem that this is all. But no.
I began to hunt wild animals! After all, everything should be in my artificial
world! But where to get wild animals? How to handle them? And you know,
I went to the zoological park. I risked my life. At night, I entered the park
and, armed with a bottle of strong sleeping pills and a syringe, climbed into
the cages of predators - lions, tigers, panthers. I threw a rag soaked in
sleeping pills over their faces, and when they fell asleep, I put a needle under
their skins and sucked out the amount of blood I needed. After that, I ran to
the laboratory and conducted the analysis. And so it was for almost a year,
until I was almost crushed by an elephant when I took blood from her
sleeping cub! Graber laughed. His face was pink and glossy. "And all
because of curiosity. It alone drives science and human progress.
"Progress?" You have a strange idea of progress. Are your stone
soldiers also progress?
"Of course, Myrdal, of course!" he exclaimed. "The Rock People race
will be very useful. They will be more useful than, say, horses, or camels,
or elephants. After all, these are thinking creatures.
"Thinking?"
— Of course. Thinking and submissive. They have a well-developed
sense of fear. And this is the main thing.
"What are they afraid of? Shock? Fire? Bullets?

57
 — No, I don't. They are not afraid of anything like that. This is
precisely the wonderful quality of them that we must take advantage of.
But, possessing the instinct of self-preservation, they are very afraid of
what can kill them.
"What can kill them?" Graber looked at me mockingly.
"You are very, I repeat, very inquisitive. But I'm not afraid to tell you a
secret. You won't tell it to anyone anyway. They can be killed by water.
"Water?"
— Exactly. Like any living organism, they consume water.
"So what?"
"Well, they have to drink unusual water. As you know from chemistry,
most silicon compounds in liquid form can only exist in highly alkaline
environments. My soldiers can also live only as long as their body is
dominated by an alkaline environment. They drink water saturated with
caustic potassium.
"Oh, that's it! "Is that why potentiometry is so important in your tests?"
"Quite right, Myrdal, quite right. And the alkalinity of water should be
within strictly defined limits. From... However, you don't need to know this.
"So why are your, as you call them, soldiers afraid of water?"
"Because, my dear, if you give them not alkaline water, but ordinary
water, they will instantly turn to stone. They will turn into stone idols, into
mummies.
"And you keep them in constant fear?"
"Uh-huh. This is a powerful means by which they can be commanded...
But back to your inquisitive mind, Myrdal. Do you think it is possible to
create an organosilicon analogue of ribonucleic and deoribonucleic acids?
I remembered how the Italian Giovanni in Schwartz's laboratory
unsuccessfully tried to synthesize these acids with silicon instead of carbon.
"What is it for?" Graber
got up and walked around the room several times.
"Oh, if only I could do it! If only the whole living cell could become
organosilicon!
"Aren't your victims completely organosilicon?"
— Completely, except for the core. You see, cannonballs! This is the
whole tragedy...
"Tragedy?"
— Yes. Because of this, my organosilicon organisms cannot reproduce.
In order to create them, you need to take ready-made material, you need to
take ready-made carbonaceous organisms...
At first, I did not understand the nightmarish meaning of Graber's idea.
After a pause, he continued:

58
 "You see, if organosilicon analogues of nucleic acids were created,
then the nucleus of a new cell would be able to multiply. And then there
would be no need to engage in the restructuring of each individual
individually. It was enough to create several specimens of different sexes,
and they would give organosilicon offspring. Then everything would be
solved extremely simply. Organosilicon seeds of plants would germinate
into organosilicon plants, animals would give herds of organosilicon
animals, silicon people...
"Scoundrel!" I shouted, running up to Graber. "Murderer!"
I grabbed him by the throat, but at that moment the window of the room
shattered and a huge boulder flew into it. Graber pushed me hard in the chest.
Shots crackled. Graber cringed, quickly slipped through the room and
slammed the door behind him. I ran to the window and looked out. There,
near the wall of the building, some people were rushing around with carbines
in their hands. Several men in white, with curved knives in their hands, were
rushing to the door. I leaned out of the window and shouted,
"Hey, here! Graber is here!
A bullet whizzed past my ear. I noticed that several Germans with
machine guns jumped out of the gate leading to the test site. One of them
was shooting at my window. I ran to the side. A burst of automatic fire left
a dotted Line on the ceiling.
"An uprising? Is it really an uprising? But who is it, who? Local
residents?"
The shots continued. Downstairs they were shouting. Some commands
were heard. There was an explosion, two more, and everything was quiet.
I slowly approached the window, but before I could lean out, I heard
another shot and a bullet whistled. I went back to the corner and listened.
The exchange of fire now came from afar, from somewhere to the left.
Then everything fell silent. It began to get dark quickly.
"Is it really a failure? I thought, sitting down on the bunk. "Has the attempt
to crush this vile nest failed?" And who could have started all this?"

10. WAR
All that night I hardly slept, thinking about what had happened at the
institute. There was a dull silence all around, and only his heart was
beating so hard that it seemed to shake the walls of the room. There was no
light. Darkness reigned all around. Maybe I should run? Jump off the third
floor and run? But where? There was no guarantee that I would not be
captured or shot on the spot below.
What good is it if I have fully solved the mystery of the Graber
Institute? He will still continue to do his job. Even now, by some

59
diabolical catalyst, he could replace carbon with silicon in a living
organism and create an unnatural living world. And what will happen
when he achieves that organosilicon properties are inherited from
organism to organism?
My imagination drew me terrible pictures. Villages in the desert,
surrounded by silent dirty yellow vegetation. Around there are cemeteries
of beds, on which tough and caustic vegetables grow. Further on are fields
of silicon cereals. Hard ears barely sway on elastic stems. Meadows of
tough pale orange grass, dirty, clumsy animals grazing on them... And
stone men and women slowly wander along the streets of the villages,
ugly children grotesquely step on the deep sand... And above all this is the
scorching sun...
Somewhere in the center of the village, on its square, there is a cistern
with a caustic liquid that people drink. In the cistern are their life and
death. Once a week, a truck drives up here and fills it with burning
moisture. Woe to the disobedient! Those who do not submit to the
fleet-footed and flexible lords will receive other water and turn into silent
stone idols. As a symbol of Graber's power, statues of petrified people rise
around the cistern.
All this was some kind of delirium, and the realization that this
nonsense was close to reality led me into unbearable horror.
For a moment I fell asleep, and it seemed to me that my arms and legs
were heavy, that I could not move them, that I was turning into a stone
creature devoid of human feelings. Then I jumped out of bed and peered
into the pitch darkness.
It was a terrible night. I forgot only when the east blushed.
However, he did not have to sleep for long. Someone unceremoniously
shook me on the shoulder. I opened my eyes and saw in front of me Hans,
Dr. Schwartz's laboratory assistant, not in a white coat, as in the
laboratory, but in the officer's uniform of the German army. He was
standing in the middle of the room with his legs wide apart. His cap was
pulled over his forehead, and small prickly eyes shone maliciously from
under the visor.
"Come, monsieur, stop dozing!" He said impudently. Without saying a
word, I began to get dressed. We were silent for a few minutes.
"What a day it was yesterday!" Hans said with a chuckle. "It's lovely!"
Otherwise, in this hole you could go crazy with melancholy.
It was felt that he was impatient to boast of something. But I remained
silent, thinking about what would happen next.
"The wanted to outwit Dr. Graber!" Not at all!
"Who is he referring to?"

60
 "But we gave them pepper. They wanted to shoot everyone like rabbits.
But the old man turned out to be smarter than all of us!
"Why didn't you shoot them?"
"There are almost three times as many of them as we do, and they are
also armed. We will have time," he added. "In the meantime, they will be
useful to us for experiments.
"You haven't done enough vile experiments here," I muttered.
The old man ordered to drag you to him! "Maybe it's going to start
now," I decided, "but I'm not going to give up so easily!"
This time, Graber's face did not seem as smug as before. On the
contrary, it looked anxious and anxious. Her lips were tightly pressed
together, her eyebrows were furrowed. He sat down busily at the table and
put a sheet of paper in front of him. Then he turned to me in a colorless
voice:
"Myrdal, you have a chance to meet your friends.
I shuddered at the surprise.
"You're going to take them to the commander like this." He handed the
paper to me.
"We are leaving this territory. We will leave your country forever. For
this, we need help. It is necessary to load the property and equipment of
the institute on cars. Ten porters will be required. We guarantee the
freedom and safety of all your people if you lay down your arms and help
evacuate the institute."
I was feverishly thinking about what had made Graber change his
tactics so suddenly. What is he up to?
"So you don't like it here?" I grinned.
Get up and go.
"And if I don't go?" He shrugged his shoulders casually. "So much the
worse for you and your friends.
"Why don't you send your man to my comrades?"
"Because you'll be better able to persuade them to accept my terms."
You know better what awaits them if they do not agree. You will tell them
about it. You will tell about it very convincingly. You go!
Hans led me to the gate leading to the test site and further to the door to
the "oasis of scarlet palms". Looking around, I did not see a single person.
Even the sentries were nowhere to be seen. At the pumping station there
were three trucks and another water tank. It was deserted and deserted all
around.
"Tell them it's two thousand volts." Hans nodded, and I pointed to the
wire over the wall. "Dr. Schwartz will take the weapon from them. He is
on duty with a machine gun in the kitchen. They will leave through this

61
door. I'll check them out here," he added sullenly.
There was no one in sight in the garden, and I went at random in an
easterly direction, avoiding beds of stone vegetation. The sun was shining
at its zenith, and there were almost no shadows. The dirty orange foliage
blended with the color of the sand, and only small round shadows lay
under the palm trees.
As I walked around one of the palm trees, I suddenly felt strong arms
wrap around my shoulders and knock me to the ground. A moment later I
saw above me a black face with fierce eyes. The man who knocked me
down shouted something softly in an incomprehensible language. A few
seconds later, several more black people bent over me, and suddenly a
familiar face appeared among them!
"Myrdal!" Pierre!
"Fernand!"
They let me go, and I got to my feet, shaking off the sand.
"You've got it well organized," I said embarrassedly, looking at the
black people. "Well done, guys...
"How did you get here?"
Dark-skinned people in short khaki trousers, jackets, with carbines in
their hands began to gather around me.
"Don't stand tall like in a parade!" Fernand cried. "Or you'll be shot like
rabbits." Everyone sat down in an instant.
"They won't shoot you," I said.
"What?" Fernand was surprised. "How do you feel - capitulating?
"That's it.
I held out a message. He read the note, frowned, and then read it aloud
again.
- I see. And so it is beforeTo be a lie. But we won't let them out!
Understanding nothing, I stared at Fernand. So he knew that Graber had
to capitulate!
"My assistant, Ali Mohammed, will tell you everything. In connection
with this turn of events, I need to give orders.
Ali Mohammed, a tall, completely black guy, smiled amiably, showing
bright white teeth. He motioned me to sit down, and when I sat down, he
proudly said:
"Now we are a free state. No Americans. No Germans. We are on our
own.
"Did you drive them away?" I asked, smiling. They are driving all over
the country. Here's how it is here.
"Bravo!" Does this mean that you will be self-reliant and independent,
free and equal?

62
 — Absolutely. Only those who are behind the wall need to be detained.
"Why?" Ali
pressed his hand to his chest. Then he spoke quickly, quickly in broken
French. He told a terrible story about how the stone corpse of his father
was found in the desert, not far from the village where he lives.
"He was hard as a stone, and his eyes shone like glass," he finished.
His eyes sparkled with rage. Clenching his fists, he looked in the
direction of Graber's laboratory.
Fernand returned.
"First of all, we need to remove the scoundrel with the machine gun
who is holed up in the kitchen," he said.
"There's Dr. Schwartz."
"Doctor or not, it doesn't matter. He shoots through the entire sector
before leaving the oasis. The second machine gunner is sitting at the water
pump.
I peeked out from behind the trunk of a palm tree. The pumping station
towered over the western fence. Small windows at the very top were open.
"Friends," said Fernand, "we must try once more to break through to
the kitchen and remove the machine-gunner. Otherwise, we will not be
able to storm the door in the south wall. At the western fence, a machine
gun at the water pumping station will not be a threat to us.
The squad stirred between the beds.
When there were no more than a hundred meters left to the fence, the
machine gun crackled. It was Schwartz shooting from the greenhouse.
"Keep to the left. Crawl towards the gate," Fernand commanded. "Ali,
go around the greenhouse on the right with your comrades.
Now the machine gun was knocking incessantly. It seemed that
Schwartz did not care much about ammunition. By second breaks in
firing, it was possible to determine the moments when he changed the
magazine.
The greenhouse rose slightly above the garden and in order to shoot at
it, it was necessary to rise above the beds. If anyone made such an attempt,
he was immediately bombarded with machine-gun fire from the direction
of the water pump.
A few minutes later, a grenade exploded. A battle ensued at the
greenhouse. The machine gun fell silent for a moment. The grenade
exploded again, and I saw Ali and the three Arabs jump to their feet and
run forward. At first they rushed to the door, and then to the window. The
sound of broken glass was heard.
"Forward!" Fernand cried.
The squad rushed to the greenhouse. Ali ran out to meet him and

63
shouted something.
"What's the matter?"
"There's a civilian," Fernand translated. I burst into the room. Among
the broken flower pots, with both hands around the machine gun, lay Dr.
Schwartz.
"He liked to shoot people," I said, and we gathered around Fernand and
began to discuss what to do next.
"There's an exit from here through an underground cable pipe," I
prompted and waits for us to get into the mousetrap ourselves. This will
not work.
"What is to be done?"
"We need to wait until dark and try to climb over the fence.
Ali sighed heavily:
"Can we hold out?" People are thirsty and hungry.
"You have to endure. There is no other way out.
"And if you try to get into the test site?" I asked. "It's easy to do by
climbing a palm tree above the fence...
Suddenly, one of the Arabs shrieked as he pointed his finger in the
direction of the test site.
The gates were flung open, and the stone men, Graber's soldiers, slowly
emerged one by one.
Slowly, fearlessly, they moved towards us. About five people from our
detachment ran headlong into the depths of the oasis.
"Back!" Fernand commanded. Someone fired at the attackers.
"There's no point in shooting!" I shouted. "They are invulnerable!"
"Don't shoot!" Let's see what they are going to do.
As when I first saw them, the flint people were in light canvas trousers,
with bare chests. Now everyone had a curved Arab knife in their hand.
They moved towards us very slowly, almost solemnly. About fifty paces
from the greenhouse, at some incoherent command of one of them, they
began to turn around in a semicircle, trying to encircle our squad.
There were about fifteen of them against our twenty-three.
"Let's move away." We must disperse," Fernand ordered. "Keep to the
western wall so that you can't be seen from the water pump.
Our squad scattered in all directions. Graber's slaves stopped for a
moment. Then their formation also dismembered, and now they no longer
tried to surround us, but each soldier chose a victim and wandered after it.
A huge big man with a pale gray face followed me. He walked slowly and
indifferently, and in his stupid desire to get to me at all costs there was
something terrible, inevitable, like fate itself. Although the distance
between me and him did not shrink and was always at least twenty paces,

64
he walked and walked, lazily waving his knife.
"Look not only at your persecutor, but also at others! Fernand shouted
to me. "You may accidentally find yourself near another...
They were very slow, these stone soldiers, and it was easy to run away
from them. In the end, the people from our detachment and their pursuers
dispersed in pairs in an area hidden from the water pump by a wall. From
time to time, shots were heard from its top.
This strange war was like a child's game, in which you have to run from
one place to another so that no one touches you. After running over, we
stopped and watched how the pairs were redistributed on the field...
Fernand commanded this amazing war, keeping a watchful eye on the
movement of the enemy.
Soon the sun touched the western hedge, and the oasis began to sink
into the evening mist. We were very tired, our mouths were dry. It was
painful to watch how Graber's soldiers sometimes bent over the pipes by
the beds and greedily drank alkaline water. For us, it was poisoned water.
Although the runs were short, they pretty exhausted us. And the stone
people were completely tireless and continued to follow us with devilish
persistence.
"Maybe we should try to climb over the fence after all?" I asked
Fernand when we happened to be next to each other.
ManevWalking between the stone soldiers, he approached the same
palm tree along which I had made my way to the firing range. When he
almost crawled to the level of the fence, a machine gun crackled on top of
the pumping station. Fernand managed to jump down from the tree at the
moment when his pursuer was almost five steps away from him.
I noticed that our soldiers began to move more slowly and the distance
between them and the stone soldiers began to shrink.
It is difficult to say how this silent and slow-motion war would have
ended if the gates of the firing range had not opened and a stone idol had
not appeared from it, pushing a huge cart in front of it. An inarticulate cry
was heard, and Graber's soldiers began to return to the western wall one by
one.
It was getting completely dark. The flint men gathered around the cart
and began to eat. Sometimes one or the other bent down to the pipes in the
sand and washed down food with water.
"We have time to rest and think about what to do next," said Fernand,
when we were all together.
"Without food and water, we won't last long.
"Maybe when darkness falls, we should try to get out of this mousetrap
through the fence?" The easiest way to do this is through the eastern wall.

65
 — And what about the high-voltage current in the wires? I objected.

"They are here in four rows. In addition, the fence is double.

"Still, while they are eating, you need to try. Ferdinand consulted Ali.
He shouted, and four of our comrades approached the eastern wall.
"Do you have a knife?" Fernand asked me.
"Here you need a knife with an insulated handle. Then Fernand
proposed to break out the trunk of a small lemon tree and use it to break
the wires.
The tree was as hard as a stone, and it took a long time to work with it
before it was pulled out of the sand. Branches were knocked off him, and a
stone club was handed to Ali. Two of them leaned against the wall, a third
climbed on their shoulders, and Ali climbed onto his shoulders. He swung
and struck the wire with all his might. A sheaf of blue sparks burst out.
With a piercing scream, the living pyramid disintegrated.
"A hopeless case," said Fernand. Indeed, we could scarcely distinguish
each other.
"I wonder if these idols see at night."
"And we'll find out soon." Maybe they see in the dark like cats.
"We have no choice but to wait until dawn.
"Unless we are all slaughtered."
We listened to every rustle, peering intently into the darkness. Minutes
passed, and there were no signs of life. Then, on Fernand's orders, we
began to move slowly westward. Suddenly his loud voice was heard:
"Attention, they are coming! On the sides! Let's know where you are by
voice...
I heard the creaking of sand. But this sound did not resemble the
footsteps of many people.
"Fernand, it seems that only one person is approaching...
— Yes, indeed. Maybe a parliamentarian with an ultimatum from
Graber?
Suddenly, a strange guttural voice cut through the pitch darkness. At
first, nothing could be made out. And then I heard someone calling my
name quite clearly.
"Pierre... Myrdal... Pierre...
"I think that's your name," whispered Fernand.
— Yes, indeed. But who?
"Pierre... I'm one of them... I'm one of them...
– CTOh, could it be?
"Judging by the way he walks, one of them... made of stone. But how
does he know that I am here, how does he know my name?

66
 I stared intently into the darkness. The footsteps were slowly
approaching. At last, a pale silhouette appeared very close.
- Maybe a provocation? I asked. He's alone. Completely alone...
"Pierre... Pierre... Myrdal . . ." wheezed the approaching figure. "I'm
one of them... I'm one of them... I...
"Who are you?" I asked into the darkness.
"I'll explain... Pierre... I'll come up...
The stone man came very close. We raised our carbines. The Arabs
stood behind us and muttered prayers and incantations.
"Who are you?" "
I'm Maurice Poisson.
"Who??! "Maurice Poisson—" exclaimed in horror.
"You didn't manage to escape?"
"No... Pierre... They grabbed me... Here... It's very difficult...
Everything is confused in my head. Listen to what you need...
I instinctively rushed to the stone man and grabbed his arm. Poisson's
hand was hot and hard as a red-hot stone. I instantly recoiled to the side.
"What did they do to you!" "Maurice, what have they done to you!"
"Now you can't fix anything... Everything is confused in my head...
All... Listen. Your salvation is in the water.
"In the water?" In what water?
"Get to the pumping station. You'll understand there.....
I heard Poisson's teeth chattering loudly, how often and impetuously he
breathed.
"Are you trembling?" What's wrong with you?
"It's cold... Hellish cold...
I wiped my sweaty forehead. The air was hot and stuffy.
"Poor fellow!" We will avenge you, for all of you, Maurice, be sure...
"Make your way to the water pump... Water... Everything in it...
I touched his red-hot hand once more, and he stomped strangely on the
spot, then, without saying a word, turned and began to move away into the
darkness.
"Maurice, stay with us!" I shouted after him. Instead of answering, I
heard the same loud clanging of teeth and some other strange sound,
reminiscent of hoarse laughter... Poisson disappeared into the darkness. I
called out to him a few more times, but to no avail.
Shocked, we stood in silence for several minutes. Then Fernand spoke:
"What he said is important. I don't know what water has to do with it,
but apparently our salvation has something to do with it.
"Until now I thought that it was connected with our transformation into
people like Maurice," I remarked.

67
 I think Maurice was not lying.
— Of course not. During the tests in the hangar, I saw Fröhlich.
Probably, when the transformation of a person into a stone man is not
completely completed, he has glimpses of consciousness. They have been
experimenting with Maurice for only three months...
"Someone needs to go to the water pump. It seems to me that it is best
for you to go, Myrdal. You'll be better able to figure it out there.
"All right, I'll go."
Fernand ordered Ali to remain at the eastern fence, and we moved
across the oasis to the place where a palm tree towered over the training
ground. When we found her, Fernand gave me his pistol. He shook my
hand:
"Whatever happens to you, don't forget that your comrades are still
here. I believe that Poisson hinted at the real path to liberation. If
everything is not done before morning, things can end badly. I don't know
if they will survive people without water and food for another twelve
hours.
I said goodbye to my comrades and began to climb the tree.

11. DVER VODY

The night was black, and only rare stars sparkled in the bottomless sky.
I crawled along the branch above the wire fence, and a strip of sand turned
gray below. Nothing could be seen except the outlines of the small hangar, in
the windows of which blood-red spots flashed. Red glare fluttered restlessly
on the sand. There was a pungent smell of burning in the air.
I jumped down and, making sure that there was no one around, began to
carefully walk around the hangar, heading for the gate that led to the
institute.
For a moment I stopped at the window to the small hangar and looked
inside. There, in front of a huge vat of flaming resin, people were sitting.
They crowded around him, as they crowd around a fire on a cold night,
and warmed themselves. They turned to the fire from one side to the other,
rubbing their bodies with their hands. Occasionally muffled exclamations
were heard from the room...
The gates were locked. Then, grabbing the metal bars, I began to climb
up and, having reached the top, I climbed to the opposite side.
Everything around seemed to have died out. Maybe Graber fled? And
what about the stone soldiers? Did Graber really decide to part with them
so easily?
Soon I noticed that a narrow strip of light was breaking through the

68
curtain of one of the windows on the second floor. It means that someone
is there.
The water pumping station was connected to the main building by an
air span. I came close to the round concrete structure and found that it was
impossible to reach the windows. A truck with a tank was standing nearby.
Water was brought in it, which was then pumped up. How was it pumped?
I began to rummage around the cistern.
Apparently, it should have a drain in the lower bottom. When I climbed
under the truck, I almost flew into a pit: right under the body of the car, in
a concrete pad, there was a drain hatch.
I had neither matches nor a flashlight, so I had to grope for it. Holding
on to the axle of the car with my hand, I carefully descended into the
hatch, and soon my feet touched the bottom.
The concrete drain went down steeply. I literally slid down the slippery
surface and rested my feet on something metal. Here I was able to
straighten up to my full height. Without a doubt, I got into the inner room.
I grabbed some objects, stepped over pipes, almost fell into some pit
and finally settled down on a small platform. It was necessary to wait until
dawn; Without matches and without a flashlight, I could do nothing.
Sitting down comfortably, I prepared to wait. But suddenly a flash of
bright light splashed from above. The door opened for a moment, and in
the rush of light I saw that I was sitting on the step of a spiral staircase
above the edge of the iron vat. The door closed again, but I already knew
what to do. Holding on to the pipe with my hand, I began to slowly climb
the stairs. A minute later I was standing at the door, clutching a pistol in
my hand.
I listened for a few seconds, then with a strong push I opened the door
and burst into the spacious, brightly lit hall. I saw a woman who at that
moment was turning a nickel-plated handle on a huge tank. She turned and
gave a hoarse cry. It was Frau Einzig.
"Excuse me, madam, for bothering you," I said through clenched teeth.
"I advise you to behave sensibly.
She stared at me, her eyes mad with horror. I noticed that her hand was
slowly fumbling against the wall.
- Move away from the wall and do not try to call for help. You know
that we will suffer in the same measure...
"How do you xiuDid they hit? She asked, barely moving her lips.
"It doesn't really matter, madam. I'm more interested in what you're
doing here.
"I... I...
"Please, sit down," I ordered, pointing the muzzle of my pistol to a

69
small metal stool.
She sat down obediently, not taking her colorless staring eyes off me.
"Will you tell me everything in order, or should I ask leading questions,
madam?"
"What do you want?"
"Where does the alkali come from in the water supply system that
supplies your squad?"
She glanced briefly to the right. I saw a metal tank made in the wall, on
which was written "KON" in large red letters.
"yes, caustic potassium?" And you need to add a lot of it to the water so
that your victims do not turn to stone?
"It must be seven and five tenths," she replied hoarsely.
"Well, what happens if we turn off the lye?" She said nothing, only
hissed angrily.
"That's what we're going to do now," I said.
Einzig walked sideways to the lye tank and began to slowly turn on the
tap.
"Stronger, stronger!" We need not a drop of lye to get into the water," I
ordered.

"Is that all?"

"No, not all," I said, staring intently at her gray face.
"What else?"
— And where is the vessel with the catalyst that you add to drinking
water so that the body replaces carbon with silicon?
She was silent.
"Frau Einzig, you have the only chance to soften your fate somewhat.
You know, now neither Western Biochemical nor Chemice Central will
help you. You will be judged by the new, local authorities. Where is the
catalyst and how is it introduced into drinking water?
Her face turned blue with anger and fear. She slowly backed away
along the wall, her eyes fixed on her pistol. We walked around the entire
round room and stopped at an oblong shelf covered with a metal shield.
"Is it here?" Open up.
"I don't have a key.
"Madam, don't force me to use force. I don't like to be rude to women,
even people like you.
"Degenerate," she whispered.
— There is a name for you too.
Einzig pulled a key from the breast pocket of her dressing gown and
opened the shelf. There were twelve small cisterns of dark yellow glass

70
lined up in a row, from which thin glass tubes branched off to the water
taps.
"Wow!" As many as twelve! Why so many? yes, I understand.
Depending on who you were going to perform your diabolical experiment
on, that tank was filled with a catalyst. With the help of water, did you
extend your power to all employees of the institute?
"You are very clever, Myrdal," she said, recovering from her first fit of
fear. "What am I supposed to do now?"
— Now tell us who wants which tank.
"I don't know.
"It's a pity. However, it is not difficult to guess. All of them are filled
with solution, except one. Who was lucky, whom did you spare?
"I don't know, I didn't.
"That's right!" And I thought it was your duty. So, where does the pipe
go from an empty tank?
"I tell you, I don't know.
"Well, I know, Madame Einzig. She goes to Dr. Graber's apartment and
apparently, in yours.
Einzig bared her teeth and wanted to feign something like a smile.
"You are mistaken, Mr. Myrdal...
"We'll see." Disconnect the outermost tank and pour the liquid into the
empty one.
Her face was distorted by horror again.
"I won't," she hissed.
"So I guessed right. You see. And you thought you were smarter than
everyone else. Do what I told you to do!
"No!" She shrieked.
"Then I'll do it myself."
"I won't allow it!" I... I...
She took off, crossed the hall like lightning, and disappeared behind the
door.
"Stop, stop!" I shouted,
but it was too late. I heard her stumble and scream as she fell from a
great height.
There was no need to shoot. A dull thud came from below, and a dead
silence reigned.
I returned to the shelf with dark yellow vessels, disconnected one from
the faucet and poured the contents into an empty tank. With the handle of
the pistol, I broke the rest of the vessels, and the liquid with the poisonous
elixir poured onto the floor.
Now all that remained was to wait.

71
 12. CLAY GOD
When morning came, I found that the water pump was an excellent
observation post. Through three windows, the surroundings around were
clearly visible. The barracks in which the laboratories were located were
visible, the test site lay in full view, and to the left of the pego stretched an
"oasis of scarlet palms". I didn't need to go back to the oasis, because I
knew that very soon Graber's stone army would be finished. All that
remained was to wait.
So far, I was the only one who knew that Graber's army was doomed.
Strangely, I did not feel remorse for the fact that all these former people
would die through my fault. They have already died. They have long
become thoughtless, miserable automatons, doomed to drag out the
terrible burden of an unnatural existence. They were spiritually and
physically killed by Graber, and only their petrified shell reminded them
of their former human dignity,
the Sun rose over the palm trees, and the flint infantry again entered the
battlefield. Fernand's detachment scattered among the beds. The stone
idols resumed their tireless pursuit...
From above, it was clearly visible how one or another stone man bent
over the beds and drank water. As the sun rose higher, they applied
themselves to the water more and more often.
At the end of the second hour of the "chess" war, I saw one of Graber's
soldiers suddenly stop. He froze in an unusual pose, raising one leg and
arm. The Arab he was chasing shouted something. At that moment,
another froze, then another, and another. All this happened at lightning
speed. The space where a complex combination war of attrition had just
taken place began to resemble a cemetery with stone statues or a museum
courtyard, where sculptures of the Paleolithic era were brought and
placed.
At first, hesitantly, and then more and more boldly, my comrades began
to approach the petrified people.
I ran down the spiral staircase and stopped for a moment by Einzig's
twisted corpse. Her eyes were wide open, and bestial malice froze in them.
Fernand quickly gave orders to his fighters. Some had to lie down along
the asphalt road leading to the exit, others had to inspect the barracks.
Several people stopped at the entrance to the three-story building where
Graber's headquarters was located.
"It feels like there's no one inside," Ali said.
I looked at the trucks on the right. Now there were not three, but two.

72
 "Probably some of them have left." I need to faster. Did Graber manage
to escape?
Fernand went to the door and pushed it with all his might with his foot.
It opened a little and then slammed shut again, as if sandbags had been
piled on it from the opposite side.
"Come, help me.
We all pressed on the door, and it gave way with difficulty. In a dark,
narrow hallway we saw two dead soldiers lying on the floor in a ridiculous
pose. One of them had his mouth full of sand. The second had sand
clutched in his hand.
"What is it?" Fernand exclaimed in surprise. "Who pushed the sand
down their throats?"
"Nobody. They themselves. On
the right, at the level of the first step of the stairs leading to the
basement, a drain sink and a tap were attached to the wall. I pointed to the
speck.
"That's the point. In the water.
And I told him about everything that had happened at the pumping
station.
"Maybe Graber is in the same state?"
At this time, Ali escaped from the second floor, accompanied by
several people. His face youhorror.
"What's wrong with Graber?" He
muttered hoarsely,
"The same as with his bodyguards." Here, look.
He held out his hand to me, but not his own, but the one he held like a
stick...
Clay. Ordinary clay. It was a hand made of clay, it broke and
crumbled... I broke it a little above the elbow and then at the very hand.
There was no bone in it at all.
"Graber's piece."
"A piece of clay god," said Fernand contemptuously, and straightening
up, he walked towards his comrades, who were smoking aside.
I threw the piece of clay aside in disgust...
Desert... Is the nightmare really over? Our squad was walking along the
black asphalt strip. Twenty miles isn't that much. Suddenly, the air
trembled with the roar of approaching planes. Here they flew over us -
one, two, three. Metal birds without identification marks. They walked
very low and, before reaching the Graber Institute, lay down on the right
wing and turned around. A minute later, explosions were heard. There
were many of them, and a brown cloud was rising towards him on the

73
horizon. The planes circled over the place we had left an hour ago. They
dropped bombs with stupid persistence, covering up the traces of the
crime.
Explosions. There are many dull explosions in the desert. Will the
world hear about them? Will he know how, by distorting science, men of
science mock men? Will people really allow grabbers to exist on our
planet?
"By the way, Fernand, where are you and your companions going
now?" He
smiled:
"Home." We have so much to do at home! We need to make sure that
no one ever commits crimes on our sacred land.

74
 220 Percent Freedom

- Mom, tell me again how it was.

"I've told you about it many times, my boy. To be honest, I'm tired of
this story. And it's not very pleasant...
"But you have to talk about it!"
Leonor put a strong emphasis on the word "necessary".
"Why do you need it, my dear?"
- Because no one understands this! Until a person understands
something, he needs to be told the same thing endlessly.
His mother smiled bitterly. She got up from the sofa and went to the
desk, on which stood a photograph in a mourning frame.
"Well, you know the beginning," she began, wiping the dust off the
photo with her hand. "Friedrich and I were on our honeymoon. Frederick
had always loved the East.
"Is Friedrich my father?"
His mother looked up at Leonor, surprised.
- Of course! I don't understand why you're asking. The portrait of your
father is always in front of your eyes.
Leonor nodded his head, casting a fleeting glance at the photograph of
the man in the mourning frame.
"So, you were on your honeymoon. How old were you then?
The mother looked at her son reproachfully.
"Don't you understand?"
"I do. But they say that women often hide their years.
His mother came up to Leonor and put her arm around his shoulders
gently. Then, leaning down to her ear, she whispered,
"I was only twenty years old, Leonor.
The son impulsively got up from the sofa.
"So," he said, "you arrived in Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.
-Yes.
- What happened next?
The mother walked around the room several times, holding her head in
her hands. She didn't really want to remember the past. But looking at
Leonor's inquisitive eyes, she stopped right in front of him and said as
calmly as possible:

75
 "We arrived in Nagasaki very early. If it had not been for the character
of Frederick, who did everything impulsively and thoughtlessly, we
would have stayed in Yokohama. But he couldn't wait to go to Nagasaki.
He dreamed of seeing there, in the museum, some stone with ancient
hieroglyphs. And he also wanted to show me an alley of cherry trees,
which, of course, do not bloom in August... Oh, why did I agree!
-Why? Leonor asked persistently.
-I don't know... After Yokohama, I had the feeling that I would
definitely have a son.
-So. What happened next?
"I suddenly became weak-willed and obeyed Friedrich in everything.
-Why?
The mother approached her son and sat down next to him. Tears
glittered in her eyes, though she tried to smile.
"When you're big, my boy, and you've got a wife, then you'll
understand." Why do you constantly torment me with these questions?
- Because I don't understand many things. For example, I do not
understand why my father died.
"Coincidence, Leonor. Fate.
The boy stared at his mother. His face was pale and indifferent.
"Che-pu-ha," he said syllable-by-syllable. -Stupidity!
The mother frightened back to the table on which there was a
photograph of her husband. She grabbed the portrait and pressed it to her
breast.
"Leonor, stop it!" You have no right to say that. Fate is fate. You Can
Never Tell, what will happen in the future, what will happen even in five
minutes... You will...
Leonor squatted down strangely, spread his arms and laughed
artificially. He laughed with only his lips, as if imitating some
artist-comedian.
"I can tell you what will happen in five minutes, in half an hour, in an
hour, in a day, in ten days, in a year. And you, you could not have foreseen
what would happen in a day! After Hiroshima, you couldn't have
imagined that the next bomb would fall on Nagasaki! Ha! This is truly
human insight!
-Leonor! Don't you dare say that! - the woman exclaimed and grabbed
her son by the hands.
Leonor pursed his lips. A few minutes of silence passed. Then he asked
quietly but persistently,
"So. What happened next?
"We stayed in a small cozy hotel on the outskirts of the city. We were a
little tired from the road and lay down to rest. The curtains in the room

76
were drawn, and the morning light filtered through them, painting the
room in soft orange tones. It was very quiet, and for a moment it seemed to
me that there was no war in the world. You can't imagine how pleased I
was. Friedrich, your father, stretched out on the sofa and dozed sweetly. I
could feel how pleased he was after the tiring journey from Yokohama.
And then something supernatural pushed me, touched me, lifted me out of
bed, and I went up to your father against my will. I loved him very much,
Leonor, very... I remember that he opened his eyes and looked at me in
surprise. "What's the matter, Anna?" - "I want to tell you something. Won't
you be afraid?" - "Since I wasn't afraid of Hitler..." - "Oh, forget Hitler. I
want to tell you that we will have a son." After that, everything happened
as if all Japanese volcanoes had erupted. Father jumped to his feet and
flew out of the room like a whirlwind. I knew where he was running. I
opened the curtain and looked down into the street. He ran like a madman,
without looking back, towards the center of the city. I knew that in a few
minutes there would be a royal feast in our room. I lay down and, closing
my eyes, waited. How sweet it was to wait, Leonor! After that, I heard a
faint howl of a siren. Well, of course, this is another raid by
reconnaissance aircraft. Not so scary. I just turned to the other side and
began to look at the cream curtain covering the window. It swayed in the
gentle wind. Then it became very quiet. The siren stopped. And
suddenly...
-Yes. And suddenly? Leonor asked.
And suddenly there was a deafening explosion. No, not an explosion. It
was some kind of roar, a scream, as if the Earth itself was screaming in
unbearable pain. And a flash of light. Oh, you have no idea what kind of
flash it was. A million lightning bolts at the same time, a hundred suns, a
billion moons. The room where I was suddenly seemed too tiny to hold so
much light. As if in a nightmare, before my eyes, the cream silk curtain
turned into brown, then black and crumbled into blood-red smoldering
pieces... The room was filled with burning, the smell of burnt rags, and
after that...
- What happened after that? Leonor inquired with the same ruthless
curiosity.
After that, a tight mass of hot air pressed me against the wall. The
windows were torn off their hinges and carried away by a whirlwind
somewhere in the street, the whole building of the hotel swayed, sat down,
the ceiling collapsed... I don't remember what happened next. Only a long
time later a man in a white coat, I think a Japanese doctor, asked me in
English who I was and where I came from. It was, in my opinion, in an
open field. On the horizon of the blue gyelling, and I also remember
someone next to me moaning. "What happened?" - I asked. "The

77
Americans dropped the second atomic bomb." Before that, for some
reason, I did not believe in atomic bombs. Then I asked where Friedrich
was. "Who is this?" asked the Japanese. "My husband. He went to the city
for shopping..." Orientals smile strangely. We, Europeans, feel rather than
see their smile... So it was then with this Japanese doctor. He smiled.
Probably to cheer me up. "Look at the power. What the human mind
comes to. Are you from Germany?" He lifted me up, and I saw that I was
on the top of a green hill, and below me there was a gaping black charred
pit. It had ugly walls, sooty hedges, and crippled railroad cars. For some
reason, I remember a huge square with a lot of black smoking pillars
sticking out. "It was a city park, as if guessing, the Japanese explained.
"Isn't it true that the mighty force is an atom?" - "What does it all mean?" -
I asked. Recently, there was a city down there. It was called Nagasaki.
And so..."
Anna moved her lips for a few more seconds, but her voice was no
longer heard. Leonor went to the window and said thoughtfully,
"Curious, damn it. Very curious.
"Leonor, what are you saying! His mother exclaimed in horror. "Your
father died there!"
- That's understandable. This is not surprising. I do not understand why
he left the hotel when it was quite obvious that the bomb would be
dropped on Nagasaki.
"You're crazy, Leonor. You talk about it in such an indifferent voice.
You'll never understand it!
The boy shrugged his shoulders.
"I don't understand why you're angry. Of course, your father was
unwise to leave you alone. You could celebrate the celebration after the
explosion, in safety. You wouldn't need to go to Nagasaki at all. I'll tell
you frankly, mother, you are strange people. And my father was strange...
"What do you mean, strange?" Anna whispered in horror.
"How can I tell you... It was easy to calculate the probability that the
second atomic bomb would be dropped on Nagasaki. After all, it was not
for nothing that the bomb was dropped on him. How could this event not
have been foreseen? One thing you humans don't understand is that if
something happens, it must be so. Why do you never try to calculate your
future? Or maybe you can't?
The mother rose to her full height and approached her son.
"Honey, what are you saying?" And what do you say?
-A what?
"You said; "You people... "
Yes, I said so.
"But...

78
 "Oh, I see. I meant people who are powerless to analyze the events on
which their lives depend... If your father and you had thought a little
before leaving Yokohama, nothing like this would have happened. You
would never go to Nagasaki because this city was doomed just like
Hiroshima.
"But we didn't know anything!"
"Oh, but it was so easy to think. It was enough to take a map of Japan
and a map of the location of American air bases, printed in all the
newspapers. The fate of Nagasaki was calculated simply, as if by a
multiplication table. I am sure that most people suffer unhappiness
because of their intellectual deficiency.
-Leonor! Don't you dare say that!
Leonor looked at his mother in surprise.
"Did I say anything bad?"
"You, you... Razvyes, you can say that your father...
- Intellectual disability? Inability to analyze rigorously? What's wrong
with that?
-Shut up! You are a soulless, cold creature. Every time I tell you about
those terrible days, you begin to torment me. What for? Why?
Anna fell on the sofa and hid her face in the pillow. Leonor looked at
his mother with interest for a while, then, sighing, said to himself:
"I don't understand that. I just don't understand.
A
week later, Leonor was received by the headmaster of the gymnasium,
Mr. Stimmer. The boy stood in front of the desk and looked at the director
with his blue inquisitive eyes. Heinrich Stimmer ran his hand over his
completely gray head and smiled affectionately, apparently expecting a
smile in return.
"An amazing case, Leonor. This has never happened in our
gymnasium, the headmaster began.
"And there never will be," the young man interrupted.
-A what?
"What you're going to tell me."
Stimmer shivered chillily in his chair. He always felt uncomfortable in
the company of this strange schoolboy. It always seemed to him that he
was endowed with an amazing, devilish insight.
"Did anyone warn you?"
-No. I had been counting on this conversation a long time ago. In fact,
you should have summoned me on this occasion at least a month ago.
Stimmer sprang to his feet.
"Did you eavesdrop?" Peeped through the crack?
Leonor smiled faintly.

79
 -No. There was no need for this. First of all, I have nothing to do in the
gymnasium. You, like me, know well that I studied the course of sciences
under the program two years ago and now I do whatever I want in the
classroom. In fact, over the years, I have done away with the university
course in mathematics and physics. Secondly, my presence in your
educational institution greatly complicates the situation of teachers. And
thirdly, this American, Stanley Kollar, has been attacking you for six
months to get you to hand me over to him. By the way, he approached me
several times with his proposals. I know that if I agree to work for them,
you will give me a certificate without passing exams.
As Leonor spoke, the headmaster huddled deeper and deeper into the
corner of his chair. His gaze ran restlessly around. The boy repeated his
own thoughts exactly. He was in no position to say anything to him. He
only asked,
"Do you agree, Leonor?"
"I have no other choice.
-That is?
"Why do you ask?" You know that my mother and I are lonely.
- But this is due to a trip to another country.
-I know. If they need me, they will take me at their own expense.
"Yes, of course," Stimmer brightened up. - Working conditions are
excellent. The pay is very high. The work is extremely interesting.
The young man's face expressed absolutely nothing. He seemed to be
completely absorbed in himself, thinking his own thoughts.
- ... And I understand, Leonor, how hard it is to get used to a new
environment, and especially to strangers! The director exclaimed
pathetically.
-What did you say? Leonor asked, as if awake.
"I say that at first it will be difficult for you to get used to a different
environment and to other people. A man far from his homeland...
"A man's homeland is the Earth," he said Leonor.
- Well, what about friends, comrades?
"Those fools in our class?"
Stimmer sprang to his feet.
"You are forgetting, Herr Heintz!" Don't imagine that you are an
extraordinary person! I know that your genius is feigned! You have no
modesty!
Leonor shrugged his shoulders and turned his back on the director.
-Wait! You don't dare to leave like that!
"I have nothing else to do here.
-That is...
Old man Stimmer's eyes rolled out of their sockets. Turning around,

80
Leonor remarked mockingly:
"You are a strange man, Mr. Stimmer. You summoned me to persuade
me to accept the American's offer. Now that we understand each other,
you are angry for some reason. Where is the logic here?
- What logic! How dare you talk to me like that! You, you...
Leonor looked at the headmaster of the gymnasium as if he were an
outlandish exhibit in a museum.
Then he took a few steps toward the door and said,
"Tell Mr. Collard that I'm willing to go anywhere, anytime."
In the yard, he was surrounded by classmates.
"Well, genius, why did he summon you?"
"I'm going to America," replied Leonor, not at all embarrassed by his
nickname.
"You're really of some value to these Yankees." They say they never
waste money.
-Of course. I'll try to sell myself as profitably as possible," Leonor
remarked without a trace of embarrassment.
"It doesn't sound very good to sell out, does it?"
- In your world, nothing sounds good at all. But if it's so stupid, there's
nothing you can do.
"Why do you say 'in your world', Leonor?" He's just as ours as yours.
The young man thought for a second, carefully examining the
comrades gathered around him.
"And yet this world is yours, not mine. All of you put up with his
incredibly wild and stupid orders. And I didn't. But I can't do anything
alone.
"And how would you transform this world, Leonor?"
He shrugged his shoulders and did not answer. A few steps away from
the crowd of guys, he suddenly turned and shouted:
"Never read the newspapers. Do not believe a single word of our
politicians. They are stupid and vain. Try to understand more deeply the
laws of nature and the laws of human society. The most run-down
textbook on mathematical economics has more sense and utility than the
hundreds of volumes written by talkative fools who project an earthly
paradise built of disembodied ideas and witty sayings. Remember the law
of conservation of matter. If, without creating anything, you got
something for yourself, then you stole. Do not forget the law of
conservation of energy. If you got something without labor, it means that a
slave is working for you somewhere. Never forget to strike a strict balance
of human happiness and unhappiness. Learn to measure it, and then
everything will become clear.
Leonor was well aware that he had said all this in vain. He was

81
considered a learned eccentric, obsessed with strict formulations and
abstruse tasks. But he could not do otherwise. His soul, if he had one, did
not admit of any compromise between truth and falsehood, between
stupidity and reason. Everywhere, in living and dead nature, he saw only
strict laws, and people, to his surprise, only thoseThey tried to go against
these laws day after day, while completely unaware of their doom. In
order to justify the inability to live in a complex world of causal
connections and quantitative relations, people invented a world of
emotions, which, simply put, seemed to them to be disgusting, for some
reason unpunishable clique. He frankly dreamed of running away from his
city, getting away from his stupid classmates, living a different life among
people who, judging by their names and published scientific works,
thought and acted in full accordance with logic and reason. Leonor longed
to go to America and work in one of the largest theoretical centers of the
country. Harry Campbell, Edward Geller, John Strawbery and other
world-famous scientists must finally replace the company of clever
burghers who, after praising the genius of Newton and Weierstrass, went
to the nearest bar and poisoned their brains with schnapps.
"Ugliness! What a mind-boggling ugliness!" thought Leonor to
himself.
He was about to leave the schoolyard gate when someone called him by
name. He stopped and looked around. To the right and left of the gate
grew tall shrubs. An intricate metal grille separated the courtyard from
Heinestrasse.
"Leonor, L-u...
It was the girl's voice.
"Who's calling me?" If anyone needs me, why hide?
A few steps away from him, the bushes stirred, and the figure of a girl
appeared in them. She adjusted her dress for a few seconds, and then
looked at Leonor guiltily.
"Was it you who called me?" he asked.
She nodded her head.
"Why do you need me?" Who are you?
She took a few hesitant steps toward him.
-I... We study in the same class...
"That's right. And I don't remember you.
"My desk is to the left of yours." My name is Elsa. Elsa Kegl.
Leonor pretended to be embarrassed.
"I don't remember, really.
A tall, slender girl with beautiful golden hair scattered in all directions
resolutely approached him and stood in front of him.
"So you don't remember me?" she asked.

82
 - No, I don't remember.
"And you haven't read my notes?"
-A what?
"I sent you notes. Every day, sometimes twice a day.
- Once I read something, very stupid. I didn't read it after that.
Elsa's face suddenly flushed and she ran forward.
He looked after her and was surprised when he saw that she stopped
about ten paces from him.
He approached the girl.
"What's the matter with you, Elsa?"
She looked up at him with tear-stained eyes.
"Are you a man, Leonor, or what?"
He shrugged his shoulders in embarrassment. Then he said not very
confidently:
"Probably. At least, that's what everyone thinks.
"Well, what do you think?"
- My experience tells me that opinions are valuable only when they are
numerous. This is the law of statistics. The opinion of one person does not
mean anything.
Not understanding anything, Elsa approached him a few steps, then
stopped, looked into his eyes and threw herself on his chest.
She was a little shorter than Leonor, and when she hid her face on his
chest, she showedvery little girl. Leonor looked down at her in confusion
and gently stroked her shoulder. He once saw in the movies that in such
cases they do exactly that.
Without raising her head, Elsa muttered:
"And I love you, Leonor...
-Love? For what?
She looked at him with red tear-stained eyes.
"Because you're not like everyone else. For being smart...
Leonor pulled the girl away from him a little.
"Strange," he whispered. - Very strange. Until now, only my mother
has told me this. So, in your opinion, strangers can love each other?
"Oh, it's quite different from a mother... Leonor! I'm going to wait for
the moment when I'll see you again. You're going to America, aren't you?
-Yes. How do you know?
"My father told me. My father and Mr. Goodmeyer are co-owners of
the firm in which you will work.
"That's right!"
"If you want to know, I'm to some extent to blame for your trip. My
father and Captain Kollar once talked about the need for very clever
scientists. Then I called you...

83
 "Thank you, Elsa.
"But you haven't answered me yet...
- What should I answer?
"Oh, my God! Are you...
The girl suddenly ran away from Leonor, and cried out desperately,
"No, you are not a man. Mr. Stimmer is right, all the boys are right,
your mother is right! Farewell! No, goodbye! I will come to America, and
then, perhaps, you will already know how to respond to a girl when she
says that she loves you.
Leonor watched for a few seconds as Elsa ran away from him along the
path, along the bushes, waving her arms in a strange way.
Never
had Leonor's face been so calm and soulful as at that moment. He
became the embodiment of intelligence, and all the cells of his brain, all
the connections, all the circuits and blocks of the nervous system, seemed
to be tuned for that moment. Now he has to meet Edward Geller, a man
who is known to the whole world as an outstanding engineer-physicist.
When the tall, narrow oak door opened and a small man with a
wrinkled, sickly face appeared in it, moving forward with small steps,
Leonor realized that it was Geller. He did not get up from his chair, did not
jump to his feet, as others jumped up at the sight of this man. He was sure
that Geller was just like him, a man of great intelligence, who had taken
upon himself the difficult mission of doing everything in his power to save
and transform a multi-billion collective of living beings who called
themselves "the crown of nature."
Geller went up to Leonor, and without shaking his hand said,
"Hello.
"Good afternoon," the young man answered, and for a moment it
seemed to him that he was next to his double.
Geller walked to an armchair by the bookcase and sat down. He and
Leonor were silent for a few minutes, examining each other as intelligent
beings from different planets would probably view each other.
"So, you're going to work for me?"
Without replying, Leonor nodded his head and pursed his lower lip
with a smile. He always did this when he was very pleased.
- They say you know modern mathematics well.
Not at all embarrassed, Leonor pressed again lower lip. Geller would
say something unusual now, and they didn't need to talk much to
understand each other!
"Can I check it?" Geller asked.
Leonor smiled. The moment of the highest human understanding was
approaching. He swayed slightly in his chair and nodded in agreement.

84
 Geller, without taking his colorless eyes off the young man, unbuttoned
the collar of his plaid shirt, then pulled out several sheets of blank paper
from his desk.
"Do you have a pencil?" Geller asked.
-Eat.
For a few seconds, Geller wrote something silently. Then, running his
eyes over what he had written, he handed the sheet to Leonor.
-Here. The condition of the problem is as follows. The state is able to
reproduce its economic potential every three years. Militarily, the state is
very strong. In any case, if there is a war, we must count on retaliatory
thermonuclear strikes. Here is a list of the industrial regions of this state in
order of decreasing economic power. It is necessary to determine the order
of their destruction.
Leonor looked up at Geller in surprise. For a few minutes they looked
at each other in silence. Geller smiled, revealing a row of gold teeth. He
said nothing, but the expression on his face showed that he was sure of the
boy's inability to solve the problem.
"Do you understand the meaning of the problem, boy?" he asked
condescendingly.
At that moment, he thought to himself, "This Collard is a blockhead.
He said a hundred boxes about the boy..."
- Yes, I understand the meaning of the task.
"Then decide," Geller said and was about to leave.
"I've already solved it," he heard in reply.
Geller stopped, smiled slightly, and said patronizingly:
"Take your time, dear...
"I've already solved it," Leonor repeated in a firm voice.
Geller looked at him incredulously.
-Well... Write an answer.
- Why write it. Everything is clear as it is.
Geller sat down. He looked attentively at the young man's motionless
face, at his attentive, unblinking blue eyes, and, putting his hand on the
sheets of paper with the content of the problem, asked:
"So what is the answer?"
"I will not touch on how absurdly the conditions of the problem are
drawn up and how incomplete its data are," said Leonor, "but in the
formulation you have given me, the problem is solved unequivocally and
immediately.
Geller raised his eyebrows in surprise. No one ever answered him like
that.
- This is the decision. Over the course of three years, it is necessary to
consistently destroy the enemy's economic centers in descending order of

85
their power.
Geller thought for a moment, and then his face broke into a smile. He
walked over to Leonor and put his hand on his shoulder.
"Bravo, my boy!" Exactly!
Leonor was silent. Inwardly, he felt some kind of dissatisfaction, as if
what was happening now was not at all what he had hoped for.
"Wonderful," Geller went on. - And here is another task. There are ten
sheepfolds, which are guarded by five dogs. Fifteen wolves systematically
attack the sheepfolds. How should the guards be distributed between the
sheepfolds in order to...
Leonor got up from his chair. He narrowed his eyes and walked over to
his desk.
- Wait a minute, ask a question. This is also a military task. But you
haven't told me yet what the turning radius of each dog and each wolf.
Without these data, the problem has no solution.
Geller froze with his mouth open. Then he put his hands on his face and
burst out laughing with a little old man's laughter.
"You're right, Leonor. Everything that Captain Kollar has said about
you is true.
"Your wolves are enemy bombers. Sheepfolds are military facilities.
Dogs are your fighters.
"That's right, that's right, my boy. Let me hug you. After all, in all my
long life, this is the first time I have seen such a creature as you! I can't
even believe that such a thing could be born in Europe...
"Not in Europe, Mr. Geller, but in Japan.
-Where is??? Geller asked.
- In Japan. More precisely, to Nagasaki. Remember, you dropped the
atomic bomb there. At that moment, I was in my mother's womb.
Geller went to a small cupboard, opened the glass door, and took a
bottle of cognac from the lower compartment. He put one glass in front of
Leonor, the other in front of him, and poured it out.
"Drink," he said, swallowing his portion.
-Thank you. I don't drink," Leonor replied.
"Don't you drink?"
-No.
-Why?
"Why do you drink?" You know it's harmful. Especially for your brain.
It works correctly when it is not poisoned.
Geller winced. Then he poured another glass. Leonor did not take his
eyes off him. After the fourth drink, the scientist approached the young
man and said:
"I'll take you. I take him to my place. You are a devilishly clever beast...

86
Hell knows! Where do people like you come from...
"You're drunk," said Leonor coldly.
"That's right, my boy. That's right. I'm drunk. I want to be drunk
because I'm tired...
- And you are trusted to solve important scientific problems? Leonor
asked, surprised.
- That is, how does it mean - trusted? Geller asked.
"If a man poisons his brain with alcohol, and you do, Mr. Edward
Geller, he is not able to solve serious problems properly. And if he is
entrusted with the task of solving problems on which the fate of nations
depends, then this is a crime on the part of those who give him such an
assignment, and a crime on your part.
"But-but-but!" Geller said and wagged his finger at Leonora. - Don't be
smart. I'm two and a half times older than you.
"So much the worse. So, in addition, you also have a sclerotic brain. I
just don't understand how you can entrust the calculations of political and
military actions to drunken sclerotics!
"Shut up, you," Geller hissed, pouring two more glasses in a row, drank
them in one gulp.
IV Electric
locomotives flew overhead along the river every now and then,
showering passers-by with a hot stench. Cars honked below and above. It
was a damp, colorless autumn day.
"Do you like it here?" Ernest Hall asked.
"With you, as with us," Leonor replied calmly.
- I have never been to Europe, but I was told that it is very beautiful
there. In any case, they have not yet learned how to pollute cities like we
have.
Leonor lifted the collar of his cloak.
"You, Ernest, talk as if you are really interested in Europe.
"And you?"
Again the train swept overhead. Leonor stopped for a moment and
looked after him.
-DvIt's rubbish," he said.
"Everybody knows that," interrupted Ernest. - So what about Europe?
"What difference does it make! I remember our small town, the
headmaster Stimmer and our gymnasium. It's funny, isn't it..
-That's funny? Listen, why are you pretending to be such an impassive
beast? After all, it's quite disgusting.
Leonor stopped and looked intently at his companion.
"Hall, if you really want us to be friends, let's not talk nonsense.
Ultimately, by your standards, I'm doing great.

87
 They descended from the bridge and walked along the embankment.
Now it was clearly visible how dirty the water in the river was.
"There was such a scientist in America, Langmuir. He was the first to
prove that oil films on water are monomolecular films.
"So what?" Hall asked with undisguised irritation.
- We know too little about monomolecular layers. It seems to me that
the future theory of matter must conceive of atoms and atomic particles as
swelling films that are built up of particles of primordial matter.
Hall stopped suddenly and took Leonor's hand.
"Listen, my friend. Do you ever feel dissatisfied with living and
working for us? Aren't you drawn to your homeland?
Leonor smiled.
-No.
- Do you have a girlfriend left there, in Germany?
- And what is it?
Hall spat vigorously.
"Don't pretend to be a fool. You, boy, know. That we, Americans, can
joke for the time being.
Leonor leaned against the granite railing.
"We are Americans, we are Europeans, we are Negroes... Honestly,
Ernest, I just don't understand why all this is being said. I have no idea
about love, and therefore, I can't have any girlfriend in principle.
"You're lying!"
-I?
-Yes you.
"But, Ernest...
-Leonor. Until now, I knew you as a smart guy. No one will ever be
able to appreciate all that you have done for our company. I can tell you
frankly that our guys study your work as some kind of special course. This
is what Geller makes us do. But... But when I saw a girl from Europe
yesterday...
"A girl from Europe?" Leonor asked.
-Yes. Her name is Elsa. She is from your city, and her father is a
co-owner of the company in which we work. Now, this Elsa said that she
would despise you if you continued your activities with Geller.
Leonor stared at Hall for a moment, uncomprehendingly, and then
began to laugh, louder and louder, until his laughter reverberated
throughout the waterfront. Leonor, writhing with laughter, pointed his
finger at Ernest Hall and said something in German. The American guy's
cheekbones twitched. It suddenly seemed to him that Leonor had gone
mad.
He stood for a long time and waited for his friend to laugh to his heart's

88
content. And when he fell silent, Ernest, without asking anything, strode
forward.
It was only after they were in the wide, brightly lit street that Hall
muttered, as if thinking aloud:
"I think an Italian named Lambrosa has noticed that genius is as
pathological as madness.
-Committedbut it is true, it was Lambrosa who said it," Leonor
confirmed. "I remembered that girl, Elsa... You know, before I left
Germany, she said she loved me.
Hall stopped abruptly.
"Well, what about you?"
-I? No problem. He shrugged his shoulders.
Leonor giggled, but Ernest came close to him and grabbed him by the
side of his jacket.
"That's it. If you don't stop pretending to be a robot in human form, I'll
crush your head. Got it?
-Got it. I'm very tired of you, Ernest. Go your own way, and I'll go
mine. We will never understand each other. Never. Adieu.
Leonor crossed the street, leaving the American guy at the intersection.
And here is the building of the nuclear center. It was very late, and it
seemed strange to Leonor that there were people standing near the high
stone fence. There were not many of them, only fifteen or twenty people,
but they were kept in a group, and in the middle someone raised a plywood
shield on which was written "Freedom from atomic danger!"
Leonor wanted to pass by, straight to the gate of the entrance, but
suddenly he was surrounded by a tight ring.
-Are you from around here? Someone asked.
- Why do you work here?
"What's your business, where I work.
- And you are not tormented by remorse?
- This is when people are killed and they believe that this is the way it
should be.
"I haven't killed anyone, and I'm not going to kill anyone.
"But you work here. Then you are aiding those who intend to commit
murder.
Leonor stepped out of the circle, stopped, and said in a tired voice,
"Here's the thing, boys. If there were many people like me, there would
never be any murders. There would be no hatred and greed, no unbridled
passions and fear, no bloodthirstiness and no madness. They are the ones
who cause all your misfortunes. Your love, passion, vanity, fear, struggle
for existence, the instinct to reproduce and the thirst for profit - this is the
cause of your wars and bloodshed. Before you can be free from the atomic

89
danger, you must be free from your vices. I'm afraid you won't be able to
do that. It is unlikely that your plywood with a slogan will help. Good
night. Standing in front of a wall at night is just stupid. Go rest.
Leonor entered the gate, and the crowd of people saw him off with eyes
full of hatred and contempt. Leonor spent all night calculating a new type
of explosive device for a new type of nucleon bomb.
V
- How did he think of it? How? Edward Geller asked himself again and
again, pacing nervously from corner to corner of his office. The large wall
clock struck two o'clock, and at the same time the telephone rang on his
desk.
-Yes? I'm Geller. I'll get up now. A what? Are you coming to me?
You're welcome.
He quickly straightened his tie, somehow tidied up the papers scattered
on the table, and waited for the arrival of the headmaster, Robert
Goodmeyer.
Goodmeyer did not come alone, but together with the retired German
General Kegl, who had been "visiting America" for several days, as he
said.
At the sight of his superiors, Geller lost his usual haughty expression,
and from the outside, if it were not known who he was, one would think
that he was an ordinary official. A thin, ingratiating smile appeared on his
yellow, wrinkled face.
"I have a surprise for you, Mr. Goodmeyer. You are free to concludeA
contract with the government for a new nuclear installation with a
capacity of, say, five hundred megatons.
"I already know that," Goodmeyer said casually. "And my colleague
Herr Kegl knows about it. And the whole company knows. That's it, down
to the last elevator operator. That's what worries me.
Geller froze with his mouth open.
"Listen, Geller. What do you know about this phenomenal guy named
Leonor? He does not understand at all what a military secret is.
Geller thought for a moment and answered:
"There has never been anyone like him in my lifetime. It was he who
proposed a new method for using free nucleons. Simply incredible!
"Do you know, Professor, that the guy is crazy?"
"What?"
-Abnormal. Not exactly an idiot, but rather... how shall I tell you...
Goodmeyer looked at Bowling inquiringly.
"Freak," the vice-director of the company prompted.
Edward Geller sat down on the edge of his chair, frightened. Herr Kegl,
as if reassuring Goodmeyer, explained:

90
 "Such things happen among scientists. For example, the French
mathematician Blaise Pascal did not have an overgrown crown until the
end of his life. They say that there, in the brain, there was also an abscess.
And Pasteur lacked half of his brains at all...
"Maybe you can explain to me," Geller babbled.
Without saying a word, Goodmeyer pulled a pipe from his side pocket
and handed it to the physicist.
"Frankly speaking, I don't understand anything about it. But those who
do, I mean doctors, say that the devil knows what.
The object turned out to be nothing more than an X-ray film rolled into
a tube. When Geller looked at it in the light, his hands trembled slightly.
-I don't see anything...
"Mother Leonora gave me this tape. Or rather, not me, but my daughter
Elsa. We were going to America, and she came to us and said: "I beg you
to pay attention to the health of my son. The fact is that in childhood he
suffered from headaches, and then he had this picture. The doctors said
that everything would be fine with age."
"Really, I don't see anything here," Geller continued to mutter,
examining the film from all sides. It clearly depicted a human skull taken
in profile.
- In order for you to understand what is going on, I will show you a
similar picture of the head of a normal person.
Bowling handed the professor the second tape, and when he looked at
it, and then at the first, a strange hissing sound escaped from his throat. He
suddenly saw that the barely perceptible shadow representing the medulla
of a normal person occupied only about half the volume of the skull. In
Leonor's head the shadow was much denser and spread over the entire
front, occipital and back parts. Judging by the images, his brain was twice
as large.
"When I gave Leonor's X-ray to the specialists, they were horrified.
Not only did they find that his brain was larger and denser than normal,
but that it had no subcortical areas at all. And this means that the guy is
completely free from any emotions. Can you imagine what this means?
At this point, Principal Robert Goodmeyer intervened in the
conversation.
"That means, my dear, that he can only reason and not feel a damn
thing. PobolWe wish we had more freaks like that, eh, Geller!
He burst into thunderous laughter.
"It's a strange case," said Geller, and looked inquiringly at Skittles.
He shrugged his shoulders.
"There is nothing strange in the fact that Frau Heintz gave birth to a
freak. After all, it survived the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.

91
 "Oh, that's it.
- And all sorts of pacifists are screaming that nuclear war is inhumane!
Goodmeyer roared, still laughing. "It is now clear that only through war
can a more perfect race of men arise. Such smart guys like Leonor. Now it
is clear how modern people appeared. Darwinian evolution is nonsense.
It's just that monkeys received a good dose of radioactivity from
somewhere and began to give birth to freaks, that is, us! Ha ha ha! I can
imagine how the mother monkey felt when she gave birth to a tailless,
hairless, heady baby, who soon began to rule the entire monkey kingdom.
And there is such a theory of the origin of people!
Geller nodded his head silently.
"So, the next stage will be the race of Leonors. Wow, how all our
scientific institutions and design bureaus will work! What a curious world
it will be! I just get goosebumps. And why the hell would we need all sorts
of electronic machines then? One Leonor replaces a hundred of these
machines. Imagine that our company has a dozen leonors...
And the director launched into lengthy discussions on the topic of the
prosperity of his company if as a result of a future thermonuclear war
living thinking machines appeared.

They sat side by side on the veranda of a deserted country café. Elsa
smoked a cigarette and sometimes glanced mockingly at Leonor, who was
absentmindedly looking somewhere in the distance.
"What are you thinking about now, Leonor?"
- About how strange the world works.
-Strangely? What is strange about it?
"I don't understand at all how you, people who love life so passionately,
do everything possible to hasten death.
"I don't understand you very well. Who seeks to bring death closer? I?
"No, not you. Robert Goodmeyer, your father, Herr Kegl, Professor
Geller.
"Well, don't pay attention to them. As for my father, he just lost his
mind.
Elsa burst into loud merry laughter and put her hand on Leonor's
shoulder.
"He's just an old fool. All the money, money, money again. And the
fear that this money will be taken away from him by some communists.
- And why does he need money? Don't you have enough?
"What are you talking about, Leonor! If my dear stupid daddy took
them all from the bank one day, they could be pasted over all twenty
rooms of our villa in Horowitz, and there would still be a decent life left
for ten generations of his descendants.

92
 "So what's the matter?"
"Here's the thing..." Elsa turned her finger at her forehead. - Historical
tradition, hereditary idiocy, unreasonable fear. And who knows what. But
don't think I'm like that. Our generation is completely different. And I'm
so disgusted that my father got involved in these dirty atomic affairs for
money.
Elsa suddenly embraced Leonora and, pressing herself to his cheek,
whispered:
"I don't want to die from an atomic explosion so much, Leonor...
He carefully pulled the girl away from him.
- And what difference does it make, from why die. After all, you will
have to die anyway.
"But it's better later, much later. I want to live, see a lot, feel a lot. Life
is interesting and beautiful, isn't it, Leonor?
"N-probably," he said hesitantly.
Elsa abruptly moved away from him and said,
"You're kind of strange, Leonor. And in the gymnasium you were
strange. And here. Do you really care when you die?
He didn't answer.
"Tell me, aren't you afraid to die?"
"No," said Leonor in a barely audible whisper.
"And even from an atomic explosion?"
-No.
"Oh my God, you're lying!"
- No, I'm not lying. I just don't know what "scary" is.
The girl's eyes were filled with horror. Leonor looked at her calmly.
"And you won't regret parting with this blue sky, with these flowers,
with this alley?"
- I don't know what "pity" means...
"And you don't care that I'm next to you?"
"I don't understand what 'indifferent' is.
- Well, let's say you don't understand. But you loved anyone, didn't
you?
- I don't understand what "love" is...
Elsa got up from the table and took a few steps to the side.
-My god. You are a terrible person. You are a terrible person. What do
you live for?
- To solve complex problems. To understand intricate technical and
scientific problems.
"What is all this for?"
- I just can't imagine the meaning of life in any other way.
"And don't you think it's...

93
 - I understand that I am not like everyone else. But I can't help it. There
are words that I understand. I, like all people, understand what a theorem
is, what logic is, what a proof is, what a machine is, what a reaction is...
But there are words, the meaning of which is not clear to me. I don't know
what it is to love, what is habit, what is fear...
- Well, and freedom? Do you understand what freedom is? I love
freedom more than anything in the world.
Leonor thought for a moment.
- Recently I saw this word on a poster that was carried by a crowd of
people in front of the institute building. It read "Freedom from Atomic
Danger." I thought for a long time what it meant. It seems to me that I
understand...
-A what?
"Apparently," he began uncertainly, "this is a situation in which atomic
war will not prevent people from loving, being carried away, enjoying
life... When death comes not from an explosion, but from something else,
for example, from illness or simply from old age... When you can live
without what you call fear.
"Oh, you understand everything perfectly, Leonor," Elsa rejoiced and
sat down next to him again. "You're just original, aren't you?"
He shook his head.
- I learned it, as they learn the words of a foreign language.
After a long silence, Elsa suddenly asked:
"What are the most pleasant moments of your life for you?"
"When I understand something very difficult, or when I solve some
very intricate problem.
- Probably, all from the field of physics and mathematics?
- Almost yes. True, now I am trying to understand something different.
-A what?
"Maybe it will be funny to you. I try to understand withthe thought of
people's existence. I can't wrap my head around how they can live being
such contradictory creatures, so, I would say... Unreasonable.
-My god! How happy I would be if you would understand this, as you
call it, problem. I am sure that you will succeed. And then...
"What then?"
"Then you'll quit your job at Goodmeyer's and my father's—"
Elsa put her hand on Leonor's shoulder again and continued dreamily:
"Bloodthirsty old men will soon die out. Only those who love life will
remain. Perhaps you, Leonor, will love me someday. And we will go far,
far away. We will be completely free. And happy...
A faint smile played on the young man's lips. He clenched his hands
nervously.

94
 "You know, Elsa, at times it seems to me that I will soon, very, soon
figure it all out. And then I will find the right solution.
"Please, Leonor!" Find him at least for me. I beg you...

VII Ernest Hall, staggering a little, made unsuccessful attempts to

support Frau Heintz by the arm. But at last it turned out that she took his
arm, and then they walked more confidently. Hall's intention was very
simple: to see the mother off to her son and return to the club. But after a
few minutes of walking, he wanted to know from the German woman
what her son was, this strange guy Leonor, with whom he had so
unsuccessfully tried to make friends. For a long time he did not know
where to begin the conversation, but then he remembered Elsa and asked:
"Is it true that Leonor will marry Elsa?"
Frau Heintz stopped and lifted her veil over her hat.
"What makes you think that, Mr. Hall?"
He shrugged his shoulders meaningfully.
"I don't know that Leonor has expressed a desire to marry. I remember
well that he did not even tell me about it... Elsa? Yes, I know this girl. She
cannot find a place for herself in life, although her father is a major
industrialist. But Leonor? No, I don't believe he's going to get married.
Unlikely. Moreover, he is not healthy...
Hall giggled rudely in an American way.
Frau Heintz pulled his hand away.
"Yes, yes, Mr. Hall. This is exactly what I mean. The fact is that Leonor
is sick, and family life is not for him. Remember Newton. He also
sacrificed his personal life for the sake of science.
Ernest stopped and rubbed his forehead.
"Mrs. Heintz, Newton worked for all mankind. Leonor is against. So let
him marry better...
"Do you think it's that simple?" Can you say with certainty who is
working for humanity in our time and who is working against? I would not
dare to make such a division among scientists. Ultimately, they can work
on the most humane problems, and their achievements can be used against
people. I do not believe that the Curies and Sir Rutherford investigated
radioactivity specifically for the extermination of mankind.
Hall stopped and, as if trying to get rid of the hops, rubbed his forehead
hard.
- Frankly, we're puppies compared to you. We have not experienced
even a hundredth part of the suffering that you have experienced in
Europe. You are wiser than we are. You are more experienced. Tell me,
why are we working so openly for the war?
"Because that's how you earn a pretty decent living. You are people of

95
action, and The word "case" does not matter to you what is understood.
You were brought up in such a way that money obtained by any means is
good money. You are morally wretched because the harsh conditions of
life in an unfamiliar country deprived your ancestors of moral scruples.
Here the one who thought least of all about God and about man survived.
You are now paying for this flaw in your history. By not learning to value
the life and dignity of people, you have thereby lost the ability to value the
life and dignity of yourself. Your arrogance is the cause of your defeat.
You have never been properly beaten, and from this you draw the
completely unfounded conclusion that you can beat anyone with
impunity. But this is not true. Everything is the opposite.
Hall took the woman's arm again. They stopped near the machine, and
Ernest put down a coin, poured a glass of soda water for the woman and
himself... As they drank, he suddenly said,
"You're wrong, Mrs. Heintz. Maybe what you say was once so. In fact,
knowing my grandfather and my father, I can say with confidence that it
was so. But now it is different. Absolutely... Especially after the Second
World War. We now know what human dignity is and what cruelty is. Our
guys also died in the war.
Mother Leonora turned to face the American and said slowly,
"But your young mothers-to-be were not bombed!
Hall stared at her for a few seconds, uncomprehending. An evil smile
played on her thin, thin face, and she repeated the phrase, trying to
pronounce the English words as clearly as possible:
"Your young mothers-to-be were not hit by the atomic bombing.
The meaning of the phrase did not reach Ernest's consciousness.
"What do you mean, Frau...
- Any mother is pleased when her child is born a normal person.
The American coughed. Something gray, cold, and terrible crept up his
chest. He cringed and leaned against the wall.
- You had such a case... Forgive my question... I'm younger than you...
"Don't be shy, Mr. Hall. You are a brave, self-confident and strong
person. Ask and say what you want. So, what are you interested in?
- Did you have a child after atomization?
-Yes.
"Well...
"This is Leonor.
Ernest Hall staggered strangely, backed to the very edge of the
sidewalk, and clung convulsively to the concrete pole of the electric lamp.
"What are you afraid of?" Frau Heintz asked, approaching him, with
genuine surprise. "You are a clever man, you read books, you know
everything, and suddenly you are frightened. Ha ha ha! It's just strange. I

96
suppose, Mr. Hall, you're going to be married soon, too, and you're going
to have a nice good wife. Sooner or later you will be waiting for a cute nice
child, and then he will be born...
"Shut up," whispered Ernest. "Shut up, I beg you. So, Leonor...
Frau Heintz laughed bitterly.
"Oh, I'm lucky!" I was terribly lucky, because he was not born a
physical freak, as many children of Japanese mothers are born to this day.
But he was born without a heart. You understand what it is.
"You mean...
-Oh no. I don't mean the absence of the heart as an organ. But Leonor is
devoid of human feelings. His ugliness is in absolute intellectuality.
Neither joy nor joy is available to himre, neither regret, nor love. He is
only capable of thinking. Like a machine. Only to think. And when you
Americans discovered this, you bought him from me so that he could
invent a new, even more terrible bomb for you. When it explodes, there
will be many, many people like Leonor, including you in America, maybe
even your wife, Mr. Hall, and they, these new creatures, will despise you
as you despise monkeys.
-My god... My god...
For a few minutes Frau Heintz and Ernest Hall walked along the
drizzle-soaked sidewalks to the boulevard where Leonor's house was
located. Ernest walked lazily, listlessly, like a man completely devoid of
will. In his head, against the background of oppressive anguish, a thought
writhed like a snake, which he did not even try to stop. But as they
approached the house with the brightly lit windows above, this elusive
thought of Ernest Hall suddenly caught on a hook, spun in one place, and
swelled, filling the whole brain with a bright light. He grabbed the woman
by both hands and, stammering, could not say what he wanted for a long
time.
"What's the matter, Mr. Hall?" Frau Heintz asked softly.
"I beg you.
"What, Ernest?" She asked, and put her soft, warm hand to his cold
cheek.
"I beg you. Leonor is not afraid of anything... In a week of testing. His
bombs... He created a new fuse... Persuade him... In the name of millions
of people on Earth.
Silence. A long, painful silence. Near the house where Leonor lived, a
sentry walked slowly. He had looked suspiciously at a young American
boy and an elderly woman in old-fashioned clothes several times before.
Frau Heintz looked upstairs, where the windows were lit.
"Go to bed, my boy. Everything will be fine. I know my Leonor.
"I'll wait for you," whispered Ernest Hall.

97
 -You don't believe me? You'd better go and call your girlfriend. Tell
her that you are not afraid to marry her.

When the warhead of a missile with a monstrous nuclear charge fell

into the ocean from a height of seven and a half thousand meters, without
exploding, Leonor was sitting in a deck chair at the stern of the aircraft
carrier and reading a mathematical paper by Walterre. The failure was
instantly reported on the radio, and Leonor's head of testing, Brigadier
General Sovner, scientific consultant Edward Geller, and security
representative Smiles immediately ran to Leonor. As if rooted to the spot,
they stopped at the deck chair, not knowing where to start the
conversation, Leonor reluctantly looked up from the mathematical treatise
and directed his gaze into the blue sky, where huge snow-white seagulls
soared.
"Mr. Leonor—"
"Oh, you're here, Mr. Edward!" How is it going?
-Not good. The machine did not work.
Leonor furrowed his brows slightly and closed the magazine.
- Didn't work?
- There was no explosion.
Leonor stood up, looked at the crowd around him, and made a
disgusted face.
"So you have complete fools there.
"You installed the fuse, Mr. Leonor.
-Yes. But all the electronics of the last stage were not created by me!
- It was checked several dozen times.
Leonor threw the magazine aside in irritation.
- They checked, checked. It is necessary not to check, but to think.
However," he winked cheerfully, "the matter is fixable. With us, it
seems,Me, there are spare missiles.
-Eat.
"So we need to rearrange the warhead.
"But it fell to the bottom of the ocean...
"Then she must be pulled out.
The General, Geller, and Smiles exchanged glances.
"But... No one knows why the charge did not explode. And what if
when climbing on deck...
A smile appeared on Leonor's face. Without the slightest
embarrassment, he said:
"You miserable cowards. You are good at detonating bombs and
poisoning the atmosphere, but you are not capable of lifting a warhead
from a depth of fifty meters, Yet what a cowardly and vile people you are.

98
I want to spit.
The security official's right eyelid twitched, the general clenched his
fists, and Geller began to bite his lips furiously. Leonor leaned back and
began to laugh his artificial, artistic laughter.
"I'll look at you!" What a company! And the fate of humanity depends
on you. Simply amazing! Mr. Geller, once, when I did not know you
personally, it seemed to me that a truly learned man was a hero who was
not afraid to look death in the face. And it turns out that a cowardly soul is
hiding behind your knowledge!
Geller's face turned completely yellow, but he did not move.
"Talking to you, though, is like spitting in a puddle. It won't get dirtier.
Leonor stood up and began to pull on his trousers. Before that, he was
sitting in his underpants. After a few minutes of silence, he turned to the
general.
"What do you call it?" Will I soap my neck for failure? Steer your ship
to where the shell fell. I will go down to the bottom and make sure that its
rise is absolutely safe. Command, General.
The three wandered uncertainly along the deck of the carrier, looking
back at Leonor incredulously. And he, picking up the magazine, continued
to read the mathematical article as he went.
The carrier stopped a mile from where the shell fell. By order of the
head of the tests, almost all small and large vessels quickly left the crash
site. Only one small tugboat remained near the aircraft carrier.
Leonor parted with Walterre's mathematical work only when the
brigadier general came up to him and reported in an angry, hoarse voice:
"Everything is ready for the descent.
-Ok. Where is the mask and scuba gear?
He was given a mask and an air balloon was fitted on his back.
- What tool do you need? The brigadier general asked.
Leonor thought for a moment and said,
"A screwdriver." An ordinary screwdriver.
Before he got off the boat, a representative of the security authorities
approached him.
"Well, what if...
Leonor looked at him from head to foot.
"I can't stand it when fools and policemen poke their heads into
scientific and technical affairs.
Heller approached.
"Leonor, can I see you for a second?"
They stepped aside.
"Are you sure everything will be all right?"
"Everything will be as it should be. Aren't you convinced, Professor,

99
that I know how to find the right solutions?
-Convinced...
"Well, what are you asking?"
The boat unmoored from the aircraft carrier and went to the center of
the lagoon. The young military engineer who had been assigned to remove
the warhead was pale and was always trying to ask Leonor something. But
Smiles prevented this. Leonor noticed the engineer's attempts andwent to
him himself.
"Do you have a wife?" he asked.
He nodded his head.
"Where does she live?"
"Not far from here. On Aykes Island.
"When you have a son, name him Leonor."
The military engineer smiled faintly. A large wave hit the side of the
boat. Still smiling, the engineer wiped the drops of water on his face with
his sleeve.
-Why?
Leonor turned his gaze to the sea. It was blue and calm. It was empty all
around. Only in the east did the bright orange hulk of the aircraft carrier
freeze. On the deck of the tugboat, sailors rattled the chains of a small
crane, others unwound a steel cable.
"It's not deep here, only about eighty feet," said the military engineer.
His face turned completely pale. Apparently, he was at nuclear tests for
the first time.
Leonor thought for a moment, then said quietly,
"My mother is in Germany now. She is an amazing woman.
-Why?
"She's smarter than the rest of us. Do you know, lieutenant, when a man
is free?
The military engineer smiled. Oh, yes, of course he knew.
"No, you don't. A person is one hundred percent free when all people
on earth are free. Free from everything, and above all from fear.
"Yes, but...
Smiles walked up to them. Words about freedom were within his
competence.
"Get out," Leonor said with annoyance. - Let me talk to the person.
Smiles bared his huge white teeth.
"I can stop all this.
Leonor shrugged.
-You are welcome. Let one and a half billion dollars lie at the bottom of
the ocean. Hey, Captain!
"You misunderstood me, Mr. Leonor—"

100
 Smiles grinned again and stepped back to the side. The sailors who
were rolling out the cable pushed him on deck. Leonor leaned over to the
young engineer and spoke quickly,
"I'll hook this thing and you'll drag it straight to the carrier. Pull the
cable all the time so that it is in tension. When you feel that there is
nothing at its end, then go around the aircraft carrier from the west and
then go south at full speed. You will have no more than thirty minutes at
your disposal...
The engineer looked at Leonor with frightened eyes.
"I'm telling you this because I'm not sure of a happy outcome. I think
you're a good guy.
"I will definitely name my son after you," whispered the military
engineer.
The
dark green gloom on the ocean floor thickened as the warhead hooked
on the cable hook was dragged along the sandy bottom by the tugboat.
Clouds of silt reared up, and Leonor rode on the projectile as if on a
fantastic underwater animal. He drove on the sand for a few minutes, and
then the movement slowed down, and he realized that the boat had
stopped somewhere near the aircraft carrier. Then he unhooked the hook
from the nose ring of the projectile and noticed how, having soared up, the
cable began to run away from it somewhere to the side. In a few minutes,
the clouds of silt dissipated and a transparent blue-green haze settled at the
bottom.
How quiet and peaceful it was here! He only heard his heart pounding
and the exhaled air rushing out of the valve behind him with a slight
gurgle.
Leonor was in no hurry. He sat right on the sand next to his brainchild
and slowly ran a screwdriver along its body. Scientific Projectsproblems,
he thought, complex mathematical calculations... And yet they say
nothing about what his mother, Elsa, and Ernest Hall had so often told
him. Amazing creatures are people. They are so the same and so different.
There is Edward Geller, who is called a man. And there is Ernest Hall,
who is also called a man. And then there's this Smiles, the policeman, and
the brigadier general who's worried up there. But can we say that they are
all the same people? Or take his mother? It was she, a strange, amazing
teacher, who proved to him that life on Earth is not a technical problem.
That people can only be happy when there are no hydrogen bombs.
Leonor remembered his childhood, so unlike the childhood of his
peers, who laughed and cried, ran and jumped, played and quarreled. It
seemed silly to him. He didn't understand why it had to be this way until
his mother explained it to him.

101
 "You are not of this world, Leonor. You're not human. You don't have a
heart. People have always fought for freedom. Freedom is a life when you
want and can be happy.
- And how is it measured, this freedom, mother?
"Well, how can I tell you... Probably, complete freedom comes when
you are not afraid of anything and when no one constrains you in your best
aspirations. However, freedom is difficult to measure...
- I am used to calculating and measuring. In what units is your freedom
measured?
His mother laughed softly.
- At all times, people fought for freedom and died for it. Like a
beautiful fairy tale, freedom was offered by insidious rulers to enslave
people. In the name of freedom, kings and ministers, dictators and
pharaohs swore before the people. The word "freedom" was written on
state banners and in state documents. And she is still gone. It eludes us like
a ghost. Sometimes it seems to me that a person becomes free only when
he dies. But death is too much freedom, there is too much of it in death...
Leonor suddenly came to his senses.
"I'm beginning to understand something. Mechanics studies the free
fall of a body, the free oscillations of a pendulum. Free soaring of the
aircraft. Free atoms... No external forces interfere with the naturally
occurring process. Isn't this what it should be in human society?
"It's hard for me to compare, Leonor, because I don't know science.
Probably, there is something similar in your analogy. But for humans,
everything is much more complicated. For example, you, are you free, can
you do what you want?
- I do what I want. But I don't quite understand why what I'm doing
disgusts people.
He remembered a crowd of gloomy people with a plywood poster and
dozens of hateful eyes fixed on him...
- Simply because you are preparing suffering and death for people with
your work, with your work...
- But people still die sooner or later. And they probably really like to
fight and drop bombs on each other from time to time.
- No, they don't like to fight. Those who like to fight are those who
think that by dropping a bomb on others, they can avoid retribution.
"Stupid and strange!" And very illogical. If you are so determined to
live as long as possible, why do you set up research centers like the one I
work for?
That evening they talked for several hours, and until they regained
consciousness Leonora gradually began to grasp the monstrously
confusing, wild, logicless and meaningless idea that guided his patrons.

102
He understood with his mind what human happiness, and joy, and fear are,
and he had a very vague idea of freedom...
"Think of all I have told you, Leonor.
"All right, I'll think about it.
And so he sits at the bottom of a shallow lagoon, next to his creation,
thinking, thinking, trying to delve into the meaning of that complex and
intricate thing that is called the human soul, the human mind, and human
feelings. He subjects them to a thorough analysis, decomposes them into
component parts, puts them back together again, trying to find the causes
of complex and indistinct people, devoid of clear contours and forms of
behavior.
A school of fish slowly swam in front of him, which suddenly took off
and rushed somewhere upwards towards the light. The dark shadow of a
large predatory fish passed along the bottom.
"Probably, to people, I seem to be a predatory fish," he thought and
moved to the body of the shell.
The shell was small, only four meters long, with a hermetic sleeve on
the side, outlined in bright red paint. Here, in the greenish twilight, the red
square seemed completely black.
Leonor smiled and began to slowly unscrew the screws. He
remembered how, before installing the projectile on the last stage of the
rocket, he was instructed to the fuse, how he was left alone at the test site
and how he made sure that the explosion did not occur. Geller, General
Sovner, and other people were quite sure that he, Leonor, would never
understand the main content of human morality, that he could be trusted to
commit any terrible crime.
"They think I'm a robot, like the kind cyberneticists are thinking about
creating right now. Thinking machine. A freak with no feelings and
hypertrophied intelligence. But it is in this intellect that all the power lies.
An impartial analysis shows that I should not live among people. But
those who want such things to be created should not live either. If I am bad
because I have no human feelings, then they are bad because of the
abundance of base, bestial instincts. All of humanity is enclosed between
these two extreme limits. The right to true freedom has only those whose
feelings and reason are in balance. The rest must either be imprisoned or
destroyed."
Leonor unscrewed the last screw and lifted the bushing. Water poured
into the hole, and a fountain of air bubbles rose out of it. He bent very low
over the bushing and looked at the dimly shining nut. It howled from
stainless steel.
How quiet it was here! Leonora was overwhelmed by a deep,
all-encompassing peace. This was always the case when he managed to

103
solve a complex intricate problem.
"Of course, I have no right to exist. But so are they."
A flock of fish swam up again. This time they were frozen above
Leonor's head, and then he stood up and waved his hand and frightened
them away.
Then he sat down again on the body of the shell and estimated in his
mind what the consequences of the explosion would be. Everything will
happen in millionths of a second. Of course, nothing will remain of the
aircraft carrier. I wonder if the tugboat with this handsome young military
engineer will have time to get away. He was so afraid!
They are afraid of death. There is something in the structure of their
body that makes them avoid Death. Mother said that death is too much
freedom, much more than a person needs. Indeed, if freedom is something
that really exists, then what can be more free than atoms scattered in
infinite space?
Leonor looked at the chronometer. Thirty minutes had passed since he
had descended to the bottom of the ocean. If the military engineer in tow
correctly followed his instructions, then he is already out of danger. Of
course, he will shake violently. It would be very good if he named his son
Leonor. He wondered if his mother would understand, if Elsa would
guess, if Ernest would realize that he, Leonor, had done everything
deliberately, based on the most accurate and impartial analysis. Or will
they think that an accident has occurred? Will they understand that great
decisions concerning the fate of mankind can be reached not so much with
the heart as with a cold, sober mind? However, this does not matter now.
It's time to act, it's time.
He once again frightened off the flock of fish frozen above his head and
took up cutting a stainless steel nut. It was well lubricated and rotated
easily. It needs to be turned only seven to eight times until it fails, until the
end rests on the spring contact of the electric fuse relay. Turning the nut,
Leonor mentally counted the seconds. He suddenly felt something like
joyful excitement and whispered into the mask:
"Now I will be free. In just a few seconds."

104
 Shipwreck
Who says it's dangerous to go to the moon? No one? That's it! And if
there are those who think that a flight to the moon is too risky, let them ask
these two comrades who are now so energetically dealing with beer and
crayfish. Now, interrupting each other, they are telling a funny story of
their flight to the moon. True, they want to depict the matter as if
everything that happened to them is a topic for a humorous story.
For the sake of objectivity, let's say that this is not the case. I know for a
fact that after everything that happened, when they returned to Earth, they
were not laughing. However, every person has the right to conceal the true
origin of his personal experiences. And only an outsider and an objective
observer can make the right conclusion. Now, that's what we're doing.
Shamray, as well as Kostya Kruglov, got off, as they say, with a slight
fright, although the situation was not easy...
This one, on the left, a tall, lean blond, is Kostya Kruglov, our famous
interplanetary ace.
Of course, you remember that after the historic day of October 4, 1957,
when we launched the first artificial Earth satellite into orbit, and a month
later the second, with a dog, test, unmanned, and then manned flights to
the Moon soon began. So, the very first manned flight there was made by
Kostya. He still likes to remember his "miniature comfortable cuttlefish",
on which he first flew around the Moon and returned to Earth.
This "miniature cuttlefish" had a starting weight of eight hundred and
ten tons! Now it is an example of museum equipment.

Kostya is known in modern lunography as the author of the most

accurate maps of the side of the lunar surface that never turns towards the
Earth.
Yegor Shamray, as it is not difficult to guess, is Ukrainian by
nationality. His perseverance and perseverance are worthy of every
imitation. We will have to get acquainted with it in more detail later. His
specialty is star statistics. This is a branch of probability theory that deals
with the prediction of various phenomena in the stellar world. Egor has the
honor of predicting the appearance of new stars in our Galaxy. He
predicted as many as five of them, and the fifth is about to flare up in the
constellation Cassiopeia. It must be said that the new stars predicted by

105
him flare up as if on schedule. Astronomers can only point their telescopes
into the black void and wait.
But the fifth star had not yet had time to flare up, and Shamray
suddenly, for no reason at all, changed his specialty. It was transferred
from the stars to the Solar System.
Egor, as a result of some very complex reasoning and calculations,
came to the conclusion that all the planets that revolve around the Sun are
not our planets. Worse, he called them "stray" planets! A huge cosmic
body flies in the Universe, falls into the gravitational field of the Sun,
slows down, its orbit is curved, and here you are, a new planet has
"caught" on the Sun. Old theories say that there is a single planetary
family revolving around the sun, and Shamray proves that there is no more
kinship between these planets than between hatchery chickens!
In his theory of "stray" planets, Yegor went so far as to assert that the
moon had also strayed! Unlike the planets, it was captured by the Earth's
gravitational field.
This is a statement that has been published on a very high theoretical
basis in all astronomical journalslach mira, caused a heated discussion.
Yegor and his supporters were attacked by world-famous authorities in the
field of astronomy, astrophysics and geophysics. An International
Scientific Conference was convened. And there everyone suddenly
shouted: "Lead-uranium ratio!"
Do you know what it is?
The fact is that the radioactive element uranium, decaying, gradually
turns into a stable isotope - lead. If you take a sample of the soil and
establish exactly how much lead and how much uranium is in it, you can
find out how long the decay process lasted, that is, the age of this soil. If all
the planets of the solar system are one family, and if the moon also
belongs to this family, then the lead-uranium ratio should be
approximately the same for everyone. If this ratio is different on the Moon
than on Earth, then it has really strayed. This means that the dispute can be
resolved very simply: you need to fly to the Moon, take several samples of
lunar soil, bring them back to Earth, analyze, find the lead-uranium ratio
and compare it with terrestrial data.

Yegor decided to do all this work on his own.

No one seriously objected to Shamrai's trip, except for Kostya Kruglov.
The whole thing was complicated by the fact that Egor, to put it mildly,
loved to eat since childhood and this noticeably affected his complexion.
His weight - eighty-nine and three-tenths of a kilogram - belonged to the
category of clearly non-flying. In order to tear Yegor away from the Earth
and give him the necessary speed for a flight to the Moon, an extra fifty

106
tons of fuel would be required. The containers of modern lunar landers are
not designed for this. Yegor faced a gloomy prospect of losing nineteen
and three-tenths of a kilogram.
Anyone who has ever dealt with this problem seriously will understand
that such a catastrophic weight loss in itself can be compared to a flight to
Sirius. But, as mentioned above, Shamray would not have been Shamray
if he had not overcome obstacles and difficulties with such perseverance.
In any case, Yegor lost weight. On the eve of departure, he ate only
nettles infused with vinegar, two tablespoons three times a day. In the
evening, he drank a shot of fish oil and swallowed one pill of vitamin C in
glucose. That's all. When he was weighed, Kostya said that he had become
quite transportable and that he could eat as much as he wanted in the
lunoplane, because this would not increase the total weight of the ship.
They started at a favorable time, when the path from the Earth to the
Moon could be made in a day. According to the flight program, the rocket
reached a speed of 10 kilometers per second at an altitude of about 200
kilometers above the ground and then lay down on a flight trajectory. At
the end of the journey, Kostya was supposed to slip into lunar orbit and,
slowing down the rocket, land on the surface of our satellite. Usually he
did it with the grace of a ballerina.
In fact, now I can introduce myself to the reader. The fact is that I have
some, though very indirect, relation to this whole story. I work as an
operator at a radar observation point for space flights. As you know, now
there are several hundred such stations on Earth and they are operated by
operators-observers, including me.
You sit near a device that looks very much like a TV and watch a small
green dot slowly crawl across the dark screen. This is an electronic imagee
of the reflected pulse from the lunar spacecraft. The ship flies about four
hundred thousand kilometers, and the electronic bunny on the all-round
view screen crawls twenty centimeters during this time. By the position of
these bunnies on the radars of various observation stations, it is possible to
determine the position of the ship in space very accurately.
Of course, watching this bunny is the most boring thing to do. Usually
you are on duty with your shift and doze off to the sounds of thin telegraph
messages: "BBE". It is from the ship that the automatic radio reports that it
is working and that everything is in order on the lunoplane.
So it was on the night when Kostya Kruglov and Yegor Shamray went
to the Moon to clarify the lead-uranium ratio in order to confirm or refute
the theory of stray planets.
Imagine my state when, once again touching my nose on the table, I
suddenly felt that the BBC had stopped. I raised my head, looked at the
radar screen and could not believe my eyes. Damn, I must be dreaming

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about it! Instead of one rocket, there were somehow two between the
Earth and the Moon! On the oscilloscope screen, two green spots slowly
but noticeably crept in the direction of the Moon at different speeds!
At this time, the phone on my desk crackled furiously...
But let's listen to our travelers. They will be better able to tell what
happened.
This happened shortly after the lunar spacecraft lay down on the
passive section of the trajectory, three hours after the launch. Amused by
the state of weightlessness, which, according to eyewitnesses, can be used
to in a few tens of minutes, Kostya and Egor sat down to dinner. It was at
this moment that Kostya said:

"Let's finish the boiled pork and spacesuits.

"Spacesuits?" Yegor was surprised. "What is this?"
— In accordance with the instructions. Just in case. And what if it
comes in handy.
"I don't understand, Comrade Kruglov. Kostya finished his sandwich
and explained:
"The fact is, dear Comrade Shamray, that now we are going to cross a
section of space where, as scientists say, a noticeable number of all sorts
of meteors hang out. By the way, you can see for yourself. Look at the
reading of a piezoelectric counter of solid cosmic particles. Look, now the
number of particles weighing one hundredth of a milligram falls on each
square meter of the ship in the amount of ten pieces per second. And the
arrow is crawling up. There are already twelve, fifteen of them...
"Yes, but such particles will not penetrate even an ordinary tin can, let
alone the hull of a ship.
"That's right," Kostya confirmed, "but larger particles are also possible,
and even pieces of several kilograms.
— Well, you know, the probability of such collisions is almost zero.
"That's why I'll have to put on spacesuits," the ship's commander said
peremptorily and "swam" to a small cabinet in the cockpit wall.
Helping Egor to get into the multi-layer plastic alloy case, Kostya
explained:
"Here, on your chest, is the control panel. This knob is the adjustment
of internal pressure, this is heating, this is oxygen, this is a racket...
"Why a racket?" Yegor was surprised.
"Just in case." And what if I have to do some maneuvers, there..." At
these words, Kostya nodded to the side and winked slyly.
"Nonsense!" If something like this happens, it's better not to have a
racket in the back, And two kilograms of dynamite. It would have been
faster that way...

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 "Ay-ay, dear comrade! And this is what you say, a man who considers
the Cosmos to be his element!
Kostya shook his head reproachfully. Then he put a cap made of
transparent material on the scientist's head and tucked in all the seals.
Yegor turned on the oxygen and pressure. A minute later, Kostya also put
on a spacesuit.
After that, Kostya returned to the dashboard and radioed something to
Earth. Then he began to examine the electronic indicator of the ship's
position. And Egor, having climbed up to the ceiling of the cabin, decided
to take a nap.
The cockpit was flooded with a bright electric light. Yegor's ears heard
only the ticking of the clock at his chin and the faint buzz of a small motor
in the backpack on his back. There was a regeneration of the carbon
dioxide exhaled by him. According to the instructions, they had to stay in
spacesuits for two hours. Kostya noticed that piezoelectric meters
registered very intense dust outside, in space.
And so, at the moment when the prescribed two hours were almost up,
suddenly tr-r-r-r-r-r!
Actually, there was no "". It's just that Yegor woke up from the fact that
he was shaken violently. Opening his eyes, to his amazement, instead of
the familiar cockpit and Kostya at the dashboard, he saw... The sun, the
earth, and the moon, all three at once, and between them, and around
them, a black sky dotted with myriads of unblinking stars. He turned his
head and noticed to his left a motionless mass, shining in the rays of the
Sun, resembling a moonplane in section. And then there is a second,
almost identical piece of the lunar plane.
The rocket split into two halves like a dried shell!
The second half of the ship was moving away from him quite quickly,
while the first half seemed to be frozen nearby.

"That's the number," Yegor thought and instinctively stepped towards

his half. But his legs dangled senselessly in the void, and he did not move.
The feeling that he could not control himself made him feel cold inside.
He noticed that the second half of the ship, where Kostya had apparently
stayed, was now shining in the rays of the Sun as a barely noticeable star.
The moon hung motionless overhead. The Earth is on the left, the Sun is
right in front of your eyes. Everything is frozen in this vast ocean of space.
All movement disappeared...
Yegor noted to himself that, generally speaking, hanging in the world
space is not so scary. The fact is that there is neither top nor bottom here. All
directions were the same, and therefore, as he put it, "there was nowhere to
fall." Actually, of course, he fell somewhere, but he did not feel it.

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 How often did he repeat to his students on Earth the well-known thesis
of mechanics that in free space it is impossible by any means to determine
the state of uniform and rectilinear motion. And yet he did not assume that
movement in free space was so "imperceptible!" And in relation to the
Earth, its speed was about eleven kilometers per second.
The thought made his stomach ache even more, and he looked
longingly at the wreckage of the lunar ship, which stood motionless, as if
on an invisible pedestal, ten paces away from him.
Then Yegor began to look with despondency at such an unusual and
majestic sky above him, below him, from all sides. It was a huge black
ball, illuminated by stars and three other cosmic bodies, so dear to him and
acquaintances. The Earth was the largest in size. It was brightly lit by the
Sun on the right and resembled a huge moon in its second quarter.
However, its surface shone with a uniform blue glow and nothing could be
seen on it. Above it was the chipped moon - a young moon, for which
more than one couple in love now sighed on the dark half of the Earth.
And between them is the Sun, blazing with a dazzling flame.
He easily recognized all the constellations and stars in the sky, and he
saw them in both hemispheres at once, because nothing prevented him
from looking in all directions of the universe. Ursa Major and the
Southern Cross, Cepheus and Peacock shone equally brightly above and
below him. The Milky Way entwined the Universe with a silvery belt.
Yegor found the constellation Cassiopeia to his right and remembered
the star he had predicted, which was to flare up there soon. "Can't I be able
to look at her," he thought sadly.
He tried again to approach the fragment of the moonlifter, and again to
no avail. Moreover, it seemed to him that the shard was slowly moving
away from him. "Probably, when colliding with the meteor, there was a
small impulse to the side," Yegor understood.
The thought that he would soon be completely alone in this vast and
bottomless universe made him sick. And then he remembered the rocket,
with the help of which he can make some movements.
His first thought was to catch up with Kostya. But he immediately
refused to do so because he lost sight of the other half of the ship. Then he
decided to approach his shard.
He pressed the trigger handle on his chest, something hissed on his
back, and he instantly rose above the wreckage of the lunar spacecraft and
began to quickly move up from it. He took his hand off the trigger lever,
but the movement continued by inertia. "Damn it, I'm not going to stop
now and I'm going to keep getting away from the shrapnel farther and
farther away. How to Operate That Damn Racket?.."
Only now did Yegor notice inside the spacesuit, right at the place where

110
the head cap was attached, a small sign on which greenish letters glowed.
He quickly read: "Oxygen supply is 12 hours, heating is 12 hours. A racket
is an equivalent impulse of two hundred kilogram meters. Movement
control is in the direction of the outstretched right arm."
After reading this instruction, Yegor again pressed the launch lever of
the racket with his left hand and stretched out his right hand in the
direction of the fragment of the ship that had floated far away from him.
To his great satisfaction, he began to approach it quickly, and soon found
himself inside it. My heart felt lighter.
He stood on the floor of what used to be the cockpit of the moonship for
several minutes, holding on to the edge of the wall. He was surprised that
the ship split in a fairly regular line. The rocket plane was as if sawn in half
along the meridian, and only at a height of about twenty centimeters from
the floor there was a gaping shapeless hole made by a meteor. Putting his
hand into this hole, Yegor carefully lowered himself to the edge of the
floor and dangled his legs into the void.

When he looked up, he noticed that the chipped moon had noticeably
increased in size. He realized that all this time he had been flying at great
speed in the direction of the moon and, apparently, he would inevitably
fall on it.
"If you crash, then with your head to the Earth," he decided. After that,
he moved to the ceiling of the rocket and sat on it, with his feet to the
moon. He didn't care.
So he sat for a long time, examining the majesticand silent outer space.
The silence was broken only by the ticking of the clock right at his chin
and the slight buzz of the engine pushing air through the chemical
regeneration devices.
While Shamray sat on the ceiling of what was left of the moonlifter, and,
with his head turned to the Earth, abstractly, almost philosophically,
examined the Universe around him, the following was happening on Earth.
As I said, the moment I found two rockets on the oscilloscope screen
instead of one, the phone rang on my desk. I grabbed the phone and
immediately heard the loud voice of my boss, the head of the first lunar
route, Nikolai Andreevich Dragin.
"What do you see on the screen?!" He shouted in a way that made my
ears ring.
"Two missiles," I answered, still not believing my eyes.
- Double the radiation power of the locator. Switch to centimeter
wavelengths. Turn on the automatic recording unit for the speed and
acceleration of both bodies. You will work in a three-coordinate group
together with the Kamchatka and East Siberian stations. In a few minutes,

111
you will have to relay all the observation data on the band of one thousand
two hundred to one thousand two hundred and ten megahertz to the
emergency high-speed lunar spacecraft LAS-11. Wait for further orders!
The voice in the receiver stopped.
I doubled the power of the station's radiation, switched to shorter
wavelengths, and stretched the sweep horizontally. The green bunnies
became very bright and distanced from each other at a greater distance. On
the screen of the two-beam tube of the differentiating unit, one could see
the value of the speed and acceleration of both missiles. I was struck by
the great value of the velocities of these two bodies, which were
incomprehensible in their origin, and the magnitude of the acceleration of
each of them towards the moon slowly but noticeably increased. What
happened there?
At this time, the phone rang again. This time my station was called by
Kamchatka.
- Radio the coordinates, velocity and acceleration of both fragments in
Simeiz. Information processing and trajectory elements will be worked
out over the entire sum of data there. The work will be duplicated at the
Indonesian Space Navigation Center!
"What does all this mean?" What shards? I hurriedly asked my friend in
Kamchatka.
"How, don't you know?" The moonboat collided with the meteor and
split in half,
"In a lam!" "And the people, what has become of the people?"
"That remains to be seen. There is no connection with them. It is known
that before the shipwreck they put on spacesuits...
"What's the point of that?" There was no answer.
I turned on the Moscow-Simeiz radio relay line and connected all the
measuring instruments to it. When a calm female voice told me from the
Simeiz Computing Center that they were receiving observations of my
station of satisfactory quality, I stared at the instrument screens, clenched
my head in my hands, and mentally tried to imagine what had happened.
At this time, Dragin himself burst into the control room.
"Get ready to rebroadcast." Now LAS-11 is taking off.
"Where?" I asked.
Save people!
"Do you think that after such a collision it is possible to say...
"Don't talk nonsense! He shouted, "We have accurate information that
they were in spacesuits before the disaster.
"So what. If the lunar spacecraft split, then some spacesuits...
"You know what you're saying!" After all, the moonship split correctly!
It had to split just like that!

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 I stared at the chief, not understanding anything.
"The design of the lunar spacecraft and the entire strength calculation
are made in such a way that when it collides with a large meteor, it must
necessarily split into two equal parts, and the direction of the meteor's
movement must lie in the plane of the split. This is what is needed to save
people. If our moonplanes in such cases scattered into fragments like a
broken bottle, then instead of two tracks on the radar screen, you would
now see dozens. The likelihood of injuring people would have increased
enormously. And so we are almost sure that they are unharmed...
"Almost," I said despondently, "we always say 'almost'...
"But you must understand, if the probability of a collision of a lunar
spacecraft with a meteor is negligible, then the probability of the same
meteor hitting one of the passengers is even less, and both at once are
almost zero.
"Almost" again...
"Well," Dragin said with undisguised malice, "I don't have time to
lecture you on the theory of probability now. Only you must understand
that we have no right and will never scatter our people in outer space.
Trouble has happened - they need to be rescued.
"Try to find them there, in the Cosmos. It's like a needle in a haystack,"
I muttered.
It is in free space that it is easier to find a person than on Earth. Radio
waves propagate there without scattering, without unnecessary
reflections, without interference. The signal-to-noise ratio is optimal.
Only there can you observe the location picture in its pure form. Would
you try to use this radar to detect a couple of such insignificant fragments
on the ground? Damn it! And here, as you can see, as in a mirror! Dragin
pointed his finger at the all-round view screen.
At this time, another bright green electronic bunny crawled out from
the left corner of the screen. A rescue spacecraft was entering orbit. A
speed image appeared on the differentiator.
"Aha, let's go!" The chief exclaimed, looking at the differentiator.
"Seven, eight, ten, eleven, eleven and a half, great!"
I looked at him and shrugged my shoulders. What is there to be happy
about? The lunar spacecraft that crashed has almost the same speed.
"No chance of catching up with the victims," I said, looking straight
into Dragin's eyes, "they will fall to the Moon before the LAS is halfway
from the Earth to the Moon.
Dragin first blushed, and then sat down in an armchair and slowly,
without haste, lit a cigarette. All this time he did not take his eyes off me.
Then he spoke in a sinister and very calm voice.
"I have the impression that you fell from the moon,

113
 "I've never been there and I'm not going there.
"So much the better," he said, and without waiting for my protest, he
said: "The fact is, my dear, that our travelers will never, you know, ever
fall on the moon.
"And where, to Mars?" "After all, as far as I know, they were flying to
the moon.
— Yes. But can you imagine how they flew?
To be honest, I had a very vague idea of this.
"Do you know why instead of ten hours of flight, our moonships spend
twenty or more?" Don't know? Simply because, for the purpose of flight
safety,Assy is not chosen the trajectory of a direct hit on the Moon, but a
flyby, you know, fly-by trajectory. This means that if the ship does not
make any additional maneuvers, then, moving along this trajectory, it will
fly around the Moon at a distance of about 60 thousand kilometers and
return to Earth.
— Do you mean that a flyby trajectory is one that encompasses the
Earth and the Moon and nowhere approaches them at the collision
distance? "
That's right, it's a closed curve that encompasses the Earth and the
Moon. And if our ships had not made any additional maneuvers near the
Moon, they would never have landed on its surface. They would
temporarily become socialized satellites of the Earth and the Moon.

"Great," I smiled. "So, then, our victims just have to be removed from
the out-of-control carousel?"
— Absolutely. And remove them for as long as they have a supply of
oxygen and heat. This is what LAS-11 will do.
They called from Simeiz and reported that the elements of the
fragmentation trajectory were continuously transmitted to the LAS-11.
Then a radiogram came from the commander of the rescue ship, where it
was said that he could see the fragments well. My radar data was relayed
to the LAS. This made it easier for him to orient himself and adjust his
flight: on his radar, the commander of the LAS saw the position of not
only the fragments, but also his own.
In the morning, my station stopped working because the Earth turned to
the Moon with the opposite side. However, I did not leave the phone, waiting
for the messages of my comrades from the opposite side of the Earth. When
the Sun rose, it was reported from Rio de Janeiro that LAS-11 had met with
the first fragment and picked up a man. It was Kostya Kruglov. Forty minutes
later, a message was received about the rescue of Shamrai. When he was
dragged into the rescue lunar lander, he was asleep. He had oxygen and
electricity for another two and a half hours.

114
 Then the story lost its tension. The LAS lay drifting around the moon,
waiting for fuel. It was sent to him on unmanned tankers, and he returned
to Earth fifty hours after departure.
Before putting an end to it, it makes sense to recall the theory of
probability once again. After all that had happened, I thought a lot about
this science and came to the conclusion that it does not claim to be a
reliable prediction of events. It only talks about what events are possible
and how often they can be expected. Based on this, scientists, engineers
and designers are developing such means for space flights that would
provide maximum safety for passengers. That lunar ships and the entire
system of navigation and rescue are effective is eloquently evidenced by
the whole story told here.
And Kostya Kruglov and Yegor Shamray are now sitting at a table,
finishing their beer and animatedly discussing the plan for the next flight
to the Moon. In the end, it is necessary to decide once and for all whether
the moon has strayed to us or not.
"By the way," says Kostya, "these rescue suits need to be equipped with
radiotelephone communication in order to listen to music from Earth and
be able to exchange a couple of words with a friend who can be carried
two or three tens of thousands of kilometers aside. It will not be so boring
to while away the time in Space.

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 "Ludwig"
"Passengers traveling to the moon on flight two zero seven should take
their seats in the roller skater. The car leaves for the launch of the
spacecraft in five minutes.
The announcement was repeated three times. Olga looked into my eyes.
"Come on, Vlado!" Be a little more fun!
Her face beamed with joy. It just emitted light. I gripped her hand
tightly and looked over her shoulder at the green horizon where the silvery
bulk of the ship towered. His sharp nose was turned directly to the Sun,
and it seemed strange that it was at noon that he went to the Moon...
"Will we remain friends?" Olga asked. I nodded.
"Well done, Vlado. Good bye.
"Say hello to Georgy," I said.

Smiling, she walked down the steps to the platform where the blue
roller stood.
Roller rolled off to the rocket track, and I continued to stand still,
looking at the silvery hulk.
"All right," I said, "I'll go..."
None of my comrades tried to stop me. Everything was clear to
everyone, at least they thought so. Already on the upper terrace of the park
I felt the air shudder, the roar of the mighty engines rolling in wide, elastic
waves in all directions. I stopped and looked at the green horizon. The low
lime trees threw their crowns away from the center of the launch pad, and
the silvery cigar swayed in clouds of black smoke and began to rise
upwards. A moment later, a high-pitched screech cut through the hot air,
and the spacecraft disappeared into the dazzling blue sky.
… I love this road. Once it seemed to me that there was no end to it, just
as there is no end to human happiness. Young lime trees grew on its
roadside, and then hills began, gentle, rounded, as if giant balls had once
been placed here and over the centuries they sank deeper and deeper into
the ground.
I love this road, I have wandered along it many times - when, as today,
birds flew over it in the sun's rays, and when the autumn rain drummed on
the hood of my raincoat, and when a crowd of boys came out from behind
the hills and diligently knocked their skis on the asphalt to knock down the
snow...

116
 A bus rushed past me, and someone, probably Galya Voin, sticking his
head out of the window, shouted:
"Vlado, don't get lost!
… The first time, when Olya and I went to the cosmodrome, she asked
incredulously:
"Do you know where this road leads?"
She had no idea that I had gone through it hundreds of times. Then we
often walked along it together. And one night we turned off the asphalt to
the side and went out to the Big Lake, in which the moon was reflected.
I will never forget that night.
"When your heart is sad, go to people." I don't remember who said it,
but it takes a really sad heart to understand the truth of these words.
In the laboratory, Hermann Sonnelgardt literally attacked me.
"They want to break up the Ludwig. You must intervene immediately,"
he said hurriedly, fiddling with the side of my jacket.
–What for? – I was surprised.
– Ask them, these eccentrics from the VC.
"Don't let them break the Ludwig, Vlado Andreevich," the girls begged
piteously. "If they need to install a new car, they can allocate a room on
the thirteenth floor for this. There, in one classroom, for a year now, there
has been an archive that was rewritten into cylinders a long time ago.
I knew that I would not be able to save the Ludwig, butI still went to the
head of the computer center. He greeted me with a sly smile.
"Sit down, Vlado, and let's pretend that we are discussing the fate of the
Ludwig." How did Olga fly away?
"Okay," I replied and tried to smile. "And yet, can't he be left where he
is?"
"What are you talking about, Vlado Andreyevich! He spread his hands
in surprise. "It's so old. Only half a million operations per second. Yes,
they will laugh at us when they find out that we have such a museum
exhibit.
"The machine has a good memory and rich notes," I tried to object.
"But it's almost a hundred years old, and it was once made almost by
hand to train calculators and programmers. Touch it and it will fall apart.
Her scheme has been supplemented for decades, and now she has turned
into a clumsy ugly monster, to which all sorts of blocks, decoders, and so
on are attached here and there. What am I telling you, you know it
yourself.
I sighed.
"So we're going to break it?"
–Of course.
I left the office. Herman saw me off. He praised the old car, still hoping

117
that it could be preserved.
"By the way, do you know why the car is called Ludwig?" Herman
stopped, thought for a moment and then answered:
"You know, Vlado, I know one thing: it has been called this way for at
least seventy years. In the library, I came across an old work made on the
Ludwig in 1975. Even then, the car had a name.
I did not notice how the computing center was empty, how the windows
darkened and the daylight panels lit up. I opened the window and looked
at where the residential buildings ended and the hilly field began. The
moon hung very low above the horizon, and it was a little scary that it
seemed as if Olga had flown somewhere completely different.
The green hills outside the city were covered with a gray mist. It was
very quiet.
"Well, Ludwig, we were left alone," I muttered, approaching the old
car.
A red neon light burned on the scratched remote control, which meant
that the car's memory was on and that it continued to absorb everything
people said and did around it.
–Silent? For a hundred years, you have not been taught to speak.
Maybe because you are dumb, I feel good with you now. Sometimes you
want so much that no one interrupts.
The gray struts of the car were covered with dust, the insulation on the
cables turned black, the adapters were rusted. I felt even sadder.
It was here, at this adder, that I met Olga for the first time. Then she
said to me:
"I thought that you did not have a car, but a fantasy. What's it? It looks
like drying boxes. And what is it?
"This is her memory.
"Well, you know! If your car's memory looks like this...
"Memory is not judged by its appearance," I objected.
I love everything beautiful. Can you help me?
Olga worked at the Institute of Biometrics. That brought her to me.
"With such a memory, it will probably take ten years to calculate," she
grumbled as I typed her problem program on the keyboard. "And
Professor Pavlov demands that we have the answer the day after
tomorrow."
"That's the answer," I said, handing her a sign with numbers.
Olga looked at me suspiciously.
–Are you joking!
–Not at all. Check it out for yourself. By the way, here is the schedule.
On The entire ecology of your algae kingdom is in full view. Ludwig
emphasized the point of equilibrium with red ink. He is very polite, our

118
Ludwig, even when he is spoken of disrespectfully.
Olga was a little embarrassed and looked guiltily at the memory box.
From that evening we began to date. The road to the cosmodrome was a
favorite place for our walks. Impatient, lively, Olga did not maintain a
calm rhythm of walking for long.
"Vladko, I'm tired of walking," she used to say. "Let's run."
And we ran along the asphalt road in a race, until finally one of us
lagged behind, most often me.
She teased me. – Vlado, is it true that with the help of a machine you
can find out what is going on in a person's soul?
– Probably, it is possible. Just don't.
"And I would very much like to know what is going on in your soul."
I was very embarrassed.
"However, I can guess what's wrong with you even without a car!"
"If you guess, you'd better not tell me.
Once Olga did not come for several days, and when she came, she was
sad and thoughtful.
"What's wrong with you, Olya?" "
Ask Ludwig." He knows everything about you.
She grinned sadly. We joined hands and walked to the cosmodrome
and back.
– How long does it take for a rocket to fly to the Moon? she asked.
– Depending on the track. Twenty-five to thirty hours.
–How long.
The next day it was difficult to recognize her: joyful, she endlessly
shook me, laughed, joked.
"Vlado, let's go dancing." I want to dance tonight. All night! Until the
morning!
But we didn't dance until the morning. The hall of the youth café had
just begun to fill with people, when suddenly Olga grabbed my hand and
pointed to the window.
–Take a look! What a miracle on the street. Let's go on our way.
Indeed, it was a miracle. Silence fell behind the green hills. The air was
saturated with the smell of hot field grasses and damp earth, and the
moonlight sky had sunk low. It was only a few steps to climb the hill, and
it seemed that you could touch the edge of the shining cloud with your
hand.
"Let's go to the field," she whispered.
Everything was like in a dream, and I don't remember how we ended up
on the shore of the Big Lake. On the west side, where the water stadium
was, music could be heard, but here the shore was completely wild, and
only a narrow concrete bridge among the tall reeds reminded that someone

119
had made sure that it was possible to walk through the lake jungle. For
several minutes we walked among the thickets. Then we found ourselves
at the very edge of the bridge, almost in the middle of the lake.
"Look, Vlado, there she is!" Olga shouted, pointing to the reflection of
the Moon in the slightly agitated water. "How do I want to go there..
"I want to tell you, Olya...
"Don't, Vlado. Tomorrow I'm leaving. I love one person very much.
His name is George... You know him. And he's there," she pointed to the
moon.
We walked back in silence, and I was afraid to look into her eyes. I
wanted the clouds to cover the moon.
Saying goodbye, Olga held my hand in hers.
"Forgive me, Vlado. I should have told you about it earlier. Forgive me.
You're such a good, loyal friend, and I'm so stupid...
… I didn't say a word about it to anyone. Tolkabout you, "Ludwig", and
then only because soon you will be gone...
A week after Olga's departure, Seryozhka ran to my laboratory, out of
breath.
"Vlado, prepare poems!"
"Which ones, to whom?"
"The best, for the man in the sky.
"I don't understand anything.
–Oddball. Tomorrow is the centenary of the discovery of the
Earth-Moon route. Gala evenings, folk holidays, festivities, and so on.
And in addition, radio communication with the Moon.
I shuddered.
"Don't you want to talk to Olga?"
I shrugged my shoulders, not knowing what to say.
"You're kind of strange, Vlado, honestly. However, as you know. Just
for a conversation, you need to come between seven and nine in the
evening to the Space Communications Office, seventh floor, room seven
hundred. I've reserved five minutes for you.
I walked around the room for a while, wondering what to do. What to
do, what to do?
"What should I do, Ludwig?" I asked the old car.
Of course, I must tell Olga what was not said. But how? In what words?
"I love Olga, Ludwig!" How do I tell her about it?...
… I went to the control panel and turned the knob of the extreme
search. Then I turned on the self-programming system and all the memory
of the machine. The Ludwig hummed, as if informing me that he was
ready to carry out any task.
A row of black keys with half-erased inscriptions: "Diff. equalized.",

120
"Integr.", "Economy. Tasks", "Industry". I found the word least worn out
by time and pressed the key...
"The old man works slowly, very slowly," I thought, looking at the
motionless drum. At last it began to move.
When the next day I handed a small coil of wire to the operator girl, she
was surprised.
"Won't you talk?"
–No.
"Who should I give it to?"
– To Olga Alyokhina, biophysical base.
The girl inserted the coil into the turntable and bent over the
microphone.
"We call the biophysical base, Olga Alyokhina.
There was a rustle in all the speakers in the waiting room, and then
there was a voice that sounded loud, like in a huge empty hall:
"Her last name is no longer Alyokhina, but Kareno. Now she is in the
crater of Copernicus, in the apartment of her husband George Careno. Are
you going to talk?
I shook my head furiously. The cameraman said:
"There is a recording for Olga Kareno. Turn on the apartment. Hello,
Olga Careno, hello...
"Yes, I'm listening!"
And I heard music. Everyone who was here heard her. It was an old
piano piece. The melody flowed, extremely clear, sincere, and the chords
created an amazing shimmering background, which, if you closed your
eyes, turned into moonlight. It was a soft, sad play... The warmth of Olga's
hand, the rustle of reeds, the boat rocking in the water... The chords were
hidden behind the ligature of the main theme, and then imperiously moved
forward, asserting strength and might. It was like that for a long time, for
an eternity. And then the music stopped.
The operator girl shook up and said quickly:
"Let's move on to the next correspondence...
But I didn't hear anything. I walked quickly along the corridor, and next
to me walked an elderly, completely gray-haired man.
"Well contrived, young man!" He said suddenly.
I'm stayinglooked at him inquiringly.
"And what kind of music is this?"
–You don't know?
I was embarrassed. How do I know! After all, this letter was invented
by "Ludwig"!
"Young man," my fellow traveler said, "this is the first movement of a
sonata in C-sharp minor, written at the beginning of the nineteenth century

121
by the brilliant composer Ludwig van Beethoven. Sometimes this piece is
called the Moonlight Sonata.
And then I ran. I ran across the city to the computer center. I ran into
passers-by, made my way through crowds of festive people, escaped from
the hands of dancers in the streets and squares, jumped into buses and,
completely exhausted, flew to the tenth floor in the elevator. I threw open
the door of my laboratory wide and stopped dead in my tracks. On the
place where the Ludwig used to stand, there was a structure made of shiny
metal and plastics...

122
 A Jaar Without Sticker
I remember this funny story well. The worm has developed a
conditioned reflex to contract under the influence of light. After that, it
was ground in a mortar. The resulting mucus was devoured by another
worm that had no reflexes. And they appeared. The science acquired by
the victim was transmitted to the cannibal through the stomach!
Yes, I remember this sensational story among biologists well. Not a
story, but just a curious experiment, a kind of tiny scientific anecdote, a
laboratory trick, like the discovery of the fission of the uranium-235
nucleus.
"Well, what's next?" I asked.
The professor had an expression of dispassionate academic inspiration
on his face.
— Do you feel a hint of the chemical nature of memory? There have
always been many misunderstandings with the memory of living beings.
No one knew where she was. They stubbornly searched for her and now
they found her. I found...
"Where?"
"Here...
The device resembled an electrolytic bath connected to a generator.
The bathtub was filled with a cloudy liquid.
"In vitro memory cells, which are basically an ordinary Benzer cell.
I didn't know who Benzer was or what his cell was.
— Now many people are engaged in artificial biosynthesis of proteins.
If you put a solution of ribonucleic acid and ribosomes in the bath, you can
get any proteins. Their structure is recorded in the RNA molecule...
I remembered the magazine "Hobby". Something was written about it
there...
— Figuratively, it can be imagined as follows. There used to be a
gramophone recording on a record. In sound films, optical recording is
used. There is a magnetic one on the tape. Nature records information on
the RNA molecule. It is thin and long, like a spider's web. Do you
understand?
I understood. Vaguely. Not in details, but in principle.
"The brain receives impulse signals from the outside world. Impulses
burst into a nerve cell filled with RNA. The chemical structure of RNA

123
changes, something analogous to sound recording. This is the material
trace of memory!
Indeed, how monstrously simple!
"So that worm ate the sound recording along with the body of its
brother?"
— Absolutely!
The professor seemed detached from all earthly things. Science, only
science!
"In this device, I record signals on RNA molecules.
He selflessly spoke about the structure of an electronic device that
encodes sound in the same way as a human hearing aid.
"That's it! The professor finished his story. But I knew this was just the
beginning!
It always starts with a trifle. From some worm, or molecule, or nucleus.
The scale of the object does not mean anything.
Jars made of yellow glass, with lapped glass stoppers. They stand side
by side, like books on a library shelf, like the complete works of the same
author. All in the same cover are yellow. And the headlines are on white
stickers.
The first jar that I mechanically pulled out of the cupboard read:
"Euclid's Beginnings." I put it back in its place and pulled out the second
one. "Thomas More. Utopia". The third jar was filled with "Shagreen
leather"...
"You have a strange taste," I muttered in confusion.
The professor remarked hurriedly. — My business is RNA.
"And a lot of this is needed to...
"One half-liter jar is enough for all of humanity!" Economical
recording, isn't it?
"Very... Maybe too muchohm...
An idiotic picture arose in my mind.
Pharmacy. In the manual department there are hundreds of such cans
on the shelves. I come and ask: "Do you have Goethe?" - "No, but..." - The
pharmacist mysteriously looks around. She is an acquaintance of mine,
sometimes she dispenses sleeping pills without a prescription. "But we got
some Agatha Christie yesterday..." — "Give me fifty grams." I hurriedly
thrust the money into her hands and run away with a bottle.
— Does it work? I forced the question out of myself.
The professor nodded his head enthusiastically. He was detached from
all earthly things.
— Who did you test on?
"Dogs as usual," he whispered.
"A trifling operation," the professor explained. – Injection into the

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carotid artery. Then, with the blood flow, RNA enters the brain...
Have you ever seen talking dogs? This is a disgusting, unnatural sight.
Especially the language! In dogs, it is long and thin, which makes it very
difficult for them to articulately express their thoughts. When we
appeared, the dog Comte said:
"Many people believe that eating meat contributes to the appearance of
atherosclerosis. This is also wrong...
The professor was waiting for enthusiastic exclamations from me. But I
was silent. I remembered that I had always had trouble with a foreign
language. Can't you take advantage of your acquaintance and beg him for
five grams of English?
Comte licked his lips and added:
"Werner was standing in the vestibule. In his pocket was a diploma he
had just received... For more information, call ALD 3-12-15. Manuscripts
are not returned...
"Delightful, isn't it?" The professor asked and patted Comte on the
back.
"The Admiral went on, heading east. On the way, I met a fish the size of
a medium-sized whale...
"Where is that from?" I asked Comte.
The dog wagged his plush tailless backside.
"Dark hydrogen flocculae are one of the most outstanding features of
the spectrogeliograms of the solar disk... The chemist, on the other hand,
perceives the confusion...
The professor answered me for Comte.
"You see," he took a yellow jar from the table without a sticker.
"Anything was poured here...
The professor was detached from everything earthly. He didn't care
about the fact that anything was poured into the jar.
I looked Comte straight in the eye. They were very sad. He seemed to
guess what I thought of him, and wanted to say something. Oh, he just
wanted to bark, in his own way, in a simple, sincere, doggy way.
Alas! He did not have a single thought of his own...

125
 White Crow
Soon after the war, I worked as a radiologist in one of the clinics in
Moscow, and lived outside the city in a small wooden house with my
six-year-old daughter Ira and my grandmother, the mother of my wife,
who died in the last days of the war. From the railway platform to my
accommodation it was necessary to walk about three kilometers in the
field. Returning late one evening, I noticed two black moving lumps on
the path. The frost was strong, at least thirty-five degrees.
I illuminated the lumps with an electric flashlight. They were birds, two
common crows, which had apparently been knocked to the ground by a
gust of biting frosty wind. When I picked them up, they shook up, wanted
to croak, but nothing came out of their throats, except for a whistling hiss.
They are completely frozen in my pocket.
At home, I put the crows in the toy crib where my daughter's doll slept,
hoping that they would go away during the night.
In the morning I found that the crows were still lying in the crib without
signs of life, and that Ira was already fiddling with them.
- Dad, why are they sleeping? she asked.
- They, Irochka, are sick. I picked them up in the snow yesterday.
"Will they get better?"
"I don't know, we'll see."
I picked up the birds and felt through the stiff feathers where their
hearts were. His fingers felt a slight tapping.
"They'll get well." Just cover them well and don't touch them. Give
them a drink of warm water.
Two days later, both crows came to their senses and began to try to fly,
which made Ira happy and frightened her grandmother. And two days
later, both birds were already screaming at the top of their lungs, cheekily
flying around the apartment and devouring everything that caught their
eye.
My Irka was delighted, and my grandmother said to me one evening:
"Let them out, please." I don't like this bird.
-Why? I asked.
My heart aches.
My grandmother was a superstitious person and divided all birds into
"clean" and "impure".
"All right, it'll get warmer, I'll let them out."

126
 Spring came, and one Sunday, after long diplomatic negotiations with
Ira, during which I had to assure her that after the next paycheck I would
buy her the same birds in the store, only with red and green wings, we
decided to set our crows free.
It was a beautiful sunny day, and we opened the window. Warm spring
air smelled into the room, the birds immediately shook up and rushed out
of the window.
"They're gone," Ira sang and waved her hand.
However, the crows did not fly away. They circled over the house, then
sat down on the roof of the gazebo opposite the window and, as if thinking
something, looked at the blue sky, then at us. After that, they resolutely
got off the roof and flew back into the room.
Ira clapped her hands.
"Good God!" They don't want to," said the grandmother.
And the crows sat in their nest on my bookcase and discussed
something long and persistently in their hoarse bird language.
They were perfectly tame, and I took them off the nest and threw them
out the window again. However, they immediately returned, croaking
reproachfully at me on the fly.
"Will they be here until I die?" - the grandmother whispered in horror.
"All right, we'll think of something." Let them live for now. They are
notfly because it's time to lay eggs. After that, we will take the nest with
the eggs, and they will go after it.
It was at this point that I remembered a scientific article about the
genetic effects of X-rays on animals.
"What if we test it on crows? - I thought. - They will die, well, to hell
with them. Grandma will stop being nervous."
I was obsessed with an amateurish interest in the problem of changing
heredity. I immediately made a cage and the next day I took both crows to
the city, to my X-ray room.
I irradiated crows twice a day with X-rays for three minutes. This
continued until I noticed that the female had become lazy, motionless, and
all the time nesting in the corner of the cage on a pile of dry grass.
I brought the crows home and five days later I found four gray testicles
on my bookcase. When I touched them, the crow shouted menacingly,
trying to peck me in the nose. A raven, croaking, ran around.
"Lord, I didn't have enough. Now the whole house will be inhabited by
this crow, the grandmother was very angry, muttering something to
herself and trying to avoid the bookcase, on top of which, humbled, both
birds were sitting. Irchonok regularly, three times a day, put a chair on the
table and delivered food and water to the family in toy dishes.
Eighteen days later, the chicks appeared.

127
 I climbed into a chair and looked at my family. Four gray, similar crows
were swarming in their mother's feathers. They stretched their long bare
necks and hissed faintly, opening their huge mouths. I did not find
anything special in these little crows. It only seemed to me that one of
them was somewhat larger than all the others.
Irochka's delight was indescribable. She sat for hours on a chair set on
the table and looked at the brood. The crow allowed my daughter to touch
her little offspring. She did not allow me to do this. I calmed my
grandmother down, saying:
"It's inconvenient to throw them away now. Let them grow up, then.
Grandmother shook her head reproachfully:
"These birds will not bring us happiness, you will see.
"Mom, I've done a scientific experiment on birds and I want to see what
happens.
Grandmother's prophecy began to come true in ten days.
I came home from work and found my daughter in tears.
-What the?
-Died. One chick died," Ira whispered.
In the nest sat a sad mother, and at a distance no less sad father. Two
small crows, fairly blackened, were swarming in the nest, and the third
was standing to the side on the plywood. He tilted his head and looked...
on the tiny corpse of his brother, There was something strange in his
stance and in the way he held his head. I noticed that it was really the
largest of all the others and, most importantly, completely white. He stood
motionless and looked with a kind of astonished bird's attention at the
dead disheveled lump at his feet. Then he looked in my direction, and I
almost screamed when I saw his eyes. They were huge and round, like an
owl's.
"A mutational freak," I decided at once, "the result of exposure to
X-rays."
Two days later, another chick died, and the next day another one. Ira
cried all day long, grandmother quietly prayed to God, and I was devoured
by curiosity about what would happen to the fourth, with the white crow.
It is surprising that after the last black crowen has diedOk, both adult
birds began to behave as if they had no one else left. They did not pay any
attention to the surviving chick, did not feed it, did not follow it.
Moreover, they moved to the valve of the chimney and began to drag all
sorts of rubbish there to make a new nest. They left the white chick with
huge eyes completely in the care of my daughter.
And it began to grow literally before our eyes. His head and eyes grew
especially, which he always stared at Irochka, then at me, then at my
grandmother. By the time he was twenty days old, he was already eating

128
twice as much as his adult parents. This bird had completely
underdeveloped wings, the legs were wide, on short legs, the body was not
oblong, but round.
- Dad, he loves sugar and sweets so much, - Ira once announced to me.
- He even talks when he wants sugar.
-Says? How can he speak?
"And so: 'I-krrr, i-krr.' I teach him all the time, but he still can't say
"sugar" correctly.
I laughed.
The next business in the clinic overwhelmed me, and I did not pay
attention to the ugly crow for a long time. Moreover, no one reminded me
of this. Even my grandmother somehow got used to the fact that we had
birds - two adults, black, and one young, ugly, white as snow. I only
noticed that now neither Ira nor my grandmother paid any attention to the
black crows. But they diligently took care of the white bird.
The White
Crow reminded me of its existence in the most unexpected way.
It was in the evening, when our whole family gathered at the table to
drink tea. I absentmindedly twirled a spoon in my glass, remembering the
results of a complex X-ray examination of one patient.
Suddenly, my eyes fell on Irina's fingers. She unceremoniously threw
them into a jar of jam and then sent them directly into her mouth.
"Stop it, what are you doing?" "
And I want it that way," she said and reached into the jar with her hands
again.
I took her little hand and, slapping it, began to say:
"Here you are, here you are for this.
My daughter whimpered, and at that very moment a huge white lump
first fell on my hand, and then grabbed it with sharp claws. I could not
even move from surprise.
"Don't it!" - I heard a hoarse, guttural voice. - Don't her! The crow
croaked ominously.
I stared at the bird in horror. Actually, now it was no longer a bird, but
some kind of huge downy ball, with large eyes like a man's, and a wide
mouth, ending instead of lips with bone plates that had grown to the right
and left. The monster stared at me, from which predatory anger sparkled.
On either side of the eyes, under the thickets of soft down, some gizzards
moved, like the cheekbones of an agitated person.
"Don't it," the monster repeated.
For a moment, I felt like I had gone crazy. Then, having recovered, I
touched the bird with my other hand, trying to drive it away. At the same
time, she clung to my hand so painfully that I whined.

129
 -Going? she asked.
I shook my head.
- Aha, aha, my Svetka stands up for me! Sveta, let daddy go, he won't
be there anymore," the daughter babbled happily, clapping her hands.
I felt the claws of the ugly bird unclench, and it still did not take its evil
eyes off me She clumsily jumped onto the table and froze in front of my
face.
Noticing that I was seriously excited, Ira came up to me.
"Daddy, don't be angry," she said, stroking my head, "she's good and
smart.
"Did you teach her to speak?" I asked, not taking my eyes off the black
sheep.
"She was the one who taught me to speak," the freak said, and his eyes
showed something like a human smile.
I felt uncomfortable.
"Yes, it was I who taught her to say everything!" Ira repeated.
"What else can she do?" I asked mechanically.
- She can read books and recite poems. She just can't fly. She jumps.
Really, Svetka?
"That's true," said the crow.
"A clever bird, white," sang the grandmother. "Not like those two idols.
I looked absently at the two idols sitting on the stove valve. Frowning,
they curiously examined everything that was happening below. Then I turned
my gaze to the black sheep. It was round like a ball. The body somehow
merged with the head, thick yellowish paws protruded from under it.
Looking at the strange bird, I slowly rubbed my blood-scratched hand.
The crow suddenly opened its mouth and asked:
"Does it hurt?"
- Yes, it hurts, but what?
- You need to anoint it with iodine. You need to call a doctor.
"You see how clever she is. She knows everything," Ira exclaimed,
admiring her pupil with admiration.
"Just like a living person," Grandmother purred.
"Damn it, she's smarter than a parrot!" "What does the
parrot have to do with it?" The crow suddenly objected. - The parrot
only repeats, but does not understand anything.
As if scalded with boiling water, I jumped up from my chair. At that
moment, my last hope was dashed.
"Do you understand?"
"Of course I can figure it out." I even know your name.
- You see what she is, my Svetka. Just like an adult, my daughter
shouted.

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 "What is my name?" I asked hesitantly.
"Dad," the crow replied very clearly.
I was stunned. Not because she had uttered the word, but because I saw
in it a disturbing and fatal meaning. After all, it was I, and no one else,
who was to blame for the fact that this ugly creature was born.
While I was silently looking at the ugly bird, Irina took a large picture
book out of her locker and began to ask:
"Svetka, who is this?"
-Cow.
"And this?"
-Horse.
"And this?"
-Hen.
The crow named everything that was depicted in the pictures without
mistake.
In the second book, she read some poems. Yes, I read the syllables, as
my Ira reads them. By the end of the evening, a lively conversation began
between her and Irka, and I looked at them and thought, thought until my
head ached, trying to convince myself that this white crow was not a
thinking creature, but something like a talented, even phenomenal, but
still a parrot.
That evening there was another event that should be mentioned.
When Irchonok ran into the next room for some reason, and I got up
from the table to calm down a little and put my thoughts in order, at that
very moment both old crows fell from the stove valve,They fell on the
white freak and began to peck at him.
He, completely defenseless, jumped on the table and shouted:
"Save me, save me, Irochka! They're beating me!
I jumped to the table and hit one of the black crows with my fist with all
my might.
They instantly soared upwards and, circling noisily around the room,
settled down on their nest.
"Thank you," said the black sheep.
"Don't," I replied and felt very stupid. I sat down opposite her again,
and she, awkwardly approaching the edge of the table, suddenly rolled
right into my lap.
"You're good," the bird said.
Holding my breath, I stroked her lightly. The freak trampled on my lap
and pressed tightly against my chest. I felt his little heart beating fast and
hard. For some reason, a lump appeared in my throat that I could not
swallow.
IV

131
 "I have committed a terrible crime," I said excitedly to my colleague,
psychiatrist Andrei Nikolaevich Antonov.
"Come on, come on. Take it easy. You look terrible.
"Don't calm me down, what happened is a nightmare. I have now lost
my peace forever. I am to blame for the birth of a thinking being.
-Wow! Andrey Nikolayevich said and smiled broadly.
-Congratulations. It's really time for you to get married. That's a good
reason...
"Oh, no, no!" "It's not a human being."
The psychiatrist frowned and looked at me from under his brow.
For half an hour I confused to tell him how I had found the frozen
crows, how I had performed an X-ray experiment on them, and how the
black sheep had been born.
"You see, I can't imagine that it's only a parrot. After all, she reasoned,
reasoned like a person, in any case, no worse than my Irka. She knows
literally everything my daughter knows. In addition, she has completely
human feelings. She can be angry, have fun, be gentle, affectionate. And it
looks like a soccer ball pasted with down. You see, what a horror! It's
almost the head of Professor Dowell, only quite independent, on its feet, it
can move...
The psychiatrist pondered. Then, as if reasoning aloud, he spoke:
"Generally speaking, the possibilities of radiation genetics are
enormous. If we believe that the ability to develop a large brain is inherent
in the chemical structure of the chromosomal substance, then I see no
reason why the chromosomes of any animal cannot be rearranged with the
help of mutational influences so that its offspring develop a large brain...
"What do you mean by that?" - I was surprised.
- And the fact that the hereditary characteristics of a living organism
can be regulated.
After a moment's thought, he added,
"You know, I have to look at your black sheep. Be sure to see, so to
speak, with professional eyes.
On the train, on the way to my home, Antonov told me about his new
work on radiation and chemical genetics.
"For agriculture and animal husbandry, there are boundless
opportunities here. By influencing the hereditary organs of animals, it is
possible to achieve the breeding of completely new breeds.
"And what if pigs, or rabbits, or cows learn to speak like a human?" I
asked gloomily. "What then?" You'll eat them too meat?
Antonov grimaced.
-It's incredible. It's almost unbelievable.
"I'm afraid this artificial genetics will lead to the fact that we will have

132
to seriously clarify who should be considered a human and who is an
animal.
On the way home, we were silent.
Opening the gate, I was surprised that Irchonok did not meet me as
usual. For some reason I was alarmed and, letting Andrey Nikolayevich
go ahead of me, quickly entered the house. An old lady appeared to meet
us, all in tears.
-What happened? Where is Irochka? Instead
of answering, she shouted:
"I told you that these birds would do no good. And so it was...
"What happened here?" Where is Svetka?
"Go and see what these devils have done."
Antonov and I ran into the next room. Irina was lying on the bed with a
wet rag on her head.
"What's wrong with you?" I exclaimed, running up to my daughter.
"They, they... My Svetka... My Svetka... They pecked at me too...
She sobbed, choking on tears.
At that moment, my grandmother came into the room and handed us
plywood, on which lay the huge bloody body of a white crow.
"It's all those blacks over there. They also pecked at Irka. Look at her
face.
- I defended her so much... - whispered Ira and threw herself into
hysterics again.
- When we began to chase these blacks and finally drove them out,
Svetka was still alive. Before she died, she said: "Bring me to Irochka." I
brought her up like this, on plywood, and she, just like a person, as she
cries... She fluttered, wanted to slide down and died...
Antonov touched me on the shoulder and whispered:
"There is no need to talk about it. Let's go out, let the girl calm down.
We went out into the garden. The twilight was thickening. My soul was
very heavy, as if a loved one had died. I shuddered when I suddenly heard
the familiar "Carrrrr" above my head. Two crows flew very low.
"Oh, you damned ones," I yelled, grabbed a stick and threw it at the
birds circling above me.
They rose high, made another circle over our cottage and, cawing
triumphantly, one by one disappeared behind the pines.

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 Along The "Ef" Axis
It was called the "Imaginary Axis". They say that the nickname arose
under the following circumstances. At a lecture on the theory of relativity,
he said that the world in which we live has not three dimensions, as is
commonly believed, but four. The fourth dimension is time.
"Three mutually perpendicular spatial axes, and the time axis is
perpendicular to them..."
Tall, skinny, ugly, he stretched his long arms up. The angular head on
the thin neck was thrown back and the eyes were closed. So he stood,
motionless, with his eyes closed and his arms outstretched, like an
orchestra conductor during a long pause.
– And how can we imagine the fourth axis, perpendicular to three? A
student asked timidly.
"Oh, it's very easy, if you keep in mind that she's imaginary. It goes like
this...
His long arms moved vaguely. No one understood anything. But it
received a nickname: "Imaginary axis".
Many years have passed since then, I graduated from the physics
department of the university. For five years, students have become
accustomed not only to four-dimensional space, but also to
five-dimensional, ten-dimensional, en-dimensional, infinite-dimensional,
Hilbert – in short, to a bacchanalia of the most abstract abstractions.
Nobody took them seriously, and everyone thought that they had no real
significance. They did not believe in them, no one believed in the
possibility of a time machine.
And then one day Professor Vireysky (as the "Imaginary Axis" was
really called) made himself felt in the most unexpected way.
It is known that theoretical physicists do not very often turn into
experimentalists. Evil tongues claim that those who become theorists are
those whose hands are "out of the arc". And then one day a pale-faced guy
came to the design bureau where I work and began to talk with a
stammering tongue about the fact that we were delaying the execution of
an order for his university. The guy was very pale, very nervous, and when
he spoke, his long, thin fingers restlessly fiddled with the tip of the black
lace tied instead of a tie.
Anechka, our secretary, a rosy-cheeked cunning girl, looked at this thin

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lace for a long time and, turning to me, asked:
"Vityuga, is it possible that men in the capital are lacing their shoes
with ties now?
The guy was stunned, quickly glanced at his shoes, and his pale face
began to be covered with red spots. I felt sorry for him.
"Don't worry. Tell me what kind of order you have, and I'll check it
now.
–Order? Oh, yes... This is a quartz cap, a desiccator, for the laboratory
of Professor Vireysky...
"For Vireysky?" For the "Imaginary Axis"? The
guy's thin lips curled into a smile.
–You know him?
"Of course! He attended lectures on the theory of relativity.
The guy often nodded his head.
"Yes, he's the same... The order needs to be fulfilled very urgently. You
don't even suspect how urgently this cap is needed...
I dug into the drawings, called the technical department, made inquiries
in the experimental workshop and, finally, contacted the sales department.
"Young man," I said to a visitor from the university, "your quartz cap is
ready, packed, and tomorrow it will be sent to the freight station..."
–Ok... Very well... You know... Is it possible to fly by plane?..
"What are you talking about! – I exclaimed. – First of all, it will be
expensive, and secondly, in the contract...
"Yes, yes, I know," he muttered and waved his hand.
At the exit From the office he stopped suddenly.
"Can I escort the cargo?"
I shrugged my shoulders.
"Probably, but why?"
His fingers took hold of the string again, but looking at Anya, he
withdrew his hands, hid them behind his back and went out.
And then I remembered that theorists rarely turn into experimentalists,
jumped up from the table and rushed after the guy.
"Where are you staying?" I asked, catching up with him at the entrance.
"Nowhere yet.
"Come to me." I live in a dormitory, alone for a whole ten-meter room.
He took his suitcase, and we walked along the only street in our village.
"So you work for Vireysky?" By the way, let's get acquainted. Victor.
–Oleg. I work for Vireysky.
"And why does he need this cap?" After all, he is a theoretician.
–Was... Now he has a laboratory.
"What does he do?"
"Yes... All sorts of things...

135
 "I see," I decided, "secret work."
We reached the dormitory in silence.
"Make yourself as comfortable as you like." Dining room on the ground
floor. And I'll run and negotiate with the railway so that you are allowed to
accompany the cargo.
–You are welcome!
We met with Oleg only late in the evening. He sat down on an empty
bunk and lay staring at the ceiling with his hands behind his head.
–Hello!
–Good evening...
–All is well. The train leaves at ten in the morning. You're supposed to
be with the station attendant at nine."
Oleg breathed a sigh of relief.
"Why are you so worried about the hat," I said, undressing. Nothing
will happen to him.
"I'm not because of the hat," Oleg sighed.
"And because of what?"
"Virey... He, you see...
"Your Vireysky will not die," I tried to encourage him.
"What did you say?"
Oleg stood up and stared at me with huge black eyes.
"I say he won't die." Wait...
"Do you know?"
–A what?
Now I was staring at this strange guy.
"That the Virean...
–Died?
I jumped out of my bunk.
"N-I don't know, n-I don't know," Oleg muttered.
For a second it seemed to me that the employee of Vireysky to... There
was a painful pause. And then I blurted out an unforgivable stupidity.
"If he's dead, he doesn't care about that cap, even if it's quartz..."
The reaction was fantastic. Oleg jumped up from his bunk like a wild
cat, jumped on me and shouted:
"Lies! I have nothing to do with it! And it is still unknown, maybe he is
alive! Or at least it will live... Or come to life!
I hurriedly got up and began to dress. Oleg breathed rapidly, his face
twisted as if from unbearable pain.
"Listen, boy, calm down, tell me what's wrong with you." Maybe I can
help you in some way...
He went limp suddenly.
"And yet it's all my fault...

136
 This sounded like a final verdict not subject to revision. We sat side by
side, and I put my hand on his trembling shoulder.
"Come on, come on, tell me," I asked as gently as possible.
After a long pause, he began in a whisper.
– It all started with movements along the "ef" axis...
"Along the axis?"
– Think so... This was the professor's last discovery. Have you heard
the "ef" axis?
– I heard from Vireysky about different axes – the axis "ta", the axis
"X", the axis without a name, but I did not hear about "ef".
– This is an amazing discovery. The letter "ef" means "Form".
–Form? Wonder.
"Every physical body has a form.
–Yes.
"And this form can be different.
–I see.
– The uniform can be changed.
"And that's understandable.
"The multiplicity of all forms of one and the same body forms a dense
continuous set or another dimension in which a physical body can exist...
– This is less clear.
Oleg looked at me with regret.
"Imagine an iron cube of a certain mass.
–Present...
"And now imagine that you have found a way to mold anything from
this piece of iron, like from plasticine... The mass remains the same, the
iron is the same, and you can attach any meaning to the shape...
–Meaning? – I was surprised.
– Yes. Along the "ef" axis, each shape will correspond to its own point,
its own coordinate...
"Typical Virey things. Imaginary axis!"
"Another abstraction?" – I grinned.
– Nothing of the kind! The device was built and passed the tests... Any
body can be placed in a glass bell. The absence of an energy field
corresponds to the origin. Next, you begin to move the body along the "ef"
axis. To do this, it is necessary to change the energy content of the field
and its structure. The body is slowly changing before your eyes...
I began to vaguely guess what he was talking about.
"Deformed, like plasticine between your fingers?"
–Exactly! Each energy content corresponds to its own deformation or
point on the axis...
Suddenly I understood everything!

137
 –Ingeniously! By successively moving, as you say, the body along the
"ef" axis, you can get everything that can be obtained from it, I mean any
forms?
–Exactly!
"Can you get a sphere, an ellipsoid, a ring, a bucket, a wheel, a wire, all
of them, with the same mass of material?"
–Definitely!
"So that's...
–Exactly! Oleg interrupted me, and his eyes lit up. "When we first saw
all this, we thought that we would go crazy, before that it was
unbelievable. Imagine, the professor slowly rotated the limb with
divisions corresponding to the coordinates of the "ef", and before your
eyes the body placed in the cap bent, contracted, stretched, curled up into a
ball, crept into a thin sheet, in general, behaved like a living thing.
Everything that can be imagined smoothly transitioned from one to the
other, and it was a fabulous sight...
–How thrilling! "But
that's not all!" The most interesting thing happened at critical points...
"What are these dots?"
"With a very high energy content, the body was stretched into the
thinnest thread, crumbled into powder, and then...
–A what?
"Then it turned into a liquid, melted and finally evaporated... After all,
these are also forms... Liquid and gas...
–Great! I whispered admiringly, imagining that having such a machine,
you can once and for all abandon all machines and devices and make
anything you want from any material. SimpleOh, put the limb on the right
point, and basta!
"And back?" I asked suddenly.
You rotate the limb counterclockwise, and the body, going through all
the shapes in reverse order, returns to the origin, that is, to its original
appearance.
"So this is a revolution! I exclaimed. "Vireysky should be given the
Nobel Prize!"
Oleg's face suddenly frowned.
"No
, you don't seem to know anything," he said and sighed. "Anyway, I'll
tell you..." The fact is that... How can I tell you... When a body passes to a
point corresponding to the gaseous state, the pressure and temperature of
the gas are naturally very high.
–I think!
–Yes. So, at critical points, the glass bells often burst. That's when we

138
ordered you quartz...
–I see. Wait, though! The caps burst, and, therefore, your body
evaporated into the air?
"N-Not really... We have automation there. Before the disaster came,
the gas was instantly pumped into a metal cylinder... We installed a new
bell and slowly let gas into it, at the same time returning the body closer to
the origin...
"Oh, yes... But it could turn out that some of them would still fly out or
remain in the cylinder ...
"And so it was... Returning to the beginning of the "ef" axis, the body
was always a little lighter...
–Leakage?
–Yes. Vireysky insisted on the urgent production of a quartz cap. And
before it was made, he ordered to put a limiter and a fuse on the limb that
would not allow the bodies to take critical shapes... I put the fuse...
I felt a vague uneasiness. Staring at the floor, Oleg continued.
"It happened a week ago... We arrived at the laboratory at ten o'clock in
the morning. Vireysky, as a rule, came ten minutes late. But half an hour,
an hour, two passed, and he was gone... Someone noticed that the door to
the office where the EF translator was installed was open... "Ef" translator
is the name of a machine for moving along the "ef" axis. I entered the
office and for a long time could not figure out what had changed in it...
And suddenly I saw... Mirror!
–Mirror?
–Yes. You know, such a high, dressing table... It used to be in the
corner, near the window, and now it was next to the cap, placed on the
table...
"For what?"
–Listen up... Then I saw that the glass bell at the top had cracked and
that the pressure gauge on the metal cylinder showed one hundred and
fifteen atmospheres... And also where my fuse stood, on the limb, there
were traces of burning... The throttle burned out...
"It's terrible," I said for some reason, not understanding anything.
"What does the mirror have to do with it?"
"He wanted to watch himself...
–Who?
"Virey...
–Are you joking...
–Not at all... The cap is huge, two and a half meters high, a meter in
diameter. He climbed into it and put the limb on automatic rotation... He
decided to drive along the "ef" axis, a little forward and return... But the
limiter and fuse did not work...

139
 "Good God! I could not help myself. "So, Vireysky...
"In a spare iron cylinder...
I shivered as if from an icy breeze.
"What will happen now?" I asked in a whisper.
"I urgently need a quartz cap...
"You dooAre you going?
"This is the last chance...
"And if there's a leak, and part of the professor?..
I whistled stupidly and twirled my hand in the air.
"Then it's over..."
We didn't talk anymore. I lay down on the bed and, like Oleg, began to
look at the ceiling... And my imagination drew me terrible pictures. What
did the professor see in the mirror? Maybe at some stage he went from
being tall and skinny to short and fat? Broad-shouldered and muscular like
an athlete, ugly like Quasimodo? Or maybe there was a point on the "ef"
axis at which he turned into a woman? For example, to Gioconda? Br-r-r!
And then? Virey in the shape of a cube, Virey in the shape of a
refrigerator, Virey in the shape of a rope or liquid! Yes, a liquid that can be
poured into a bottle. If it breaks, Vireysky will turn into a puddle on the
pavement, and it will be sprayed on the sides of the truck wheel! If it is
liquid, everything in it must be mixed, and then there is no hope of putting
everything back in its original place when traveling back... And even more
so if there is gas, and even a leak... Arriving at the origin, the "Imaginary
Axis" may turn out to be flawed.
Poor Virean! Poor Oleg! Everyone is poor.
And yet it is ingenious to move bodies along the "ef" axis! A revolution
in technology, in the economy, in transport!
I don't know how many uses for the EF translator I came up with in one
night. When I fell asleep, I dreamed of the shapes of different bodies
changing into one another, and from time to time the figure of the
"Imaginary Axis," Vireysky, flashed before my eyes, one of the possible
forms on the endless path.
A day after Oleg left with his cap, I received a short telegram from him.
"It's okay. He is alive..." I still don't know what happened. Maybe he was
released from the iron cylinder and returned to the origin? Or maybe he
didn't get there, but just "played" the guys who delayed the installation of
the quartz cap?
Oleg will write to me about this in the promised letter.

140
 Golova For Rent
I rent my head. If you like, that's what I live for. A hundred years ago,
such an activity would have been simply impossible. And now, thanks to
the tremendous successes of science and technology, the transfer of one's
own head to another person for temporary use is a completely trivial
matter. And profitable, because every day there are more and more crooks
who need someone else's head.
When they say that a thing is rented, a ridiculous picture arises in the
mind. As if a rented thing would really be rolled, like a wheel on the
pavement or a soccer ball in a stadium. As you can easily guess, the head
is not good for either. Firstly, it is not round enough in most cases, and
secondly, it cannot be worn under the armpit. Therefore, renting a head is
a term that bears a clear stamp of its history.
And yet I rent my head in the literal sense of the word. But before I tell
you the essence of the matter, I must introduce myself.
My name, however, is of no interest. Moreover, for some reason, I
would not like it to become known. Another thing is important: I am a
great scientist. Not in the sense that I create science myself, but in the fact
that I studied a lot. By the way, people like me should be called scientists.
This does not mean that these cats or dogs were the discoverers of new
theories.
Now, I'm a scientist in the sense of a "learned cat." Almost all my life I
did nothing but study. I have two large universities, European and
American, and several other private educational institutions. I studied
many natural sciences and humanities, including physics, chemistry,
biology, history, law, and philosophy. In private schools, I thoroughly
studied spiritualism, raja yoga, alchemy, and some occult sciences.
Occultism was taught to me by a man who miraculously remained from
the Middle Ages, who was engaged in this business in his spare time in the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Probably, I would have continued to study until the end of my days, if a
revolution had not been made in science. You've probably heard of it.
Finally, it was proved that there is telepathy, that is, the transmission of
thoughts at a distance. That thoughts, like radio, can be transmitted from
one brain to another. As you know, this discovery was made not by
physicists, not by doctors, but by psychiatrists.

141
 When a psychiatrist learned what telepathy was, he burst out laughing
and exclaimed,
"Oh my God! And you have been struggling for half a century to prove
or refute such nonsense? Yes, we deal with this telepathy of yours twenty
times every day!
The conversation was with me, and the psychiatrist told me that in
order to establish schizophrenia in a suspected patient, he always asks the
same question: "Do you hear voices?"
"If the answer is yes," the doctor continued, "then this is irrefutable
proof of schizophrenia. So, my dear, telepaths are walking around under
your noses, and you're having a stupid argument. Schizophrenics are
precisely those individuals who perceive other people's thoughts, and this
causes them considerable suffering, and we are incredibly troubled.
I told about this amazing report to an amateur cyberneticist, and he
immediately proposed a brilliant theory, which later became generally
accepted. The essence of this theory makes sense, it reminds youMan is an
information machine. This machine walks among the same information
machines every day. Therefore, it is simply incredible that in the process
of evolution he did not develop the ability to perceive other people's
thoughts. He must definitely perceive them. But how and how much? A
little and only when necessary. Imagine if a person were to perceive all the
thoughts that swarm in the heads of those he meets at work, on the bus, or
at the theater. It would be a nightmare! His head would burst from the
abundance of other people's thoughts. He would have ceased to orient
himself in a crowded world. A terrible nonsense would be going on in his
head. There would be no room left for your own thoughts. And, probably,
once, at the dawn of mankind, it was so.
At this point, my erudite amateur told several ancient stories that
mention heroes who learned about the thoughts of other heroes, although
they were not interested in it.
To prevent this from happening, nature has developed protective
barriers in the human body against other people's thoughts, barriers that let
in exactly as much as necessary. (For example, "I felt someone's gaze on
the back of my head" or "I knew that there was someone else in the room
besides me, although I did not see anyone", etc.)
So, schizophrenics differ from normal people only in that, for some
incomprehensible reason, their barriers against other people's thoughts
were violated. Anything gets into their heads, and the unfortunates end up
in a madhouse.
There, as they say, their brains are straightened. I have never heard
anything more accurately reflects the essence of the matter.
A learned friend of mine published his theory and was rewarded with

142
the approval of all the supporters of telepathy, as well as all those who had
the ability to hear other people's voices and who, it turned out, were
mistakenly tried to isolate themselves from society.
I did something completely different. If there are barriers against other
people's thoughts, then how to destroy them artificially? After all, solving
this problem could have far-reaching consequences!
My extensive knowledge helped me to reach the long-awaited goal
after five years of hard work! The barriers are chemical in nature, and it is
worth any so-called normal person to go to the pharmacy and buy
dimethyloxyribo in tablets or in a mixture... However, it is too early to
publish the name of this ridiculously elementary substance. After all, all
my well-being is now built on it!
I carried out experiments on myself, and after taking the medicine I
acquired the ability to cope with l u s l i u c o g o g o d n o.
In the process of experiments, I kept two notebooks. In one he wrote
down the results of his scientific observations, in the second - overheard
thoughts. In accordance with my will, both the first and second notebooks
will be published and will undoubtedly cause a terrible sensation.
I will only report the following. Thoughts can be heard from any
distance and sent to any distance. They propagate, unlike radio waves,
without attenuation, and there are no barriers to them. Each person thinks
in his own frequency range, and this range is easily established by a
suitable selection of functional chemical groups in dimethyloxyribo...
Having made all these amazing discoveries, I was about to flee to the
Ministry of Defense and Assault, when suddenly an idea struck me. Well,
I'll get some kind of reward there, well, the Minister of Defense and
Attack himself will pat me on the shoulder. And what farther? Then they
would shut my mouth, put me under surveillance, and then, what was
good, they would accidentally pin me somewhere. In order to make ends
in the water.
No, I decided, the Ministry of Defense and the attack could wait. And
there is a more humane purpose for my discovery.
And then I decided to rent out my head.
This is done as follows. In accordance with my appeal, some Mr.
Thomson, a fool and a fool, came to me for "radical help in any matter" (as
it was printed in all the newspapers and announced on radio and
television). I listened to who he was and what he was. Then I would do a
simple medical analysis and determine what Thomson needed to drink so
that he could hear my thoughts. In the same way, I found a remedy for
myself, so that I could hear his foolish thoughts and correct him in time.
And two-way communication was instantly established. For a fee, Mr.
Thomson was the owner of my head for a short time. And then he went

143
and did his job, although, to be more precise, I did his job.
Having established a telepathic connection, he cheerfully went to the
editorial office and there, in front of the editor-in-chief and members of
the editorial board, made such a speech that they stared and opened their
mouths. Thomson, who had long been considered a graphomaniac and a
complete idiot, showed knowledge, erudition, critical thinking and the
ability to throw critics to dust to such an extent that he was immediately
given a cash advance and signed a contract with him. Another Thomson
received a patent for his invention in exactly the same way - a machine
that makes butter out of air.
In this case, I used my knowledge of Hatha Yogi, and when Thomson
turned his wild car around and started the gasoline engine, shocked
experts and newspaper chroniclers were simply stunned. Butter really
crawled out of the exhaust pipe of the device instead of smoke! When
Thomson left with an inventive certificate, attempts to obtain oil, as well
as to find where the oil that had already been obtained, had gone nowhere.
But the author received "big press", which, in fact, he needed.
I had one Thomson, who wanted to become Prime Minister. I politely
refused to help him, as it went against the constitution. But I agreed to
make him a minister without portfolio. It didn't require him to head any
political party. He just had to speak to the voters of some district, and this
is easy. Through this Thomson, I conveyed to the audience the content of
several election speeches taken from the archives. All of them have an
amazing ability not to age and are suitable for all times in the history of
our society. When I, that is, excuse me, my Thomson, spoke, the listeners
roared with delight or wept bitterly at the mention of the so-called "eternal
human values" such as freedom, Christian love, and others.
This Thomson became a minister without portfolio and a regular client
of mine, because from time to time he had to speak in parliament. But his
colleagues in the cabinet still got rid of him. They were jealous. I
overplayed and Thomson performed too well. And this could end in his
further elevation.
Of course, I also had difficulties, because for all my scholarship I could
not know everything. For example, once one Thomson came to me and
said that he wanted to be a clown and perform in the circus. In my view,A
clown is a cheerful and witty person. And this one's face resembled a
country dump on an autumn, November day. The devil knows why he
wanted to become a clown. Maybe his lady liked to go to the circus, or
maybe he just wanted to be written about in the newspapers. The sum was
considerable, and so I suggested that this Thomson come later, hoping that
I would be able to learn the art of clowning.
The matter here was clearly more complicated than with a minister

144
without portfolio. It was necessary to memorize several dozen witticisms,
learn to walk on a tightrope and somersault over the head. It was about
renting not only the head, but the whole body.
And so, when the moment of his performance came, I realized that he
would not succeed, because nothing came out for me. The witticisms
turned out to be flat, and the tricks were inept. In the middle of a telepathic
communication session, I passed out, and my Thomson found himself
helpless in the middle of the arena. And then he roared, sobbed so truly
that the whole audience began to laugh wildly, taking his roar for a really
worthwhile wit.
When renting out my head, I sat in front of the mirror and suggested to
my client everything he needed. It is not difficult, but it is not easy either.
At any rate, after each session I felt tired, and then I began to think that it
was time to expand the firm and hire assistants with a variety of abilities
and specialties. And then we would be able to serve several dozen
Thomsons at the same time, and the fame of the company would quickly
multiply their number. But what will happen then? Again assistants will
be needed, and the number of Thomsons will increase again, and this
process cannot be stopped.
At this point of my reasoning I was suddenly horrified. Who could rent
their head? Of course, they are scientists like me, or at least smart people.
A. who would the customers be? Stupid, stupid, untalented Thomsons
who have money. My discovery would divide the whole world, all of
humanity in half. Some, like me, would sit in front of mirrors and work
like devils for money, transmitting their thoughts to their intended
purpose. And the second, using someone else's mind and someone else's
knowledge, would receive all the benefits from life. Some, in general,
have a dog's existence, and others, the Thomsons, have a real life.
And an obsession is brewing in me. Shouldn't I pass on my discovery to
another scientist and go to the Thomson camp myself? Let others think
and decide for me!

* As you understand, this "theory of schizophrenia" is of a humorous

nature. (Author's note).

145
 Blue Glow (Abridged)
1.
There was a deafening explosion of a heavy high-explosive bomb. A
dense raging block shot up into the sky, where orange rockets were
blazing under the domes of parachutes. A few seconds later, a hailstorm of
lumps of earth, splinters and broken bricks fell on the ground. The first
explosion was followed by a second, even more terrible. Unleashed, the
dull fury of matter mercilessly tore pieces from the living body of the
earth, crushed them and blew them away with a red-hot wind. A little
above the parachutes, describing steep arcs, two black giants swam by.
Their contours shimmered slightly in the glow of the conflagration. The
bombers turned around to tear the ground under them to pieces again with
bestial persistence.
Two men, with their hands over their heads, lay face down in the thick
grass by the side of the asphalt road. When the roar of the planes subsided,
they jumped up and ran. But then the planes approached again, new
rockets flashed in the dusty sky, and the people fell again, pressed
themselves to the ground and covered their heads with their hands... Two
more explosions one after the other.
The planes went on a U-turn. Two got up and ran along the road. One of
them stopped.
"Dr. Roberto!" Dr. Roberto, hurry!
"Müller, I can't take it anymore," he groaned back. "I have no more
strength... I wish it would all end as soon as possible...
Roberto sat down wearily on the grass by the road.
"Dr. Roberto, for God's sake, let's go!" In a few minutes, they will start
bombing again! Müller bent down and began to pick him up.
"No, you shouldn't, my dear friend. I'll stay here. Let it be what will
be... I'm already old....
- Pull yourself together! Rather! Do you hear them coming..
Roberto was petrified. His gray hair flowed over his head, and he
looked back to where the building used to stand... Now smoking
firebrands flew up with hisses, trees engulfed in flames crackled. Thick
orange smoke hung low on the grass and rolled down to the river.
"Müller," he said wearily. "Take this... I'm not going anywhere. I
can't...
He pulled out an aluminum cylinder and held it out.

146
 "What are you talking about, Dr. Roberto! Müller exclaimed, and
backed away.
"Take it, take it." You have the right to do so. There is more of your
work here than mine... I ask you one thing. For the sake of all that is holy
in the world, for the sake of your mother, for the sake of your children, for
the sake of all honest people, make sure that this does not fall into evil
hands... Only you and I know what it is.
Müller hesitantly took the top hat from Roberto's hands.
"Now go..."
"I'm not going anywhere without you."
At this time, the ugly shadow of a bomber floated out from behind the
forest. He was flying very low. Both men fell to the ground. One managed
to slide down into a ditch near the road, and at that very moment another
terrible explosion rang out. The asphalt canvas reared up like a black sail,
unfolded and crumbled into thousands of pieces. When the stone hail
subsided, no one rose...
The planes left... Rockets were slowly burning out in the sky. The edge
of the forest and the mutilated asphalt road were illuminated by the uneven
light of flaming trees. Blood-red glints danced on the grass.
A man crawled out of the ditch with difficulty, it was Müller. He
staggered to the spot where Dr. Roberto had been a few minutes before.
No problem... Emptily...
A Wonderful Creature - Man On his way - flame and death, air pierced
with screeching metal, slain friends and comrades fall at his feet, and he
walks and walks...
How long to walk on this scorched, mutilated land? Is it possible to
keep hope and wait for bright days after all that has been experienced?
Contrary to experience and the most ordinary logic, to believe that the
bloodshed and destruction will one day end and will not happen again?
He clutched an aluminum cylinder with precious papers in his hands
and walked forward into the darkness, stumbling over piles of upturned
asphalt. The road went down to the river, which was covered with a thick
layer of smoke that glowed in the darkness with a lilac light. It was stuffy,
tickling in the throat.
The bombers had long since flown away, and a strange, unaccustomed
silence had settled around. Only something crackled from time to time
behind him, sometimes bright flames flashed. And then Müller's shadow
danced on the smoky veil...
Carry it with you?
He remembered the last words of his teacher: "For the sake of all that is
holy that is on earth..."
Is there anything sacred on earth?

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 He stopped and listened. Dead silence... Only the splash of water in the
river... The end of the war. Perhaps this is the most sacred thing?..
Müller turned sharply to the right and down the escarpment. Straight
ahead was a black wall of centuries-old trees, the same ones along which
Dr. Roberto and he had so often walked. Maybe we should bury them
there? No! Nowadays, forests are short-lived.
They are mercilessly exterminated, cities and factories grow in their
place. Bridge! This is what is most durable now.
He climbed up the embankment again and walked along the plank
flooring that swayed on the pontoons. A damp coolness blew into his face,
there was no smoke in the middle of the river, he took a deep breath.
There was once a large bridge nearby. Directly ahead on the western
bank, a granite bull towered, followed by a second one.
Despite the warm spring weather, the sand under the stone kept the
winter cold, and the deeper Müller dug, the colder his hand became. If
only no one would see it.
At last he touched the granite with his wounded shoulder and pulled his
stiff arm out of the pit. Then he lowered an aluminum cylinder into it and
slowly covered it with damp sand. He put a cobblestone on top and
stomped it several times with his foot.
The end. The end of all this. This will never happen! He walked quickly
westward, not knowing that this was only the beginning.

2.
Colonel Semvol settled in an ancient castle. Everything here breathed
the Middle Ages: pointed domes of towers, gray, moss-covered stone
walls with barely noticeable bas-reliefs of heraldic coats of arms, a ditch
covered with garbage, bizarre arched bridges that had not been raised for a
long time.
The castle was dirty, empty, and resounding. But the colonel's office,
located in one of the bedchambers of the former owner, was a contrast to
everything that was around
. They connected the colonel with almost any significant place on the
globe. Two fans slowly swayed their transparent snouts, directing rustling
streams of cool air to the chair. To the left of the chair, in a plastic case,
there was an apparatus with which the colonel could talk to any military
headquarters. Here, on the counter, the teletype clicked incessantly. From
a narrow crack, you hurriedlyAn endless paper tape with letters and
numbers was crawling. Letters and numbers reported what was happening
in the world.
Colonel Semvol, a tall, thin man with a yellowish, clean-shaven face,
was dressed in a light gray civilian suit. For half an hour he read the TTY

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tape attentively, and then, throwing it over on the receiving drum, he
leaned back in his chair and thought.
Yes, everything is going as you would expect. Crowds of joyful people
are rejoicing in the world, the day before yesterday a document was signed
on the end of the war, at banquets everyone toasted eternal peace, swore
eternal friendship and love, and today... And today the fuss around
captured weapons has already begun, orders and instructions have begun
to arrive on the conservation of tanks, aircraft, artillery, and on keeping
them in full combat readiness. Someone insistently demanded technical
data on captured projectile aircraft, on research on some heavy water, on
research institutes and laboratories where atoms are studied...
The instructions prescribed to collect and store books, manuscripts,
drawings, notebooks, notebooks and even just pieces of paper with notes
and formulas found in laboratories as the greatest value.
But something else was essential.
"Scientists," said one secret letter, "are an important trophy of war for
us. This trophy is more important for our future prosperity than all the
material values to which we are entitled."
The letter further emphasized:
"Of the scientists, we need first of all those who have worked on the
study of the atomic nucleus. According to the data available to us, the
most far-reaching results in this field were obtained by Dr. Roberto and
his collaborators Haynes, Müller, and Rodstein. All of them worked in a
separate laboratory in the Sonderstadt area. These scientists are to be
interned together with all documents, equipment and apparatus."
Remembering this order, Colonel Semvol took a deep breath. This is
exactly what they failed to do...
What could he do?
After consulting with the command, he received an order: "A separate
laboratory is to be wiped off the face of the earth... The search for these
scientists should continue."
The colonel opened a drawer and pulled out some varnished aerial
photographs. He looked at them again: clouds of smoke and flames rose
up right at him. The forest and the buildings and structures hidden in it
were burning. Second photo. The fire subsided. Where the laboratory used
to be, there is a loose gray spot. Here is another one. In place of the gray
spot there are huge craters, like craters of extinct volcanoes.
We need to look for people. Of course, they fled. But where? The
colonel got up from his chair and clicked the microphone button.
"Commandant's office at Sonderstadt," he said, and at once a loud
answer was heard:
"The commandant of Sonderstadt, Major Inser, is listening.

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 - Who deals with refugees there? I need data on persons arriving in your
area...
"Who exactly are you interested in, sir?"
-Record. Dr. Roberto, Dr. Müller, Haynes, Rodstein, all the people who
worked in the Separate Laboratory.
"I'll make inquiries and let you know."
Semvol switched the machine.
- Head of the Department for Displaced Persons.
"I'm listening," said a voice.
"How are you doing with the gathering of long-haired people, Sandy?"
-StateThe Criminal Code has already gained seventy. Most of them
study history, literature, art, music, philosophy.
"Well, that's not it, Sandy, it's not good for us. Let them stay here to
philosophize. We need physicists, mathematicians, chemists, engineers.
Collect this product. Write down such names, Dr. Roberto, Dr. Haynes,
Dr. Rodstein and Dr. Mueller. If you get caught, send them to me
immediately. Do not forget the most important thing! We need specialists
in nuclear physics.
-Yes.
Colonel Semvol left the table and walked around the office several
times. Approaching the door, he pressed a barely noticeable button, and a
pretty girl entered the room. There was nothing military in it. Her slightly
painted lips made her look more adult than she really was. Her big green
eyes expressed a question.
"Liz, you'll have to change your clothes," said the colonel, looking at
her with a good-natured, mocking look.
"How, Mr. Colonel?" The girl asked in surprise.
"I hope you have not forgotten to bring your civilian dress with you?"
From now on, you will have to part with your military uniform. Honorable
scholars will soon begin to arrive to us, and we must not frighten them
with our military appearance. Especially you," he added cheerfully.
"Why, Colonel, what a military appearance I have! Liz exclaimed. "But
if I have to, I'll change my clothes at once."
Liz turned and wanted to go out.
"By the way, do you receive letters from your father?"
- Yes, only yesterday.
"And what does he write?"
"He congratulates you and me on the end of the war in advance. In
advance, because when he wrote this letter, the war was still going on. And
he also reported interesting news. He is invited to work somewhere... Where
- he himself does not yet know. But he received an invitation personally from
the president of the Cienzia company, from Mr. Saccoro himself.

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 -Wow! Semvol exclaimed, who had long ago known all that Liz had
said. "Saccoro means something.
"Saccoro means something," he repeated in his mind. It was not for
nothing that he, Colonel Semvol, and Major Sullo and many other officers
who were expected to retire after the war, took care to throw in their lot
with this powerful man in advance. Saccoro is much more reliable than
official military service, and even when the war ends...
-Yes. That, in fact, is all the news. Father thanks you for giving me the
opportunity to see Europe in such a wonderful way.
At these words, the girl looked at her military uniform in
embarrassment. It was the "way to see Europe".
- Well, did you like Europe?
-Yes... But I feel so sorry for these people who endured a terrible war. I
have seen so much destruction and so much misery... I just don't
understand why people can be so cruel to each other?
"You're still very young, Liz," said the colonel, putting his hand on her
shoulder. - When you grow up, everything will seem much easier to you.
Then you will understand that wars have been, are and will be as long as
there are people on earth who speak different languages and think
differently.
- But is this the only reason why wars arise?
"There are other reasons, but we'll talk about that some other time. And
now, Liz, go change your clothes.
When the girl came out, something clicked in the apparatus and a
hurried voice was heard:
"Mr. Colonel,commandant of Sonderstadt.
"Well, well," said Semvol, quickly approaching the table.
"The people you named, Haynes, Rodstein and Müller, are in our
commandant's office.
-Ok! Miraculously! Semvol exclaimed. "And Dr. Roberto?"
- There is none. Mueller claims that he was killed during the explosion
of a high-explosive bomb. He says, with our bomb, Colonel.
-Killed? Semvol asked loudly.
"Müller says he's killed."
"Hmm," Semvol grunted, tugging at his chin. "Is there anything with
these people: books, drawings, notes?"
-No nothing. They say that everything was destroyed in the bombing.
"Okay, Inzer. Arrange transport for them and send them to me. Under
guard.
"Maybe feed and give some help?" Müller is wounded.
- No, you don't. This will be done here.
"A person does not need to be allowed to come to his senses. Let him be

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hungry, undressed, sick or wounded. No compassion. Only then will the
victory be complete," Colonel Semvol recalled the words of one of his
mentors at the military academy.

3.
The car with the scientists did not arrive in the evening, as Colonel
Semvol had assumed, but late at night. He was already asleep when the
adjutant knocked on his bedroom and asked what to do with the
newcomers.
At this time, three men with gray exhausted faces, in dirty tattered
clothes, barely dragging their feet from fatigue, hunger and pain, entered
the huge empty hall, accompanied by two soldiers.
A man with a dirty rag bandaged in his arm walked up to the wide
staircase leading to the upper floor and lowered himself to the step. The
others joined him. They sat silently, not looking at each other, not moving.
The soldiers also froze at the opposite end of the hall, like stone knights.
After a few minutes the silence was broken, and under the ceiling of the
hall the echo repeated several times:
"Mr. Haynes, please come in!"
The people sitting on the steps shook up. They quickly exchanged
words, and a man of average height in a gray torn suit separated from
them. He hurriedly walked to the door and straightened his tousled hair
with both hands.
"Please come here," the adjutant suggested gently.
As he entered the office, Haynes closed his eyes tightly. Not because
the room was too brightly lit and his eyes, accustomed in recent months to
the darkness of cellars, air-raid shelters and trenches, were blinded by the
light of two electric lamps enclosed in pale pink lampshades. No, that's not
why! Haynes could not believe that among the ruins and ashes, among all
that military people used to call the "desert zone", in some old castle
smelling of dead and decay, there could be such a corner... He opened his
eyes and looked at the man at the desk in confusion.
"Come in, come in, Mr. Haynes," Semvol said encouragingly.
"Excuse me, Mr. Eh... but my shoes...
"Oh, that's nonsense, my dear," said the colonel. With that, he quickly
got up from the table, walked over to Haynes, took him by the hand, and
led him to the chair.
Haynes sat on a corner, completely confused, clutching the sides of his
jacket convulsively.
Semvol did not immediately begin the interrogation. He studied his
face and figure long and intently, and his pale blue eyes that were running
around and afraid of the light. He watched the frozen liHaynes with either

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a guilty or a confused smile.
"How do you feel, Mr. Haynes?" The colonel finally asked.
"Oh, excellent, excellent, Mr. Eh...
"Georges," the colonel prompted.
"Yes, thank you, Monsieur Georges. I never thought it could be
anywhere now—" He made a broad gesture with his hand.
-This is? Semvol asked casually. "Any civilized person has the right to
do that, my dear Haynes, and especially the people who created
everything. I mean scientists.
Semvol put a significant emphasis on the word "all".
Dr. Haynes wrinkled his brow and said dryly,
"You're joking, Monsieur Georges. We know what we are entitled to
now...
"Dr. Haynes!" "Do you seriously think that we are going to take
revenge on you, scientists, for the sufferings you have inflicted on us?"
Are you to blame for the fact that the fruits of your labor were used by
barbarians who happened to be in power? Do you really think that we are
the same barbarians who will blindly take revenge on people who enrich
human culture and civilization? If you think so, you are deeply offending
us.
Haynes was confused. He fidgeted in his chair, became agitated, and
spoke in a broken voice:
"Forgive me, Monsieur Georges, if I have offended you. But if you
really think so, then I am so obliged to you, so obliged... How would I like
to do anything to justify what you think of us.. I am ready to give all my
knowledge, strength, experience...
"That's right, Dr. Haynes, you're telling the holy truth. This is exactly
what is needed now. We should not remember grievances. We must speak
the same language, the language of cultured people who hate war.
"Yes," Haynes said enthusiastically. "That's quite right.
"I think, Dr. Haynes, that you'll get a shack like this," the colonel
casually swept his hand around his office, "much sooner than you think.
We believe that true scientists will find their calling in a renewed world...
- Of course, of course...
"Before I end our conversation, I have to ask you a few questions so
that I can have an idea of how best to arrange you. If, of course, you allow
it.
-Oh yes yes...
- Did you work in the Separate Laboratory headed by Dr. Roberto?
Haynes shuddered.
"Yes," he replied quietly, not understanding how Monsieur Georges
knew such details.

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 - Did your research mainly concern the atomic nucleus?
"Almost," Haynes whispered, frightened.
- Why "almost"?
- Because the atomic nucleus itself was studied by other laboratories
and institutes, and we tried to go a little deeper...
- How deeper?
"We studied the structure of the particles that make up atomic nuclei,
Mr. Georges... We studied the structure of particles, which in physics are
called "elementary".
Semvol smiled and, leaning over the table, remarked with a guilty
smile:
"Excuse me, I am ignorant of these matters. Therefore, I ask you to tell
us a little more. By the way, it seems that these studies were combined
under the code "Omega"?
Haynes was terrified. His voice was barely audible.
"Yes, Monsieur Georges. You are very informativeare ... Project
Omega was developed under the leadership of Dr. Roberto. The fact is that
Dr. Roberto, as well as some other scientists, theoretically predicted even
before the war that the particles that we used to call "elementary", from
which the nuclei of all atoms in the universe are built - protons, neutrons
and electrons, in turn have a complex structure.
"So what?" I don't think you did Omega during the war to prove any
theories, but had a very specific goal in mind?
-Exactly. That goal was... This goal was a terrible weapon of war...
Thank God, it was not created...
"That's right!" Semvol said, leaning back in his chair. "And how far has
your research gone?"
- It is difficult for me to judge what was done in connection with the
Omega project. I know that the theoretical substantiation of this work has
been completed. An accelerator circuit was also developed for scattering
high-energy particles on protons and neutrons. But what happened next, I
do not know.
"Don't you know?" Colonel Semvol was surprised. - What did you
work for Dr. Roberto, if you do not know the details of his research?
Haynes smiled guiltily.
- What kind of work did Dr. Roberto trust you with?
- Most of the time I worked to provide the laboratory with the necessary
equipment. The rest of the time I was engaged in information.
"yes, that's it," said Semvol with a hint of disappointment. "Well, what
did you inform your boss about?"
- I translated Russian articles.
- Russian articles? Do you know Russian, Dr. Haynes?

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 "Yes, Monsieur Georges. I once lived in Russia, or rather, not in Russia
itself, but in the country that is now called Western Belarus. True, all the
articles that I translated belonged to the pre-war period, but nevertheless
they were very informative. Dr. Roberto thought very highly of them.
"Did the Russians do things like your Omega before the war?" The
colonel asked incredulously.
- Well, of course!
"That's it," the colonel said thoughtfully. "Now I will ask you to answer
me one more question. Which of your comrades was most closely
connected with the work of Dr. Roberto?
"Dr. Mueller," Haynes said. - Dr. Müller was Roberto's most trusted
person. They were always together. They worked in the same office. They
did all the calculations together...
"I feel you don't seem to like Dr. Mueller, Haynes?"
"You are shrewd, Monsieur Georges. Yes. A thousand times, yes! I
never believed in his loyalty.
"Wow, Haynes, it turns out that you suspect your colleague of
something!
"I have suffered the right to do so, Monsieur Georges!"
"Well, well, I won't ask you any more about anything that might affect
your personal feelings. I am primarily interested in business. What can
you say about your second collaborator, Rodshtein?
- Rodshtein is an experimenter. He conducted experiments that Roberto
or Müller ordered him to do. He has golden hands and a devil's instinct.
Roberto did not like Rodstein for his greed for money, but he respected
him very much for his experimental talent...
"Thank you, Mr. Haynes. The conversation with you was very
interesting and useful. I appreciate your frankness and willingness to help
us. Now I will order you to be taken to thewhere you can clean up, change
your clothes and, of course, eat - you must be hungry?..
"Oh, Monsieur Georges!
"Don't," Semvol interrupted. "But I will have a request for you, and
even, if you like, an order.
"I'll do everything."
"My demand is very simple: neither now nor at any time should you
pass on the content of our conversation to your employees.
"Oh, of course, of course!"
"Well, that's all. And now good night and goodbye.
Semvol stood up and shook hands with Haynes. An adjutant appeared
at the door.
"Take Mr. Haynes to his room and call Rodstein to me."

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 4.
Colonel Semvol was known among his comrades as a subtle
psychologist. It was said that it was thanks to this that he made a rapid
career in the army. He had a flair that always led him unerringly to his
goal. He used this intuition not only to carry out the tasks of his superiors
in the best possible way, but also to win them over. He knew the
temperament of almost everyone he had come across, as well as the
weaknesses of everyone who might be of any interest to him. As he
himself said in the circle of his close friends, "when I talk to anyone, I
think my game ten moves ahead."
And now, looking at Rodstein, who was short, excessively fat at the top
and thin at the bottom, with a bald head and huge, skillful eyes, he knew
the whole "game" to the end. He knew on what move he would checkmate
this employee of the Separate Laboratory. The little that he knew from
Haynes's testimony, and, most importantly, his inner instinct, was enough
for Semvol to choose the most rapid "blitz" to play with Rodstein.
The colonel began rudely and unceremoniously:
"How much did you earn working for Roberto?"
"Three thousand," Rodstein replied without a trace of respect for the
foreigner sitting opposite him. His voice was low, hoarse, like that of a beer
cellar owner. His huge eyes expressed contempt for everything around him.
- Do you want to receive three times more? Semvol asked, keeping his
eyes on Rodstein.
- I want to receive five times more.
"At four," said Semvol.
"All right," Rodstein answered. "Besides, you must see to it that my
valuables are returned to me.
- What other values do you have? Semvol asked mockingly.
"The same ones that your compatriots in Sonderstadt stole from me.
"If they took them, it was by the right of the victors," the colonel said
carelessly.
"I don't care if you're the winners. You need me - give me back my
goods. That's all.
Rodshtein unceremoniously turned his back on the colonel and began
to examine the walls of the office.
"All right, I'll have your valuables returned to you." What can you do?
Semvol asked, inwardly indignant at his impudence.
- Everything you need. Since you don't understand a damn thing about
science anyway, then, probably, in your opinion, a lot. In short, I am an
atomic experimenter. In our time, this is the dirtiest and highest paid job.
- Why the dirtiest? Semvol grinned.
- Because we are working for the mass murder of people.

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 "And you are not Are you tormented by remorse? Semvol asked
ironically.
"No more than you," Rodstein answered. "We work to kill Russians,
they work to kill us. That's all the logic. Before you are killed, you need to
save money to build a reliable anti-nuclear shelter.
"And I thought you were just a miser!" It turns out that you are going to
build a personal shelter! The colonel laughed.
Rodstein came close to the desk, leaned his whole body on it and
wheezed:
"Only rich idiots like you, chief, spend money on cars, country villas, and
jewelry for greedy mistresses. You don't understand that during an atomic
explosion all this becomes ordinary fuel. With my own money, when the
time comes, I will build a hole of my own design in one secluded place of the
globe, climb into it and watch how you begin to evaporate. After your
stinking bodies in the form of dust and radioactive gases are dispersed in the
ionosphere, I will crawl out, collect everything that can still be called people
and every day I will hammer into the stupid heads of the remaining humanity
the truisms: science is meanness, civilization is stupidity, technology is a
crime, books are suicide. In short, I will see to it that the world has the kind of
golden age that modern humanity deserves and seeks.
"Isn't it too pessimistic, Rodstein?" Semvol exclaimed. "After all, what
you predict is only possible if Omega is developed by both sides?"
"Do you think the Russians are going to wait for you to develop
Omega?" Rodshtein asked the teacher with surprise when he discovered
that the student did not know the lesson he had learned long ago.
"And why do you think they'll work it out before we do?"
"Because they started earlier, chief. Our Fuehrer underestimated the
Russians in some ways. You seem to be repeating his mistakes.
Semvol grimaced. For the second time today they mention some
Russian works similar to "Omega", and for the second time they say that
they began earlier.
"Let's leave philosophy for the moment and get back to business," said
the colonel. "What do you say about Müller?"
"A talented physicist and a fool to boot.
"Why a fool?"
"He knows more about nuclear matters than anyone involved. And a
fool because he believes that his research will be used for some common
good, I hope that talking to you will make him wiser.
-So. That's it, Rodshtein. You can go. Let's assume that the agreement
between us has been concluded. Don't worry about your values. They will
be returned.
Rodshtein left the office without saying goodbye.

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 5.
Müller and Semvol studied each other for a very long time. Müller
looked at the colonel as if he were looking at a living creature of scientific
interest from another planet. Neither his slightly disheveled gray hair from
sleep nor his polished nails escaped his gaze. The colonel's gaze made him
uncomfortable, and for a moment he lost his usual self-confidence.
In this silent duel of views, Semvol acted as a buyer, trying to guess its
inner value behind the outer shell of a thing. It seemed that Müller was
detached from his body and consisted only of a large, beautiful head, full
ofprecious substance.
It was this clever head that frightened the colonel. No matter how hard
Semvol tried to mentally penetrate into the soul of the dignified scientist,
he could not guess anything in him, except that he was damn clever.
"The devil knows," thought Semvol, "if I'm thinking a game ten moves
ahead, can't Müller be twenty moves ahead of me?"
Semvol decided to start with "psychological intelligence". He asked,
smiling slightly:
"Apparently, Herr Müller, you had to endure a lot of trouble during the
war?"
"No more than others, Herr Colonel Semvol," replied Müller.
"Wow! Knight's move! How does he know my name and that I am a
colonel?" - like lightning flashed through Semvol's brain. For a moment
he was confused. Müller smiled broadly and openly.
"You wonder how I know your rank and your name?" I just heard the
soldiers who accompanied us here talk about you.
"Damned talkers. That's a military secret in our time!"
"But I hope they didn't say that it was Colonel Semwol who would talk
to you?" The colonel asked dryly.
- No, they really didn't say that. But they described you very colorfully.
One of them said that your head resembles an old pumpkin with some gray
hair glued to it for laughs.
Semvol was completely confused, not knowing how to continue the
conversation. But looking into Müller's eyes sparkling with amusement,
he began to laugh softly at first, then louder and louder.
- So he is conspiratorial! he exclaimed. "Well, all right, Dr. Müller, if
that's the case, let's get acquainted, I'm really Colonel Semvol." Only, for
God's sake, don't tell anyone about it!
Semwol said the last words in a tone as if he and Müller were old
friends who might have their own secrets.
"Well, I won't tell anybody about that," Müller said.
Semvol was pleased. He decided that the situation was not out of his

158
control and that Müller's move had been successfully neutralized, even
profitably. It seemed to him that he had won the trust of a scientist.
"You know, Müller, I'm damn glad that the war is over and I have the
opportunity to throw off my tired ranks and ranks. I'm a civilian by nature
and prefer to wear this," the colonel tugged at the hem of his jacket.
"Yes," Müller drawled thoughtfully. - There has been no war for two
days now.
"For two days, mankind rejoices and enjoys the silence that has reigned
over the world," Semvol supported him.
"And why, Mr. Colonel, did your planes bomb the Separate Laboratory
on the night before the end of the war?" Müller asked suddenly.
Frowning, Semvol said,
"That was a terrible mistake. The aviation unit received an order in
which the dates were mixed up. The commander of the aviation link was
given to a military field tribunal ...
"It's a pity," said Müller.
- Flight commander?
"No, the laboratory. I thought it would become a research center on...
"Oh, that's what you mean?" By the way, I just called you in order to
offer you a job in the field to which you have devoted yourself... As for the
laboratory, rest assured, we will offer you a laboratory that you have never
dreamed of...
"Actually, I don't need a laboratory for my work, Mr. Semvol. I am a
theorist. My laboratory is a desk, a stack of paper, and a good library...
"You, Herr Müller, will have all this and more. Believe me, we
understand what conditions a theoretical scientist needs to create. We're
committed to making sure you can continue to work on Omega.
"Tell me frankly, Colonel Semvol, why do you want to continue
working on the Omega?"
"We want to use the forces of nature for the benefit of mankind,"
exclaimed Semvol, jumping up from the table. "To hell with war!" Stop it!
People are tired of wars!
Semvol walked around the office excitedly several times. In his mind,
he figured out if he had overplayed.
Semvol waited to see what Müller's reaction would be. But there was
no reaction. Müller was silent, watching him with his eyes. "Overplayed,"
thought Semvol, "probably overplayed!"
"The time of wars, Herr Müller, is over!" he exclaimed pathetically
again. - And are they possible now? Here you are, a scientist, one of the
few who understand the potential of modern science. Can you imagine
war in an era when the Omega problem will be solved?
Müller grimaced. He looked attentively around the colonel's office,

159
looked strangely at all the objects on the table, at the furniture around him,
and at the colonel himself, and said barely audibly:
"All this will disappear. Ash... No, gas... Plasma is scarier.
The colonel also lowered his voice and continued excitedly:
"Yes... This is what humanity has led to. It is difficult to say whether
this is a blessing or a curse. You say gas, plasma. That's nice! But someone
will survive! Someone can accidentally avoid instant destruction. It could
be your father, or my wife, or your friend's little daughter. A burned man
slowly wanders through the scorching desert. He is blind, wounded,
poisoned. He moves on the poisonous ground, in the poisoned fog,
completely alone, without any hope of help or salvation. Do you, Müller,
imagine what it means to wait for the inevitable death in solitude, in the
desert?
"I imagine," the scientist whispered and grabbed his chest with his left
hand. His eyes widened and stared at the Colonel.
"Are you wounded?" Semvol hurried.
Müller smiled guiltily.
-Oh no... That is, a little. In the right shoulder... It's nothing. But what
you're saying reminds me of how once...
-A what?
The scientist clenched his teeth and said firmly:
"Once I experienced this terrible feeling of doom and hopelessness...
So why do you want to continue working on Omega?
"Don't you guess?" Streams of free energy! Flights to the stars! Seas in
deserts! An unprecedented flowering of civilization! Abundance and
happiness! It's all in Omega, isn't it? But here, in your ruined homeland,
nothing can be achieved now. It takes time, time... And you can't lose it.
That is why we invite you to a ready-made, well-equipped laboratory. The
best in the world. And when your country can... Then you'll come back, at
any time.
"I mean," said Müller at last, "that before I agree to continue working
on the Omega, I must have a guarantee that it will not be used for another
war. I want to have a guarantee for myself. I don't want to go to the bto sit
in the dock as a war criminal.

"Yes," said Semvol vaguely, feverishly thinking how best to continue

the conversation. "Well, in what form would you like to have such a
guarantee?"
- In a very simple way. All my research and all the research of my
future comrades should be freely published in all scientific journals. There
is no secret science, all the research of scientists should be the property of
all people.

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 The colonel thought for a moment. He knew he couldn't do to Mueller
what he had done to Haynes and Rodstein. It was too serious a game here.
I had to answer something immediately...
"All right, Müller. I agree...
"In that case, Colonel Semvol," Müller stood up and smiled, "in that
case, here's my hand for you."
The scholar shook Semvol's hand firmly.
"And now you'll be taken to your room and sent a doctor."
Müller shuddered.
"Only, I beg you, there is no need for doctors. Just the sight of them
makes me feel bad. It is better to let them bring me a bandage and warm
water. I'll take care of myself.
-Ok. Good night.
When Müller had retired, the colonel summoned Liz. She walked in
with a small notebook and a pencil in her hands.
"Haven't you fallen asleep, girl?" Semvol asked her cheerfully. - Today
we worked well with you. You see what an interesting people they are. I'll
ask you to retype the record as soon as you've had enough sleep. Make the
conversation with Haynes in triplicate. Cut off the part of the tape on
which this conversation is recorded and send it to Major Sullo along with a
copy of the transcript. We'll send Haynes himself there, too.
"And who is Major Sullo?"
"People like Haynes are his thing," Semvol said evasively.
- And what will happen to Müller and Rodstein?
"These, apparently, can be used for their intended purpose," said the
colonel, as if in thought...
"As trophies?"
-A what? Ah, trophies! Holy naivety. Go to bed better, Liz.
When Semvol left, the girl approached the table and pressed a button on
the tape recorder panel. Then, from the drawer of her desk, she took out a
reel with a magnetic recording of the conversation. Grabbing it, she turned
off the light and silently left the office.

6.
The old military cruiser "Maloe" crossed the ocean, carrying in its
womb several thousand tons of scientific equipment and several dozen
scientists and specialists, including Dr. Muller and Dr. Rodstein.
Meanwhile, Dr. Haynes was getting acquainted with his new life in
Europe, in one of the tiny villages in the Bavarian Alps, on the shores of a
large blue lake.
Haynes did not immediately understand his new situation.
On the day of his arrival, a man in civilian clothes but in a uniform

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military cap, with huge sunglasses that covered the upper part of his face,
gave him a thick notebook with numbered pages and ordered him to write
an autobiography, starting from birth. It took Haynes three days to
compose.
After finishing writing his autobiography, Haynes told the man in
sunglasses about it. He took the notebook and reappeared a day later. He
said that he was satisfied with the work and that he would like to clarify a
few details. Could he, Haynes, remember the street and the number of the
house in which he and his parents lived in a small town in Western
Belarus, before its accession to the Soviet Union? Haynes made the
addition, wondering why these people might be interested in such small
things. He was waiting to be told something about his future scientific
work.
One day, the same bespectacled gentleman came to him and gave him
another literary task: to write everything he knew about Russian works
related to the Omega project. "It's begun," Haynes thought to himself, and
he set to work eagerly.
He presented in detail and, if possible, popularly the content of the
works of Russian specialists in nuclear physics, articles that he translated
into German for Dr. Roberto. He pointed out that as early as 1939, Russian
physicists had calculated the critical mass of uranium. He mentioned the
experimental studies of Russian scientists who had observed the
spontaneous fission of the nuclei of heavy chemical elements long before
Otto Gann. And he dwelt especially on the curious nuclear particles
mesons, which were discovered in cosmic rays by a laboratory in the
Caucasus.
When his note was read, the "master" of this mysterious organization,
Major Sullo, came to him.
He was a short man with a very thin body and excessively broad
shoulders and long arms. From behind, he resembled a gorilla. He walked,
swaying from side to side, with his hands lowered low. Sullo's face was
the most terrifying. It seemed to consist of two parts. The lower part was a
tiny, almost childlike face with a small nose, mouth and chin gathered
together in an underdeveloped ball. Above the closely set prickly eyes
hung the second part - a huge, ugly-shaped skull, pushed forward,
overgrown with thin red hair, through which the pink crown was visible.
His hair almost merged with his sparse eyebrows, so that the major
actually had no forehead. As he spoke, slowly, with difficulty
pronouncing each word, sounds like a frog croaking or a spasmodic
hiccup were pushed out of his tiny mouth.
Sullo seemed to enjoy the fact that Haines was afraid of his ugliness.
He deliberately moved close to him or suddenly leaned close to his face

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and smiled with a kind of hideous smile.
"From everything we've read, it's clear to us that you'll be a good fit for
us," said Sullo.
"I am very glad, Mr. Major.
"Neither do we," Sullo said, still smiling and chewing.
"What am I to do now, Herr Major?" Haynes asked, looking away.
"To learn, Mr. Haynes," Sullo said.
"Isn't my knowledge enough?" Haynes asked in a choked voice.
Sullo leaned over to him again and hissed,
"No.
Haynes recoiled. He sat in an unnatural position, with his head thrown
back and his back arched.
- You will have to learn a lot.
"Do you want to use me in a job similar to the one I did for Roberto?"
- Not exactly. We don't need it.
With these words, Sullo got up and, without looking back, left the
room.
The next day, a bus with five passengers in civilian clothes came to the
valley. They were accompanied by two soldiers. Haynes ran out of the
house and went to meet them. However, one soldier raised his hand and
signaled him not to approach.
Everyone forgot about Haynes. To kill time, he sat on a rock near the
lake and looked at the cottage with newsettlers, then to the pass. One day a
photographer came to him and photographed him several times.
The real nightmare in Haynes' life came after that memorable day when
Sullo appeared again and began to speak, emphasizing every word:
"We, Haines, have no need to play hide-and-seek with you. We know
who you are. We know that in addition to your scientific, so to speak,
activities, you were engaged in other activities. All your denunciations of
the staff of Dr. Roberto's laboratory are in our hands. This would be very
good material for the prosecution. We are also aware of some of your
operations in Western Belarus during the occupation. The Russians may
be interested in this. Wouldn't it be a pleasure to meet them?
Haynes was speechless.
"In your position it is necessary to be very loyal and submissive, yes,
submissive," Sullo continued. "Otherwise, things will end badly for you.
By the way, only for participating in the work of the Separate Laboratory,
your friends Müller and Rodstein, whom we considered it necessary to
hand over to the Russians, were hanged. They were not even tried.
-Hanged? Haynes whispered. His stomach felt cold, as if liquid air had
been poured into it.
"Yes, my dear. Their crime compared to yours is an innocent joke...

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 "What am I supposed to do?" whispered Haynes pleadingly, grabbing
Sullo by the sleeve. "Tell me what I have to do, and I'll do everything!" He
shook all over.
"As long as you're with us, you're safe." If you cooperate with us, you
will receive honors and awards. But it will not be easy for you. Strange as
it may seem, but the safest thing for you is to go to Russia.
-A what?! - Haynes shouted in horror - Go to Russia!
"Yes," Sullo smiled nastily. "Please don't be alarmed. As the first task, I
suggest that you forget your name and surname and get used to the other
one. Everything is written here.
Sullo handed Haines a piece of paper, which he took with trembling
hands.
When the major came out, Haynes sat there for a long time, not
thinking. Then he clutched his head and began to sob loudly.

ROSE AND MARIA

1.
"Gene, let's go bathe, let Crowe keep watch at the phone."
Gene Stokink and Juan Rodores came out. From the door and windows
of the makeshift house, sharply outlined streaks of light fell on the deep
sand. A few meters away from the house, both were completely lost in the
dark. They walked towards the barely audible rustle of the sea.
"If this island was called Las Palmas only because of those two palm
trees on the shore, then I am sure that the Spaniard who discovered it had a
great imagination," grumbled Stoquinc. He was very annoyed by the
emptiness around him.
- They say that there used to be a lot of them here. Then they were cut
down.
"And you say that all the natives have been evicted from here?"
-Yes. Saccoro suggested that they move either to the island of Puerto
Rondo, or even further south, to the Soyd Islands. Yesterday a large
steamer was moored in the roadstead of Sardoneo, on which the last
islanders were loaded.
They approached the seashore, and it became cooler. His eyes were
accustomed to the darkness. In the black sky there were rare stars and
against them the majestic silhouettes of two palm trees. Someone once
called these two lonely palm trees Rosa and Maria. They, these palm trees,
were known on all the islands, they were known in the "capital" of the
archipelago, in the village of Padre on the island of Owori. Often instead
of "Las Palmas" they said "Rosa Maria".
They are notThey immediately undressed, and putting down the towels,
sat down next to them and stared into the thick blackness of the sea.

164
 "I don't see what could have kept him there," said Stoken. "It's so unlike
Frank.
"He will," said Rodores confidently. "There's never been a time when
Frank didn't keep his word.
"They say he's a talented guy.
"Do you think Professor Faith takes on all sorts of petty things?" The
old man has a flair for talent!
"Faith is said to be very independent. Someone heard him yelling at
Saccoro himself. Do you know what Faith said to Mr. Saccoro? He quoted
to him the words of the great Einstein addressed to the fascists: "You don't
need a brain. The spinal cord is quite enough for you."
The friends laughed, threw off their clothes and went out to sea. They
walked for a long time on the soft sand melting under their feet, gradually
sinking into the warm water.
"There's nowhere to swim here. The bank stretches for thirty kilometers
to the north, and the depth of the sea does not exceed three or four meters.
"Yes, it is," said Rodores, "and that is why Saccoro bought these
islands. Shallow water greatly facilitates communication and especially
the laying of power lines. You know that laboratories, especially
cosmotrons, will eat up a huge amount of electricity... The power plant is
being built on Ovori. From there, the energy will go to Cuello and to our
Rosa Maria. Most of all, to us, because the cosmotrons will be installed on
Las Palmas.
- And why did you decide to build this research center not on the
continent? Stokink asked.
"Because it's a private research center, Saccoro's personal property!"
Everything here belongs to him, from sand and water to our brains.
Suddenly, the silence of the night was cut by the distant roar of
helicopter propellers.
-Goes! Rodores exclaimed. "I told you it would come!"
Cutting through the water, the young people quickly walked to the
shore, leaving two dark paths behind them on the surface of the sea. When
they reached the shore, the silhouette of a small helicopter appeared low
above the ground.
"Hello, Frankie," the three shouted as they saw a guy in a white suit
coming down the easy stairs. "Hello, old man!" We almost died of
impatience waiting for you here.
- Wait, guys, squeeze me! Crowe, get in the back of the car, pull out a
box of beer and something else.
Crowe rushed into the helicopter, and Frank, accompanied by Rodores
and Stocking, entered the cabin.
"You've messed up, you scoundrels," Frank said without malice,

165
looking critically around the smoky room.
"Frank, it's nerves," Rodores began to justify himself.
"Hurry up and marry tyrannical women, they will put your nerves in
order.
He opened a bottle of beer and drank straight out of it.
Although he was tired, and his slightly squinted eyes were red from
insomnia, the mood was excellent. There was something boyish and perky
about him. His face was especially pleasant. Oval, dark, with a straight
beautiful nose, with plump lips, like those of little boys. The smile is
delicate, slightly ironic. Frank belonged to the category of people who
seemed to have no enemies. Even at the university, rich and arrogant
students treated him with respect. Everyone considered it an honor to win
his friendship. No one ever dared to hint at his rather "average" origin: his
parents were poor farmers.
True, Frank Dolory was not only loved for his kind face and open soul.
Many were simply afraid of him. They were afraid of his sharp tongue, as
well as not very large, but very strong fists.
- Frank, dump the news! Crow exclaimed.
- I don't know exactly how many years we will work here. But I know
for sure that we are going to work on the most modern physics with the
most modern equipment under the leadership of such a giant as Professor
Feith. And I also found out that some German scientists were contracted to
work with us.
Frank said the last words as if in secret. Indeed, the words "in secret"
are more than appropriate here. The history of scientific research on the
islands of the Las Palmas archipelago would remain a secret from all
mankind for more than one decade if... However, more on this later.

2.
In a world where everything is bought and sold, the relationship
between science and those in power is purely commercial. Science offers
an increase in profits, labor productivity, political and military influence,
as well as personal power. In return, she is paid in cash. Corrupted by
money and philistine ideals, scientists offer themselves without caring
about how and for what purposes the results of their work will be used.
The hunt for this commodity took on grandiose proportions, and the
commodity itself really decided that a great era of flourishing of science
and culture had begun.
This was one of the most dramatic delusions in the history of science,
and flirting with scientists is one of the most insidious traps that has been
set by the corrupt world for those who think and analyze. Future historians
will sarcastically mention the names of many outstanding scientists who

166
succumbed to the boom in connection with the creation of "brain trusts".
The proletarianization of science was facilitated by another objective
circumstance. There came a time when scientists could not work like
Galileo or Newton. The age of great discoveries based on observations of
a falling apple or a heated piece of metal is over. Tiny scientific
laboratories were suitable only for amateurism, for a "hobby", for a
pleasant pastime, without any hope of making any valuable discovery.
Real, "big" science was created in giant research centers and institutes,
with their colossal accelerators of nuclear particles, computers, complex
electronic equipment and expensive materials. All this could only be
possessed by those who had money.
Saccoro belonged to the most dangerous category of wealthy
individuals in modern conditions, who tried to buy science and scientific
thought to strengthen and expand their own, personal power.
Saccoro is, first of all, billions, tons of jewelry, its own banks and
factories, its own islands, territories, airfields and farms. The very name of
this man threw the bourgeoisie into confusion. He was spoken of in a
half-whisper, and his lawyers and advocates felt that they were the true
makers of the law.
In his fifties, Richard Saccoro once met his son Onto.
Onto told him that he was graduating from university and receiving a
Bachelor of Science degree.
- What do you study at the university? Father asked indifferently.
- A little bit of everything. Mainly nuclear physics. You know it's so
fashionable now...
- I know, but I don't understand, why. I heard that after thermonuclear
things there is nothing else to do there.
- Nuclear physics still contains the most incredible opportunities for the
power that a person can acquire.
Richard Saccoro perked up.
"What kind of power are you talking about?"
- About the most direct, I would say, physical. By mastering the third
type of nuclear energy, man could literally become a god. The theory
predicts that it is possible to carry in your pocket a force sufficient to blow
up the entire globe...
"Well, that's enough," the elder exclaimed Saccoro in disbelief.
-Not at all. Until now, when people talked about nuclear energy, they
meant the fission of the uranium nucleus or the synthesis of helium from
heavy hydrogen. It is very cumbersome and inconvenient. Now a new way
of obtaining a myriad of energy has been outlined. With the help of the
annihilation of matter...
"Come on, come on, tell me more about it..."

167
 Onto Sakkoro confusedly told his father everything he knew about
annihilation and antimatter. Richard thought for a moment. He didn't
really trust his son's knowledge, but what he heard excited him.
Immediately after his visit to Onto, he called one of his information
centers and asked for a competent scientist in modern nuclear physics to
be sent for consultation. Professor Faith had been sent to him.
What Professor Faith had told him stirred his imagination even more.
He suddenly decided that perhaps he, Richard Saccoro, should be the one
who, by taking possession of the third type of nuclear energy, would put
an end to the confusion and confusion of the present world...
At first it was only an unformed thought, then it gradually turned into
an obsession, behind which a terrible, fantastic plan was hidden.
After all, he thought, if he died just like that, some majestic tombstone
would at best be erected over his grave. Mankind and even more so history
will soon forget that Richard Saccoro once lived in the world... He could
not reconcile himself to the fact that he would die, and life, young,
flourishing, healthy, would go on.
After Professor Faith's stories, Saccoro lay awake all night long and
saw terrible pictures of death and destruction in the dark. They must begin
at the very moment when his heart stops beating.
In a strange way, fantastic nightmares were associated with the
meaninglessness of a life of continuous accumulation of wealth. Outward
splendour, fame, universal admiration and fear, vanity, riotous and insane
spending, all that people in his circle call "big life," began to fade before
what he, Saccoro, could really do with the help of science. He suddenly
felt with painful acuteness that the result of the life he had lived could not
be expressed either in the capital left behind after death, or in the
comparison of pleasant and unpleasant minutes lived.
Oh, if only he had thought about it earlier! Perhaps he would already
possess superhuman power and crushing strength!
But he will still have time! He is not so old yet! He will have time!
This is how a research center arose on the islands in the Atlantic
Ocean...

3.
The construction of the Saccoro Research Center was completed at the
very time when the whole world, like a disturbed beehive, was buzzing
with excitement. Advances in a wide range of fieldsThe techniques were
fantastic and seemed to have reached the limits of what was possible.
After a long period of research, the first fusion-based power reactor
was finally launched. Deep under the ground was hidden an obedient
miniature "sun". Ordinary water became the fuel for nuclear power plants.

168
 After that, they began to talk about the fact that true scientists in
physics had nothing more to do, because everything was revealed,
investigated, patterns were found and transferred to engineering and
technological reference books. Many nuclear scientists began to "change
their specialty", leaving to work in the field of space astronomy,
cybernetics, biophysics, and medicine.
And yet, nuclear physics has not yet said its last word...
It began at the dawn of the 20th century, when Einstein wrote his
famous formula for the equivalence of mass and energy. The meaning of
this formula was unclear for a long time, because it was derived from the
most general ideas about space and time... Einstein's formula was obtained
automatically, "by itself", without any special assumptions about the
structure of matter. The great scientists of the time intuitively assumed
that the equivalence equation could be tested on reactions occurring in the
atomic nucleus.
But nuclear fission and synthesis are only special cases of the
transformation of matter. Einstein's formula did not at all claim that it
applied only to these particular cases. After all, in Einstein's formula, mass
is any mass, not just the mass of uranium or the mass of hydrogen. The
formula states that any substance under some conditions that are not yet
known can become a source of energy.
What are these conditions? Can such conditions be realized on Earth?
And if so, will this be a terrible catastrophe or the beginning of an era of
truly unlimited human domination over the universe?
The captivating simplicity of the formulation of the law attracted
hotheads of scientists who were not satisfied with particular cases of its
application.
The mystery became somewhat clearer when suddenly a very clear
category of so-called antiparticles was discovered in the family of nuclear
particles. Positrons, antiprotons, antineutrons...
Gradually, at first, only in the minds of the most daring theorists, and
then in the minds of experimenters and, of course, in the minds of science
fiction writers, the idea of an anti-world was born, which probably exists
somewhere and which, at least in miniature, can be created on Earth...
Professor Feith belonged to the category of the most daring physicists
who understood that there was something more behind the law of
equivalence of mass and energy than the well-known and carefully tested
special cases of nuclear transformations.
"At least half a century must pass before the physical idea becomes
understandable and accessible to a wide range of people," he said to
Frank. - Such laws as the law of equivalence require much more time to
comprehend. And do you know why? Because its fundamentality has sunk

169
in the ocean of private inspections.
- So, you believe in the existence of the anti-world, in all the fantastic
nonsense that popularizers and writers have invented? Frank asked.
- I believe that the matter is not as simple as people who are not familiar
with modern physical theory try to portray it. The amazing symmetry of
the laws of natureoften makes me think that by necessity, or perhaps by
pure chance, we are forced to consider only one side of the coin.
When both cosmotrons were launched on Las Palmas and the mass
production of antiparticles began to be observed in colliding beams
accelerated to an energy of tens of thousands of billions of electronvolts,
then even then Professor Faith did not have a very good idea of how to
create a significant piece of antimatter from these tiny antiparticles...
"Come on, Frank, you have a more vivid and daring imagination. Think
about how we can create, well, at least antihydrogen...
Faith had loved Frank since university, and of all the scientists working
for Saccoro, he considered him the most talented. Despite the big
difference in years, more than twenty-five years, Faith and Dolori were
friends in the truest sense of the word. This was to some extent facilitated
by the tender friendship between Liz and Dolori. Faith looked
good-naturedly at his daughter and at Frank, and decided to himself that
the marriage of Liz and Frank was as inevitable a "phenomenon of nature"
as the annihilation of a particle and an antiparticle.

4.
Professor Faith and his young friend were so engrossed in working on
the problem of creating antimatter that they completely stopped noticing
what was happening on the islands. The two of them sat late into the night
in the control room of the observation room, then in the optical laboratory,
then at the computer that processed the results of the experiments. Frank
worked feverishly, with enthusiasm, sometimes to the point of
self-forgetfulness. When he came up with a magnetic chamber for
antihydrogen, everyone thought he was crazy. He ran around all the
laboratories, hugged and kissed everyone, told funny stories and
anecdotes or wrote mathematical equations and explained for the
thousandth time how his magnetic chamber should work. He was so
carried away by his idea that he told the seller of a tobacco kiosk on the
embankment about it.
"Still, how good it is to be a scholar these days, Mr. Dolori," said the
old man, after listening to Frank's strange and utterly incomprehensible
story. "And where does it fit in your head?"
"Here, old man, here!" Frank said, slapping his forehead with his hand.
"Tell me, please, Mr. Dolori, why did the military come to the islands?"

170
 -Who?
- Military people... True, I don't know much about ranks, but it seems to
me that they are some kind of generals...
Frank was surprised. No, he had not seen generals on the islands.
Indeed, why are they here?
"And how many of them came?" Frank asked, as if awake. For the first
time in a long time, he suddenly realized that life was flowing around him,
that he was not alone on the island...
"I really don't know, but I've seen five or six military men.
"Strange," Frank said.
He walked quickly along the embankment to Professor Faith's villa.
He found the professor reading the latest scientific journals. Instead of
answering the greeting, he looked intently at his young friend and said
very emphatically:
"I got really into trouble for you...
"For what?"
"For your talkativeness—" Faith smiled bitterly. - There were people
who saw a threat to our priority in your joy.
Frank flushed.
"Well, you know! If everything repeats itself, as with nuclear energy,
this idiotic secrecy is underInsightfulness, mutual distrust, then...
"What?"
- I don't understand why we are engaged in scientific research.
The professor approached Frank.
"Don't you think that you and I have become detached from life and
drowned in calculations and experiments?" Here are the new issues of the
Physical Review. There is not a hint of our articles in them. And we sent
them three months ago.
Rummaging through the drawer, he took out a large package and
handed it to Frank.
-Here they are... Today they returned it. They did not go further than the
post office on the island of Owori.
-Strangely...
Frank turned the thick package in his hands in confusion.
- No, it's not strange. You and I did not even imagine that censorship
had long been organized here, the personal censorship of Mr. Saccoro...
"But that's the devil knows what!" Dolori burst out. "After all, when we
started work, the conditions were completely different. Science is science
and...
"Yes, yes, yes... I remember everything. But now it has become known
that the Russians are dealing with a similar problem, and not without
success. Do you know who is in charge of their work? Professor

171
Kotonaev, the same one who published a number of brilliant papers on
relativistic quantum electrodynamics a few years ago...
-Very well! It means that we have a worthy opponent, and we can
measure our strength with him!
"Oh, Frank!" The matter is much more complicated, and we need to
think hard. In the meantime, Mr. Saccoro has ordered me to forbid you to
tell about your successes to the first person you meet.
Frank sank into his chair.
- And what about the military?..
- Well, let's assume that these are only former military men dressed in
the farce uniform of the Las Palmas armed forces. They had come here at
the invitation of Saccoro to restore order. Our research must be kept
secret.
-Mystery? What kind of nonsense? What a secret it is, if any competent
physicist knows about it! Nuclear research even in our field has long been
no secret!
"Nevertheless, they insist on secrecy.
- But we work not in a governmental, but in a private research center.
Why, having started such a business, Saccoro needed to play some
secrets!
- Saccoro says that he would be very pleased to overtake the Russians.
This, he says, is the object of his personal vanity, if you will.
- Doesn't sound very convincing.
"Exactly, Frank. That's why we need to take a good look and think
about everything.

5.
Of all the foreigners who worked for Saccoro, only one was allowed to
live on the island of Las Palmas - Rodstein. Firstly, as an experimenter, he
always had to be close to his installations, and secondly, given his
unscrupulousness and greed for money, for some reason they believed that
he was a reliable person, he would not run away, because he was well
paid.
When the first antihydrogen traps began to be manufactured, Rodstein,
under the direction of Dolori, reconfigured the linear accelerators to
ensure the production of the largest number of hyperons. At very high
energies, hyperons turned into a whole cascade of antinucleons. The
reaction took place in billionths of a second, and there was little hope that
the antinucleons would have time to "stick together" into the nuclei of
elements heavier than hydrogen. While the technicians were installing the
meters and cameras, Frank and Rodshtein were considering new
experiments.

172
 Rodshtein explained his ideas reluctantly, lazily, squeezing out hoarse
indistinct words.
Frank was used to it and always listened to him with great attention.
"Rod, don't you want to go home?" Frank asked, as they discussed the
upcoming series of experiments in detail.
"Yes," Rodstein answered. "I love land and hate crazy sunshine and
water deserts.
"I've been told you're going to go into the jungle and start building a
personal anti-nuclear shelter.
-Going to. Be sure, I won't invite you.
Frank smiled maliciously.
- You have an obsession. You know how many good changes have
taken place in the world.
- Changes, changes... I don't really believe in these changes.
- Do you think states will violate their solemn obligations?
- No, they won't. Atomic and thermonuclear attacks are outlawed,
firstly, because the affected territory will be impossible to occupy.
Secondly, the atmosphere will be so polluted that all life on earth will be
breathed in. Thirdly, it is pointless to drag a thermonuclear colossus even
on an intercontinental missile, since modern anti-missile technology
eliminates the carrier with its cargo at the very moment when it lifts off the
ground. I am absolutely sure that it is for these reasons that a nuclear war
is not foreseen.
"So you agree?..
- No, I do not agree. I know that Hitlers appear on earth from time to
time. Enlightened philistines like you and your Professor Faith allow these
schizoids to make their way to power. And in the paranoid, like a
cancerous tumor, the idea of rising above all mankind, taking over the
whole world and commanding the fate of each person begins to swell...
"Nonsense, Rodstein! Today's society will not allow this to happen.
"Won't allow it?" You know, I once thought, why did the Olympian
gods deal with Prometheus in such a boorish way, who stole fire from
them and gave it to people? He forgot that among the millions of people
who will use fire to warm themselves and cook their own food, there will
certainly be a few dozen idiots who, using fire, will cause more trouble
and suffering to people than people will do good to themselves...
Prometheus was just a short-sighted politician.
Frank said,
"Of course there are freaks. But there are more good people. They will
not allow freaks to become arsonists...
"That's if the arsonist runs around like a madman with a torch in his
hands and puts it under the roofs... Such a person, indeed, can be caught

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and stopped. But what if the maniac is smart and cunning, and his power
fits in his pocket?
Frank smiled and patted Rodstein on the shoulder condescendingly.
"You're a dreamer, Rod!"
"But you have no imagination. You know physics, but you don't have
the goal you're working for.
- I believe in reason...
"And who doesn't believe it?" At all times of history, people believed in
reason... And yet there were wars.
Rodshtein got up from the table and, muttering "reason, reason" under
his breath, left the office.
Dolori imagined for a second the entire multi-billion population of the
globe, opposed by one man - the yellow-gray old man Saccoro, and he felt
That's funny. Nonsense!

6.
Liz opened the door for him. She stood slender, warm, charming.
-You here. Liz! God, how unexpected.. And not a word of warning!
"I decided to surprise you: you, Mr. Dolori, and my dear father,
Professor Faith.
He impulsively embraced her.
"Father's not at home," she whispered, and clung tightly to him.
"Now tell me, where have you been?" He asked at last, as they sat down
on the sofa.
"Frank, I've been everywhere. I traveled like crazy from one end of the
country to the other in order to forget you at least for a minute. I
sometimes succeeded, but not very often. You know, I took this trip only
to avoid distracting you 6 tons of work.
"Is that so?" - he was surprised. "Who made you think?"
"As always, my wise, all-knowing Professor Faith. Before I left, we had
a serious conversation. It is long and very boring, with references to the
ancient classics, to Freud and Pavlov, to Newton and Leibniz, in general,
to all those sources that talk about the beneficial and unbeneficial
influence of a woman on the creative process that takes place in all men
here.
She slapped Frank on the forehead.
"Well, you know, I'll definitely talk to your dad. By the way, don't you
know where he is now?
-Yes I know. He is now on the island of Owori with Mr. Saccoro Sr.
himself.
"Did he call him?"
Professor Faith himself demanded an audience. He says that some

174
strange events have happened here on the islands. And I noticed it myself.
Can you imagine, before boarding the helicopter home, I was subjected to
a real search on Owori! And do you know who runs this business there?
An old freak I've known since the war. At that time he was a major. His
last name is Sullo.
"By the way, there's another wartime acquaintance of yours, James
Semvol.
-I know. It looks like they decided to replicate their old organization in
miniature! Why all this comedy?
Frank remembered his conversation with Rodstein.
"If only it were a comedy. However, I am sure that the professor will be
able to dot all the i's. In the meantime, let's forget all this, Liz!
It became completely dark. The conversation fell silent. They would
have sat there until morning, if the door had not suddenly opened around
twelve o'clock at night.
"Dad, is that you?" Liz exclaimed.
-Yes. Is Frank here?
Frank shuddered at the surprise. The professor's voice was very harsh.
The chandelier burst into flames. Professor Faith quickly crossed the
living room and sat down in an armchair.
"I've just come from Saccoro. What I managed to find out infuriated
me.
"What's the matter, Professor?"
"First of all, he made me wait for about half an hour. As if I were some
kind of boy. A negro servant told me that Monsieur Saccoro was having an
important conversation with the military masters. A company dressed in the
idiotic clothes of our "armed forces" stretched out of the office in single file. I
flew into the office completely furious. He was sitting at his desk. "I'm
listening to you, Faith," he grunted. "Only shorter. In an hour they will come
to me." - "Okay, in short, it's shorter. I want to know only one thing: what is
happening on the islands? Why did the military appear here? Why are the
sentries stationed? Why was my daughter searched? Why?" interrupted,
asking: "Do you have a lot of "whys?" - "Enough for now!" - I was literally
choking with anger. "Because, Professor Faith, I want to."
"Is that what he told you?" Frank exclaimed.
-Literally. I was even speechless. I wanted to say something else, but at
that moment he stood up and began to ask me in an ominous voice: "Why
are you working so slowly? Why hasn't the main result been obtained yet?
Why are the Russians ahead of us in everything? Why don't you load
foreigners properly? For example, this Müller, whom Semvol praised to
me so much?"
Can you imagine my situation? I couldn't stand it anymore and just

175
yelled: "Science and scientific research is not making shoes on an
assembly line! Your "whys" are meaningless. Take the trouble to answer
my questions. Otherwise, you will have to look for another leader to
continue the research." He said, "And that's what I'm thinking about now."
In the helicopter, I thought about this conversation carefully. It seems
to me that there is a smell of adventure here, maybe even worse... I feel
that I urgently need to fly to the continent and tell everyone about it.
"Dad, dear, I'm beginning to be afraid... It is better not to go to the
continent. After all, if Saccoro... Oh, don't, please!
"What are you afraid of?" People should know what is going on here.
Frank came up to the professor.
"There's no need to hurry, Professor. Work has really stalled lately. We
need some new ideas regarding the production and storage of antimatter.
Faith lowered his head to his hands and stared at the floor:
"Why is Saccoro mad?
- Simply because he wants to be the first.
Wishing to distract the professor from his anxious thoughts, Frank
remarked:
"As for Müller, Saccoro is probably right. More serious tasks need to be
set before him. By the way, I don't even know him personally. Perhaps it
will be necessary to meet with him in the next few days.
"As you wish," Faith said vaguely. "I'm damn tired, so I want to leave
you." Good night.

INSTITUTE OF APPLIED PHYSICS

1.
Molchanov and Samarsky were the only members of the experimental
department who attended Professor Sokolov's seminar. Sometimes they
went to Kotonaev's seminar, but despite the brilliant presentation, wit and
beauty of theoretical constructions, they felt something of posturing in the
young scientist. In solving complex theoretical problems, he was
primarily concerned with showing how he could solve them.
With Sokolov, everything was different. He spoke in a monotone, in a
hollow voice, rarely looked up from the blackboard, and only occasionally
glanced at the audience to make sure he was understood. It is curious that
both Kotonaev and Sokolov had a keen sense of those who lost the thread
of reasoning. Kotonaev, unmistakably identifying the one who did not
understand, usually spoke as follows:
"If you, Comrade Razumnov, are able to understand anything else, I
can perhaps repeat it.
At the same time, he cast a hurried glance at his watch and made a

176
barely noticeable disgusted grimace.
Finding even a shadow of incomprehension, Sokolov slowly turned to
the blackboard and, choosing a blank plot, wrote old formulas and
equations on it:
"It's really difficult... Try to understand that here we have to normalize
the function taking into account thevolume of this spinor matrix...
But the most interesting thing about Sokolov's seminar was something
else. After the end of the main report, he was in no hurry to leave, like
Kotonaev. He sat down at the table, carefully wiping his hands, smiling in
a friendly way.
- Well, now about life... That's enough theory for today.
The youth of the institute called this unofficial part of the seminars
"quantum theory of life". Here everyone could talk without being ashamed
of either their insufficient special knowledge or their little life experience.
One day after the seminar, when everyone began to disperse, Sokolov
approached Molchanov and Samarsky and said:
"Please, stay a few more minutes.
The children sat silently at the table and watched as Professor Sokolov
carefully wiped the board, not leaving a single letter or badge on the black
surface of the linoleum.
"I'm talking about this... It seems that you also attend Valery
Antonovich's seminar?
"Yes," Kolya answered.
"I really don't feel very comfortable asking you. The point is this...
Once, quite by chance, I went into the classroom after his seminar class. I
was a little confused by one circumstance... People dispersed, but the
board with Valery Antonovich's notes remained. True, very little was
written on it... But you understand...
He was even more embarrassed, as if he felt that he was talking too
seriously about nonsense. Then he spoke quickly and excitedly:
"If someone on the other side were told that here, in Roshchin,
Professor Kotonaev wrote such an equation on the blackboard... And he
left two or three more numbers... Honestly, you don't have to be a genius
to figure out what's what.
He impulsively approached the young scientists.
- The struggle is for scientific ideas, for thoughts, for formulas, for
solutions! Whoever thinks faster, who decides faster and more accurately
wins!
After a pause, Sokolov added:
"All countries of the world have come to the conclusion that the use of
atomic and thermonuclear energy for war is the greatest madness. Existing
treaties between states are signed and sealed. But are these treaties binding

177
on those who consider themselves the owners of their scientific research
in a new, unexplored field? For those who do not take into account either
someone else's or their own state? That's why I'm so worried...
Sokolov stepped aside and looked at the guys.

2.
He loved this narrow corridor with a steep staircase thrown over the
point of contact of two giant accelerators. One of the institute's jokers
wrote on a reinforced concrete wall with a red pencil: "Passer-by, stop!
And at the bottom, already in blue pencil, it was written: "Diagnosis:
megalomania." These inscriptions were made a long time ago, and no one
erased them. The joking short phrases contained the philosophy of the
work of the institute employees: "You are doing a great job. But don't be
conceited."
Every time Molchanov walked along this corridor, he slowed his pace,
and his imagination immediately rushed into the depths of the massive
concrete wall, where two terrible forces collided during the operation of
the accelerators.
"The method of colliding beams" - this was the modest and
inexpressive name of the method of synthesis of stellar matter.
What was going on there? What monstrous forces manifested
themselves? What are theDid the laws of nature give birth to dozens of
new fragments of the universe, which rushed about in the black void for
billionths of a second and then irretrievably disappeared?
Mesons, hyperons, antiprotons, strange particles - the chaos of the
fantastic microcosm, like dazzling fireworks, flared up and faded away. In
microscopic fractions of an endless stream of time, dozens of smart
devices caught everything that could be captured, and with cold
impartiality told the researcher about a catastrophe that happened a long
time ago.
It was impossible to pass in this place without excitement, because
there was a model of the Universe itself. It always seemed to Nikolai that
if nanoseconds were stretched into millions of years and looked into a
chamber where two opposing streams crashed into each other, he would
be able to see the entire Universe, all the stars and nebulae, planets and
galaxies. Maybe our entire world arose as a result of such a billions of
times more powerful collision of something with something? How many
fantasy novels have been written about flights to the stars, novels that
breathe either the freezing cold of emptiness, or the withering heat of
flaming giants. But is all this true, and in general, can the human mind, its
imagination, here on Earth, in the outskirts of the Milky Way, reliably
recreate worlds that are beyond reach?

178
 Of course, we will get to the stars! The key to this is these endless
microscopic stars that flare up at our will here, in a deep vacuum. The
dream of our science fiction writers will come true, no matter how hard
those who would like to turn the human genius away from the path of
peace and great human happiness try to prevent us.
The stars will be reachable! And this confidence worried Molchanov
even more when he walked along the narrow corridor...
"Passerby, stop!"
No, it's not just the drama of the universe that is playing out here. And,
probably, not so much a drama as an optimistic tragedy full of sparkling
joyful flames, so often inevitable on the endless path of development of
the inquisitive human mind.
Nikolai stopped on the bridge and looked down into the reinforced
concrete floor for a long time, trying to imagine what was happening
under it. Here he forgot all his failures, resentments, fatigue, injustice... He
looked at the gray concrete, through it he saw the black emptiness of the
vacuum chamber, and not once did his thoughts touch anything but the
stars...
It was cool and quiet here, the fan was driving a fresh stream of air. On
the railing, on a small board, there was always a green light on, which
meant that you could stand here. Someone foresaw that this is the very
place where every scientist thinks about the fate of his work and the fate of
the work of his comrades.
Long before the start of the work of the cosmotrons, a red light flashed.
It seemed to remind her that the hour of reflection was over and it was time
to get to work.
Stars, stars, stars... How many of them flare up there, in the emptiness
of the cell! There are so many of them in the Universe!

3.
- What energy do we work with? He asked Kirillina.
"Four hundred billion... Today they have set traps for antiprotons.
- To drive them into a linear one later?
-Yes. The first experience of sticking...
Today, Kotonaev's scheme was checked. He calculated at what
energies the antinucleons would stick together into antideuterium nuclei.
This is the first step... And there is half of the period aheadsystem.
Molchanov felt that the "X" was monstrously unattainable.
Maybe Nonna is not as stupid as she seems?
As the energy increased, the hum gradually increased.
"Seven hundred bevs," whispered Nonna. - You know, Nikolai,
sometimes I get scared... Wow, it's started!

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 -A what?
- Heavy particles appeared... At the output of the linear accelerator...
In front of the girl was a counter graded by atomic scales. Data on the
composition of antimatter came here from an automatic mass
spectrometer...
- Atomic numbers? Nikolai asked.
"One, two, three, there are four...
-Helium? Alpha, or rather, anti-alpha?
-I guess...
"Do you write it down?"
-Yes... And automatic registration...
The hum jumped into a roar, like from the mighty engines of a turbojet
aircraft.
"Oh, thirteen!" Thirteen appeared!
- Anti-nitrogen?
-I guess...
Stop! Everything fell silent, only the windows shook a few more
times... The experiment is over. It lasted only five minutes.
Molchanov looked up from the photometer. He didn't know anything yet.
Somewhere there, far away in the pavilion, there was a bubble chamber,
through which a light beam passed as it swept. Here the optical system drew
on a photographic plate everything that happened in the camera. Only after
manifestation will it be possible to say what happened there.
He carefully pulled out the tape and went to the darkroom.
"May I come with you?" I want to see...
Nikolai stopped indecisively. However, let him go...
Dim red light. Right under the lantern there is a ditch filled with fresh
developer. At the bottom there is an automatically rising table. A thick
black line is drawn on the table. As soon as it becomes visible through the
plate, the process can be completed.
During the development, Nikolai and Nonna bent over the ditch,
carefully peering at the slowly emerging black tracks. Their cheeks were
almost touching, but they didn't even notice it.
"Look how fat they are here...
-That's right. These are heavy cannonballs. And here is the explosion!
What a flash!
"Creepy, isn't it?"
-Yes. Don't sniffle in my ear. Here's another fat track, several times
thicker than this one!
Nikolai whistled.
-Gosh darn! And there is no explosion! This means that the cannonball
flew out of the chamber.

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 The developing table jumped, the water hissed. In a second, the plate
smoothly descended into the new solution.
They sat in silence for the rest of the day. He examined the tracks under
a microscope, and she wrote down the data of the mass spectrometer in a
notebook. He was very pleased that Nonna did not talk. He liked not to be
disturbed by anyone when he delved into photographs of a mysterious
world that had long since disappeared...

4.
The news that the nuclei of heavy antielements were synthesized in
colliding beams quickly became the property of the leading scientists of
the Institute. A special meeting of the Academic Council was dedicated to
this event, at which everyone sincerely congratulated Kotonaev and his
theorists. Many different suggestions were made for further research.
The results were so encouragingNo one suspected that the real
difficulties were just beginning. How often the first successes of scientific
research mask insurmountable barriers and obstacles!
Only two people were silent at the Academic Council: Professor
Sokolov and Sasha Samarsky. Sokolov understood that now, when people
were seized by such enthusiasm, it would be tactless to bring confusion
and uncertainty into their minds, especially since already at the institute in
some places they began to say that "a crisis of ideas has come"...
Samarsky was thinking about a recent very strange conversation with
vacuum engineer Alexei Grzhimailo.
"Samarsky, I want to tell you something," Grzhimailo began
uncertainly. For several days now, one guy has been walking around the
territory of the institute. He walks and walks, some new one.
"How is that?"
- Very simple. I came across it several times. Cheekbones, small in
stature. In a gray sweater. It's summer, and he's in a sweater...
-So what?
"I thought he was from the mechanical department. There is always a
turnover there. But one evening I went into the theoretical sector. I looked
- the door to Kotonaev's office was open. I looked in - this guy was sitting.
There is a notebook in front of him, and he is copying something from the
blackboard. Some formulas. He looked at me over his glasses (he wears
such thick glasses) and barked: "What do you want here?" I decided - not a
mechanic, but a new theorist or something like that...
- And what happened next?
-No problem. I left.
"Did you ask the duty officer?"
-No.

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 -Why?
Grzhimailo shrugged his shoulders in bewilderment.
- It was somehow uncomfortable. And what do I have to do with the
theoretical sector...
Samarsky pondered. He was short, cheekbones, with glasses, and a
gray sweater. He didn't remember something like that.
- And after that, did you meet him?
-No...
"And now there is a stormy meeting of the Academic Council, and he,
Samarsky, looks out of the huge window and for some reason anxiously
recalls what the engineer Grzhimailo told him.

5.
They entered the huge pavilion where the accelerator stood. They came
here often, but during the day, during work, something was always
humming, knocking, grinding, and the noise prevented them from looking
around and feeling the grandeur of the structure.
Now, in the bright electric light, the huge silent hall looked like a circus
arena prepared for a fantastic performance. Above him hung an openwork
lace of metallic weaves. It supported a glass dome, balconies and
mezzanines, filled with instruments, panels and dashboards. Below, near the
circular concrete columns, the toroidal chamber of the accelerator, twice the
height of a man, curved. The cell here was affectionately called "bagel".
If you climb to the metal platform above the accelerator, you can see a
rectangular concrete structure hiding in the semi-darkness on the opposite
side of the arena, behind which another ceramic pipe can be seen. It passed
through the thick wall of the circus and fell into a two-story annex. On the
opposite side, the same tube from the second accelerator entered there. In
this two-story house, beams of nuclear particles were found. It was there
that the biggest "nuclear tragedy" imaginable took place.
"What a device," Terekhin said in a reverent whisper, looking around the
hall with admiration. - Such a thing, apparently, costs more than one penny.
"I don't mind the money for it," Grzhimailo remarked. "With the help of
it, our specialists are going to create a new substance.
Terekhin looked at the engineer in surprise.
"And I thought substances were made in a different way. At school, in
chemistry lessons, I saw how a third substance is made from two
substances. There all this happened in a test tube or in a flask. It is hard to
believe that in order to obtain a new substance, you need to build such a
colossus. Here, as far as I understand, the atomic nucleus is split.
-That's it! Grzhimailo exclaimed and laughed. "The nucleus was split a
long time ago. Here it is not a matter of splitting, but of obtaining a new

182
substance. But I don't know what kind of substance it is.
They walked over the bridge over the toroid, descended to the center of
the building, and approached the injector.
"It's here," Grzhimailo said. "Kulagin said that the third valve was
leaking.
Bending over, the mechanic and engineer crawled under the
electromagnet and found themselves near the bronze door, pressed against
the frame by four huge nickel-plated nuts.
- What should I do? Terekhin asked.
"Now we will open the chamber and see if the vacuum gasket is
cracked. Perhaps a piece of rubber got inside the chamber, and it gasses.
Because of this, the car does not work for two days.
They began to unscrew the nuts in silence. Then Terekhin pulled the door
handle.
"Turn on the side light," Grzhimailo asked. Terekhin clicked the
switch.
"Everything seems to be all right," Terekhin said, looking inside.
- Everything, but not all. Look, there's a dent on the ring. Maybe the
leak is here.
- Here you can put putty from the alloy. But it seems to me otherwise.
Look, the opposite wall of the chamber at the place of the weld bent a
little. Maybe there is a crack there?
They climbed inside the chamber and began to carefully examine the
weld.
-What are you doing here? - suddenly they heard a voice behind their
backs. Both turned sharply and saw the engineer on duty, Abramov.
- Good evening, Vasily Anisimovich! There's something wrong with
the valve, Terekhin said. Grzhimailo continued to examine the camera
from the inside.
- How are you going to act?
"Now we'll tinker a little, we'll do what we can, and then we'll turn on
the pumps for testing."
-Well good. Just before turning on the pumps, call me. I'll come and see.
"All right, Comrade Chief," Grzhimailo replied, without looking at the
officer on duty.
He silently walked around the cell, bent down and disappeared under
the shoe of the electromagnet.
"By the way, a very unpleasant guy," Terekhin remarked and climbed
into the cell. There he took a small bottle of liquid from his pocket and,
soaking a flannel rag in it, wiped the welded seam.
- Well, and the camera. A whole apartment. And to think that all the air
is pumped out of it in five minutes," he said, illuminating the seam with

183
the ultraviolet rays of a portable lamp. The seam shone brightly with
yellow light.
-Aha. Here, there is. Crack! he exclaimed. Indeed, a narrow strip shone
brightly along the seam.
- Well, it's simple. Do you have pasta? Grzhimailo asked.
-No. I left it in the workshops," Terekhin replied in confusion.
Grzhimailo looked at the mechanic and smiled:
- Crow! You go to work without putty.
"I'm running away in a moment," the mechanic hurried up.
-In a trice. It's easy to say. Run almost half a kilometer.
"I'll be quick." In no time.
Terekhin returned only fifteen minutes later. To his surprise, the door to
the pavilion was locked, and no one answered his knock.
The figure of a janitor in a canvas cloak rose in front of him.
"Are you Terekhin?" The janitor asked.
"Yes," the mechanic replied in confusion. "Here, I was running for
material, and then they locked up.
"We ran slowly," said the janitor. "Your boss must have fixed it and
gone home.
Terekhin was dumbfounded.
- Did you start the pumps?
"I don't know...
Not understanding anything, Terekhin went to the checkpoint. He
decided that he had really been going to the workshop for a very long time.
It turned out to be inconvenient. The engineer had to do his, the
mechanic's work. But even if so? Why didn't he wait five minutes? And is
it possible to test the vacuum in such a short time? It would be necessary to
pump for at least twenty minutes.
At the checkpoint, he picked up the phone and called the pumping station.
"Kurilin?" Why did you pump so little?
"I pumped as much as they demanded," Kurilin answered. "My
business is small.
Terekhin walked home slowly, thinking how bad Grzhimailo had been.
At home, he quickly fell asleep, not suspecting that a terrible event had
happened that evening.

6.
Antimatter, Nikolai thought bitterly, is a strange thing! Maybe
somewhere in the Universe there is as much of it as ordinary matter in our
world. Perhaps there are entire universes outside the Metagalaxy in which
everything consists of antimatter! And here, on Earth, in order to obtain
just a few antinucleons, it is necessary to build gigantic installations with

184
billions of capacities... Nature takes a lot to reveal its innermost secrets.
Hundreds of billions of electron volts for the experimenter to admire the
unprecedented matter for a billionth of a second! He does not see
antiparticles. He sees only their shadow, their traces in the form of straight
lines in thick photographic emulsions, lines that suddenly end and break
into many other lines diverging in different directions. These tiny black
stars are witnesses to catastrophes that have erupted in the mysterious
microcosm of antiparticles.
A billionth of a second! Damn it, do we live and work to admire a
spectacle that flows millions of times faster than thought? Is this why
hundreds of talented and intelligent people have gathered at the institutes
to arrange an enchanting and expensive spectacle for themselves - to
watch how antiparticles are born and die? "A cemetery of antiprotons,"
Nikolai remembered Samarsky's words about one of the developed
photographic plates. Indeed, no one had ever seen antiparticles, but
anyone could admire the cemetery where they were buried.
Nikolai sat down heavily behind the desk and clutched his head tightly
in his hands. Strange visions floated before his eyes. Stars, stars, stars.
Thousands of black stars on developed emulsions. How many of them he
had watched in recent days! His eyes hurt from the fact that he pressed
them to the eyepiece of the microscope all day long. And in the field of
view there are only stars, stars...
Is it really impossible to stretch the damned microseconds? Is there
really no way to save antimatter for a long time, look at it, what is it? So
that it lies in the form of a lump of metal or like a crystal. I would like to
look at antiquartz or anti-gold or anti-iron! How to tame this restless
powerful force and create a small piece of the anti-world here on Earth?
Stars, stars, stars... From them and from the thoughts associated with
them, the brain was torn apart.
He imagined the antiparticle as a dazzlingly bright star flying from the
accelerator into the vessel from which all the air had been pumped out. It
spun in a circle at first quickly, then slower and slower, and finally
stopped, hung in space, all radiant, dazzling... And then she began to
slowly fall down under the influence of gravity. "All bodies are attracted
to each other...", the voice of the school teacher was heard.
The antiparticle is slowly falling. Finally, it touches the wall and
explodes like fireworks. A star again...

185
 MÜLLER
1.
Frank had long wanted to meet with Mueller, but somehow
unconsciously postponed the meeting. As he became acquainted with his
calculations and theoretical constructions, he immediately sensed in this
stranger a tremendous intellectual power, that power of a theoretical
physicist before which even the most brilliant experimenters usually bow.
An outstanding theorist himself, Frank felt like a boy in comparison
with the unknown Müller. Rodshtein added fuel to the fire.
"Well, how?" He used to ask in a hoarse, soaked voice, looking over
Frank's shoulder as he read Müller's notebooks.
-Ingeniously. Giant! It's unbelievable!
"Eat to your heart's content," Rodstein said and, giggling evilly, went to
his equipment.
This "eat to your heart's content" kept Frank from meeting with Müller.
And then one Sunday evening he finally decided to meet with Müller.
He wandered along the seashore for a long time and finally came to the
pier. The sentry nodded approvingly, and Frank took the helm of the
motor boat and set off for the island of Sardoneo.
When he approached the shore, he was a little feverish. With difficulty
containing his excitement, he reached for cigarettes and found that he had
forgotten them in the laboratory. This misfortune threw him into complete
panic, for he knew that he could not now conceal his excitement by any means.
"Where does Dr. Müller live?" he asked the sentry on the other side of
the strait. He nodded in the direction of one-story houses.
"Do you have cigarettes, boy?" Frank asked.
- Not allowed at the post. We leave them in the guard room.
He walked slowly toward the house, considering how he would begin
his conversation with Müller. All ordinary addresses seemed to him stupid
and vulgar. And then there are these damned cigarettes...
His legs somehow carried Frank to the house by themselves, without
the participation of consciousness. At the door he stopped and looked at
the lighted window. This is where what we, like spiders, eat, is born. Other
people's thoughts.
He knocked.
"May I come in?" Frank asked in a strange voice and opened the door.
In the room, he saw a man near the radio. Soft music came from the
receiver. She seemed familiar to Frank. Beethoven, he remembered. His
heart sank for a moment.
-Am I disturbing you? He asked louder.
Mueller threw up his head and looked at Frank. For a few seconds they
stared at each other in silence.

186
 "Excuse me. I came here to a friend, uh, and forgot my cigarettes... I
wanted a damn cigarette. I remembered that you live here. I'm Frank
Dolori.
"Oh, come in, come in," Müller smiled and got up from his chair.
Frank walked into the room, walked over to the radio, and for some
reason turned the volume knob.
-Beethoven? he asked.
-Yes. Eroica Symphony.
"Does it remind you of your homeland?"
"Yes," Müller replied simply. For a few minutes they listened to the
music in silence. It seemed to Frank that Müller had completely forgotten
about him.
"You know, I thought I had seen you once.
"That's what they usually say when they want to meet a girl," said
Müller, a little mockingly.
-You don't believe me?
- No, why not, I believe. However, what does it matter?
"Of course he thinks I'm one of Semvol's gang," Frank thought bitterly.
"By the way, you wanted a cigarette." Cigarettes on the desk in the next
room," said Müller, without looking up from the receiver.
The music grew louder and more majestic. Frank got up and walked
into the next room. For a few seconds he stood in front of his desk, littered
with papers and books. They were lit by the sharp circle of a bright table
lamp. Under the ashtray he saw a piece of paper written in his own hand.
This was the formulation of the next task.
- I don't really like the way you set tasks. You immediately feel that you
are not a European school.
Frank turned abruptly and saw Müller in the brightly lit rectangle of the
door.
- Why don't you like my wording? he asked.
- Petty concreteness. You probably think that the more you narrow
down a task, the easier it is to solve it.
Frank thought for a moment.
- In theoretical physics, in the overwhelming majority of cases, it is
much easier to analyze a more general problem, and then get a particular
solution from it. For example, here. See...
"That's right," Frank muttered, his eyes quickly scanning the orderly
rows of equations and formulas. -You are right. This is indeed a
methodological defect of our mathematical school. And maybe even more
- our narrowly commercial philosophy.
"I don't know if this applies to your philosophy. I am not interested in
this now.

187
 "In vain," Frank interrupted. "If you want to find out the reasons why
we (he was ashamed to say "I") pose theoretical problems in this way, you
must look at things more deeply.
"I just didn't suspect that you had a special approach to solving
problems.
"Alas, that's true," Frank said, and suddenly he felt like a stupid boy
with undeserved power in front of this tall, blue-eyed blond. He painfully
wished that Müller would not think anything bad of him.
"It's convenient for you to work here and... live? he asked.
"And you?" Müller asked. "You don't seem to be at home here either.
"Well, I—" Frank began. "I'm used to...
- And I am even more so. I had lived through the war and was used to
solving partial differential equations under bombing.
"No, really, perhaps you are missing something?" -onFrank said.
"Yes, if you like," Müller replied very simply, and went into the room
where the final chords of Beethoven's Eroica Symphony were playing out
through the speaker.
-What?
- Societies of smart and decent people.
"Aren't there any clever and decent people among your comrades
here?"
- There are smart ones. There are decent ones too, but very rarely.
Moreover, those who are endowed with this quality hide it. They say it is
not fashionable now.
"Aren't all smart people decent?" Frank asked.
- Alas, no. Müller smiled. "Haven't you already made this elementary
but important discovery?"
"I just haven't thought about it.
"Then you have an easy life," said Müller, and turned the knob of the
radio. He fell silent. - Do you like Beethoven?
-Sometimes. When I was at university, I had to play jazz. Come on, I
want to consult you about something.
Bending over their desks, they wrote equations, drew graphs, and
calculated the effective cross-sections of reactions until two o'clock in the
morning. They argued heatedly, then came to an agreement and laughed
together at their errors.
"You can tinker with this endlessly!" Frank exclaimed cheerfully. I'll
tell you frankly, your head works perfectly. It's true.
"For God's sake, don't be jealous. Maybe that's why I got here.
"Damn it, that's right! Come on. Ultimately, great physics is a
fascinating thing.
-Ok. Take cigarettes to the road.

188
 2.
"Your theoretician doesn't give us what we need," Semvol announced
as Frank entered his office.
- Wow, are you starting to delve into the essence of theoretical physics?
Is it up to you to judge whether or not the theorist does what I want?
Frank sat down on the edge of the table and looked down at Semvol.
"I say, Dolori, he's either not as talented as you think, or he's just
cunning. - How long has it been since you gave him the task of calculating
a method or method, or whatever you call it in your dog's language, for
storing antimatter?
Frank got down from the table. After a pause, he said,
"About a month ago.
"And what did he do?"
-Much.
- What exactly does he propose? We don't need theories, we need
cameras.
- So far, none of the cases considered gives the desired result. Storage
facilities turn out to be unstable.
"Oh, yes... Maybe he really doesn't know how to do it, or... However,
now everything will become clear.
He handed Frank a large yellow piece of paper, folding it in half.
- Read what's below. The rest does not concern you. Frank looked up,
and his face showed utter amazement.
"Now tell me what all this gibberish means," Semvol demanded in a
cheerful voice.
Frank whistled loudly.
-Great! And why the hell is there such a huge magnetic permeability
here? Stop. Why, such is the permeability of iron! What does iron have to
do with it!
"What does it have to do with iron, Frank?" Semvol asked, leaning
across the table.
"One second." This equation describes the dynamic state of a
ferromagnetic thingIn a periodic magnetic field, taking into account the
force of gravity...
-So what? Semvol asked, not taking his eyes off Frank's surprised face.
- Where is the continuation of the calculation?
"That's all, Frank," said Semvol. "That's all we've managed to get so
far. Does that mean anything to you?
"I'll be damned if those two lines don't have a sound idea!" After all,
storage can be provided not by static, but by dynamic fields! Orbits of
different weights in cyclic accelerators, stable oscillations under the
influence of periodic forces...

189
 "Then there are people smarter than your Müller," Semvol remarked
with a sneer.
Frank woke up in amazement and asked sharply,
"Where did you get that?"
"This is a gift from our Russian rivals," replied Semvol.
-Gift? Frank was confused.
- Well, well, not exactly. In any case, it was these two lines that were
written on a black board in a large physics classroom of one institute.
They were written by Dr. Kotonaev! These lines were written in
connection with the discussion of the problem of storing antimatter.
Frank's eyes widened.
"So, Kotonaev has your spies there..
"Oh, don't shout so loudly!" What do spies have to do with it? After all,
we did not steal Dr. Kotonaev's report. This is simply impossible. We got
only two lines of some gibberish. And, as I can see now, they are quite
enough to get you and your Müller off the ground. Isn't it?
- You stole an idea from the Russians! Frank exclaimed hotly. "It's not
fair play!" You keep a spy there, at the institute. You...
"Sit down, Frank, and calm down. "This man, so to speak, is a spy,
sitting and collecting crumbs. He chooses only the most important. To do
this, he must be a specialist. He passes these crumbs here to us. And that's
where the real work begins. This, Frank, is a research work, I would say, a
research work.
"And all the same...
"An example of these equations," Semwol went on, ignoring Frank.
"They don't say anything to a mere mortal. But as soon as you showed
them to a specialist, to you, their great value was immediately revealed.
Fortunately, the same designations are used in science all over the world.
This makes the work of our intelligence easier...
"Listen, Semvol, you say 'our intelligence.' Have you really gone so far
as to spy even on science? Is it really not enough for you to do dirty things
in military affairs, in industry, in politics?
"God, I never suspected you were such a baby!" Don't you understand
that military affairs, industry, and finally politics are all the result of
scientific progress! Espionage in science is long-range reconnaissance.
Knowing the science of the enemy today, we can predict its economy,
industry and military potential for years to come.
Frank suddenly felt the reality of what Semvol was talking about. "A
scientific theory is a model of a future life expressed in symbols," he
recalled Professor Feith's words. How profoundly right he was! With such
a model in hand, it is easy to recreate the present and future reality. So this
is the point of this "reconnaissance of Semvol"!

190
 Frank glanced again at the two lines of differential equations and at the
magnetic susceptibility circled in red. He felt uneasy.
He got up and wanted to leaveThe study is not a good idea. Semvol
blocked his way.
- So we did not clarify the issue. Why didn't Müller think of all this? He
shook a piece of paper.
"Because he's Müller, and whoever thought of it is smarter than Müller.
-Are you sure?
"Absolutely," Frank said.
"Well, if that's the case. In that case, give Müller new ideas about the
vault. Of course, don't tell him it's from Russia. Let the idea kind of come
from us, or rather, from you, Frank.

3.
He was sitting in a café and drinking cold coffee in large sips. It was
past midnight, but Frank forgot about the time, because his mind was
occupied with the thoughts that had so suddenly flooded over him after his
conversation with Semvol.
He always thought that calculations, information, figures and facts,
systematized and neatly recorded on cards, are the result of careful
processing of scientific journals, monographs and reports. And suddenly it
turned out that among all this wealth there were stolen thoughts.
Now he painfully remembered all his own discoveries and successes, or
what seemed to him to be his own, and he noticed with horror that they
had taken place after he had spent a good hour and a half digging through
the file cabinet. Somewhere there is a direct solution, somewhere just a
hint, someone dropped an unformed guess, someone corrected an error in
someone else's calculations...
He shivered at the thought that perhaps he himself had not invented
anything, had not discovered anything, and that he was only a compiler,
and that he did not have and never had real scientific thinking.
Frank did not notice Gerda Cuse enter the café. He met with this singer
from the local music hall once or twice in the company of tipsy physicist
friends. She was damn beautiful, but even by the standards of the "atomic
age" she was too vulgar...
"Good evening, Dolori," she said, sitting down at the table. She wore a
fairly rumpled evening dress and smelled of wine. "I'd like a cup of cold
coffee, too," she ordered the waiter, "with cognac." Stop looking through
me," she shook Frank's shoulder, "Don't you like me?"
-You? How do you say... Sometimes.
-Awesome! You know, young women get mad if they don't pay
attention to them. Am I really worse than Liz?

191
 "You're prettier than Liz, but you're worse than her.
Gerda lit a cigarette.
"I know that, Frank. And it is very unpleasant for me...
"It's all up to you.
"From me?" Oh no, nothing depends on me anymore. Everything now
depends on you, as you call it, on physicists, on scientists, damn you.
Frank smiled.
- Why are you suddenly up in arms against physicists?
"As if you don't know!" And who killed several hundred thousand
people with the help of a hell bomb? Aren't you, Frank, now inventing
something that will pay people with millions of lives?
"Gerda, you look at things too gloomily. Now we are on the verge of
such a thing, after which we can start building a real Eden.
Cuse looked at him from under her brow and burst out laughing.
"And yet you lie. The rest say something completely different. Do you
know what they say to me? "Don't break down, dear, tomorrow we'll turn
into space dust anyway." That's how they say. Well, once in the dust...
"You're just a fool, an ordinary weak-willed fool.
"Thank you. Since childhood, I have been told that I am a fool. But
you're the only one lying. By the way, I recently performed at the
Sardoneo. In the front row, I noticed a tall blond man with huge childish
eyes. He reminds you in some way. Don't you know who it is?
"His name is Müller. He's a very smart guy.
They ordered another cup of coffee with cognac. Gerda leaned close to
Frank and, curling her lips contemptuously, said:
"And there is indeed rubbish among your brethren, Frank. Real cattle,
though called scientists.
"Please don't call them scientists. Scientists cannot be cattle. This is all
the public that imitates scientists, because now it is fashionable and
profitable.
"If you only knew how nice it is to talk to you." As if you find yourself
in another world, good, pure... The way he seemed to me when I was
little...
They were silent for a long time. The waiter was dozing in a chair in the
corner. Behind the bar, sniffing loudly, the bartender slept.
"It's nice to be silent with you. What a happy Liz... So you say this
blue-eyed blond is Müller?
"What did you get from it?"
"I just fell in love with him because I love you," she said, laughing all
the time. Her tipsy eyes glittered brightly from under her eyelashes. "And
Onto is doing nasty things to Müller.
"What kind of nasty thing has Onto done?"

192
 Gerda got up from the table and stretched herself wearily.
"Will you walk me home, Frank?"
-Spend.
She leaned heavily on his arm. They went out onto the embankment. A
sentry stood in a bright circle of light, and boats swayed beside him,
pushing each other on the waves. A damp, cool breeze blew from the east.
"Really, Frank, I love you very much. And you don't have me.
- I can't love several women at once.
- And why can others? She whimpered like a capricious girl.
"Because they don't love anyone. What nasty thing did Onto do to
Müller?
"Oh, nonsense. You don't love me anyway.
Frank could see that she was very tipsy.
"Well, I love you, I love you, Gerda.
-Give me a kiss.
He touched her cheek with his lips.
Onto recorded Müller's voice on a tape recorder.
"Müller's voice?" Frank asked.
-Yes. He sang some of his songs, and Onto recorded it. He said to me:
"Do you want to listen to how theoretical physicists sing?" He turned on
the film. I asked what kind of artist he was. And he said, "Frank's friend,
Muller." And he began to laugh at Müller, because he has such a bad
voice... I got angry and ran away.
"Did Müller only sing or say anything?"
- I only sang. Very bad, Frank. Worse than I am," Gerda replied with a
stammering tongue. She hung on his arm and could hardly move her legs.
He dragged her with difficulty to the door of the apartment.
The next day he went to the island of Sardoneo. Loudly, so that those
who were recording the conversations would not miss a single word, he
ordered Müller:
"To hell with the reactor for now. We need this!
- Task number 330? Ahem... About! Müller paused in mid-sentence.
In Dolori's notebook, along with the formulation of the problem, there
was a note in which was written in huge letters:
"Don't yell! Everything You Say, sing, listen on the radio, and all our
conversations with you are listened to and recorded."
"Do you understand?" He asked Müller in an official voice.
-Yes.
-Perform. This is urgently needed.

4.

193
 Frank considered the scheme of storage for anti-iron. There were some
details that required special calculation.
One day, when the compressor units in the main pavilion were being
repaired and the accelerators were not working, he went to Sardoneo again.
Müller greeted him with loud cheerful greetings.
They sat down side by side at the desk and armed themselves with
pencils.
"So the storage question seems to be solved," Frank said in a hollow
voice.
-Really? And that's why you have such a lean face? Or you just play the
role of a humble worker of science well!
"I really am," Frank thought, but he said something completely different.
- When designing traps for antimatter, you and I proceeded only from
static fields, knowing that the storage facilities would be unstable.
"Not only that, Frank. I have considered the problem of the dynamic
stability of antiparticles in cyclic orbits. Actually, there is nothing new here
compared to the classical consideration of the cyclotron.
- Yes, but we came to the conclusion that this method of storage would
be inconvenient, because this way you can store not a substance, but
antinucleons.
Müller nodded his head, looking intently at Frank.
- It turns out that there is one possibility here.
-Which?
- It is necessary to create the nuclei of chemical elements and supply
them with positron shells. In other words, you need to make antiatoms from
them.
Müller laughed.
- Theoretically, this is a simple matter. But once electrically neutral
antiatoms appear, you can't do anything about them. Your insurmountable
enemy will be gravity.
Frank smiled mischievously. Although the thoughts were not his, he
admired them doubly, because even Müller could not immediately find a
solution.
- It all depends on what antiatoms we will synthesize.
"Any," he replied and got up from the table. "Unless you have managed
to invent a substance that has no mass.
- On the contrary, this substance has mass and a relatively high atomic
weight.
-What? Müller asked in surprise.
-Fifty-six.
-Fifty-six? Damn it, it's iron!
- Yes, iron.

194
 "So what?" What will you do with him next?
- Iron is ferromagnetic, with high magnetic permeability. It is easily
magnetized in a magnetic field.
Müller knitted his brows.
-Well...
- The effect of the magnetic field will be large, and most importantly,
controllable.
- Do you propose to suspend anti-iron in a static magnetic field?
- No, this is an unstable option. On the contrary, it must be made to
oscillate under the influence of a periodic magnetic field. Heaviness will be
a constant component. Here is the equation of oscillations.
Frank wrote an equation on a piece of paper.
That was enough. Müller snatched up a piece of paper and continued to
write feverishly. A few minutes in the room Only the impetuous breathing
and creaking of his pencil were heard.
When the solution to the equation was found, Müller looked at Frank in
admiration.
- The solution is sustainable. A piece of iron can really be hung in a
vacuum! You're a genius, Dolori!
Frank stepped aside. A painful grimace appeared on his face. He shook
his head hesitantly.
"My dear Frank, you've come up with such a wonderful thing!
Frank picked up a piece of paper and slowly wrote on it, "Don't say
anything. I didn't come up with it."
- Are you sure that the solution is really sustainable? He asked Müller,
not taking his eyes off him.
Müller stood with his mouth half-open.
- Yes, yes... That is, of course, I am sure. Let's take a variation in the
coordinate for testing and find the minimum of potential energy...
On the same sheet he wrote:
"And who?"
"The Russians. This was fished out from Dr. Kotonaev."
"Fished out? And how did it get to you?"
"It's stolen."
Müller rubbed his forehead hard. Her lips tightened into a thin line.
"I have nothing to do with this theft. They just handed me over and
named the source."
"Yes, the decision is indeed sustainable," said Müller. His voice was
choked and hoarse. He wrote:
"Are you sure that this was stolen from the Russians?"
"Let's vary the speed solution," Frank said.
"Absolutely. They have a spy there."

195
 -Gosh darn. The solution is really sustainable in all respects. Now I
imagine how to make a trap.
"It's bad. But you don't have to tell anyone what I told you," Frank wrote.
Be calm. No one will know about it," Mueller wrote and silently shook
hands with Frank.
-Ok. I give you three days of time. I need the following: the energies of
antiparticles at which anti-iron synthesis takes place, and also the value and
configuration of the fields.
"I see, Mr. Dolori," said Müller, still clutching Frank's hand. The
calculation will be performed.
-Good bye.
"Good-bye, Mr. Dolori."
After Frank had gone, Mueller stared at the piece of paper with their
silent conversation for a long time. Then he struck a match and burned it...
Stealing other people's scientific ideas. Eavesdropping on
conversations..
A chill ran down Müller's spine, a prickly chill from the sudden memory
of the Separate Laboratory. All this is familiar to him. He remembered how
Dr. Roberto had warned him:
"Don't talk so loudly. You can be heard and...
Or,
"Do you know what I accidentally found in Haynes's notebook?" Essay
on the topic "Psychological Analysis of Dr. Müller's Political Views"! Be
careful.
Müller knew that Haynes, in charge of information work in the
laboratory, often fiddled with some films and photocopies, and, translating
materials from Russian into German, clicked his tongue loudly and
repeated:
"Well, for this piece I will seize the iron cross.
Haynes received two Iron Crosses... And he, Müller, somehow did not
think about what exactly...
And now history repeats itself here, far away in the ocean.
And what if the Omega project has a completely different purpose?
"It could be your father, or my wife, or your friend's little daughter... Can
you, Müller, imagine what it means to wait for the inevitable death alone, in
the desert?"
A long time has passed since then, and Colonel Semvol has changed a
lot. He no longer curses war. When meeting with Müller, he says: "It was a
fun time!"
And now Frank's new order. By the way, what is this 330 problem?
He unfolded the notebook.
-No! Never... For all that is holy on earth!

196
 5.
It was a hastily written note.
"I can't be silent anymore. I weighed everything and thought it through. I
have to fly to the continent. In the hospital, they kept me deliberately. If
something happens to me, it will be unequivocal proof that my assumptions
are correct. Frank, be on your guard. Take care of Liz. It's all up to you.
Faith"...
The news that the helicopter in which the professor had left Owori had
not arrived at the continental base instantly circled the island. Everyone was
talking about the strange disappearance of the leading scientist.
Frank did not leave Liz's side, who was lying in bed delirious.
The phones were silent. Or the colorless voices of secondary persons
answered, who, of course, knew nothing about Professor Faith's fate.
Late in the evening, Frank decided to ring the last bell. He asked to be
connected to Saccoro's apartment, having previously given his name. After
a long pause, on the opposite end of the line they asked:
"Is this Frank Dolori?"
-Yes.
- Saccoro. I know roughly what you are calling me about. The latest
information is this: the helicopter was forced to land on the water due to an
engine malfunction. However, at the same time, they forgot to batten down
the lower hatch ... Only one person managed to escape...
"And the others?.. I have in mind, first of all, Professor Feith.
"Let's go down... It's a pity, it's a pity, Dolori. For us, this is a colossal
loss.
Frank bit his lip.
- Convey my most sincere condolences to the professor's daughter. Try,
Dolori, to use your special influence to make her feel that she is not alone...
Tell her also that she will not experience any financial difficulties, we have
decided to leave the full support of the professor to her. This is our humble
gratitude for what he did for science.
"Thank you, Mr. Saccoro. However...
"I beg you, do not slow down the pace of research for a second. Starting
today, Project Omega is being renamed Project Faith, and we're appointing
you as the interim lead for this effort.
-Me?..
"Yes, you, Dolori... Do not hang your nose. There is not a single loss in
the world that would be worth giving up work for the benefit of millions...
"What a falsity! Gosh! And I believed all this..." To expose the lies, Faith
had to pay with his life. Too expensive, Frank thought. If people begin to
pay such a price for lies, soon there will be no honest people left...

197
 ALIEN TRACES
1.
Grzhimailo's corpse was found on the seventh day after his
disappearance. Someone suggested opening the bronze hatch of the
vacuum chamber of the kosmotron and seeing what Grzhimailo and
Terekhin did during the evening work. For some reason, the heavy lid is
not fromscrewed. Everyone immediately felt that something was wrong.
Having opened the adjacent hatch, the investigator, together with experts
and representatives of the institute, climbed inside. Finally, investigator
Vasily Karimov hurriedly crawled out of the hatch, and then... Then the
mummy's head appeared, its thin, wrinkled body with dried arms and legs
dangling like whips...
"So much for your mass spectrometry," Karimov said, looking at the
frightened and bewildered faces of the employees sent to him by the
management for technical assistance. - Who said that organics get into the
mass spectrometer all the time?
Sasha Samarsky thought: "This is what can happen to a man in space."
The nightmarish picture of the crime began to become clear: when
Grzhimailo was working inside the toroid, someone slammed the hatch,
after which the mighty pumping station began to take air from the
chamber...
"Cleverly invented," Karimov said through clenched teeth. - Subtly,
scientifically, silently...
He continued only when he came to report the first results of the
investigation to Colonel Bazanov:
"These are only the most preliminary outlines so far. It seems to me that
the criminal who killed Grzhimailo did not enter or leave the pavilion of
the cosmotron...
"Did he hide somewhere until morning?"
- Of course, he did not hide. He left the territory of the institute ten
minutes after his crime.
Bazanov looked attentively at the investigator.
- Have you ever been inside the steering wheel? No? Karimov
continued. - Until today, I have not been inside such cars either. I was
literally dumbfounded when I saw that there, inside, you can not only
walk, but even ride a bicycle. A huge room. Scope. Evenly curved
metal-ceramic floor...
- Yes, but how is the floor?.. After all, as far as I know, there should be
perfect cleanliness...
- Of course, the first thing I saw inside the cell were traces on the floor.
They go to the place of the steering wheel where it connects with the
second cosmotron. They will have to scrub and clean the inner walls for a

198
long time until vacuum hygiene is restored!
"And where do the tracks lead?" Let's figure it out," Bazanov said.
"Please, draw me a diagram of the articulation of both cosmotrons..."
Karimov carefully drew the diagram, putting all the dimensions. - Yes,
sizes! Indeed, you can ride a bicycle.
"I think there is no need to wander around the cells again," Karimov
said, looking at the sketch. "If we go there, the work that has already
stalled for them will be delayed even longer. As far as I understand, these
are backing jackets and valves. They are the same as at the first
accelerator. And the doors to the outside are located symmetrically. Look,
there is a garage right behind the second pavilion. Do you know how I
imagine a rough picture of what happened to Grzhimailo?
When Terekhin went to get the putty, Grzhimailo remained in the cell
and continued his work on the crack. So, as soon as Grzhimailo was left
alone, the criminal suddenly appeared out of the darkness, right from the
pipe, and hit him on the head with the key, the same with which he opened
the hatch of the first kosmotron. Then he closed the door to the pavilion,
dragged Grzhimailo further inside the steering wheel, screwed the hatch
from the inside and went back. He left the steering wheel in the same way
as he entered, carefully battening down the hatch. Then he called the
pumping station and said that it was possible to start vacuum tests. I found
out the power of these pumps. Three minutes and... all.
"We need to find out the main thing: why he killed Grzhimailo.
- Yes, we don't know that yet... Maybe because he saw him in the
theory room?..

2.
The crime at the Institute of Applied Physics haunted Bazanov,
occupied all his thoughts. And today - he did not have time to sit down at
his desk in the morning, as he immediately reached for the materials of the
examination, which Karimov brought him yesterday.
At that moment the door opened and Gorshkov hurriedly entered.
"Here," he put a strip of paper on the table.
Bazanov quickly ran his eyes over the typewritten text. The colonel's
face became tense, he mechanically took a cigarette and began to knead it.
- How do you like it? Gorshkov asked.
"Yes, n-not really... When did you get it?
"Late last night." We read it and argued for a long time - the guys could
not understand this word. It seems to me that this is not a serious word in
such an important espionage report. Look: "We managed to fish out the
next two Kotonaev equations about anti-iron," Gorshkov read aloud. -
And that's it. Then these equations. Why "fish" is not clear.

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 Both thought for a moment. Suddenly Gorshkov's face brightened, and
he spoke quickly:
"Comrade Bazanov! Maybe this is a hint at a connection! After all, we
do not know how this man received his information from the institute, how
he communicates with his accomplices.
Bazanov frowned, then laughed.
- Well, my friend, you have a fantasy! You can only fish in the water.
And the closest water from the institute is the Komar swamp, five
kilometers.
On the way home, Bazanov did not stop thinking about the
incomprehensible word in the message.
After dinner, Bazanov went into the office and took out an explanatory
dictionary of the Russian language. He opened it at the word "fish" and
began to think carefully about all its meanings. The more he read, the more
he became convinced that none of the meanings fit the text of the telegram.
Snoozing discontentedly, he undressed and lay down. For a few minutes
he tossed and turned from side to side, and then touched his wife and asked:
"Lena, are you sleeping?"
"Almost, what?"
- How many years have you known Roshchino?
- Lord, what has come over you? You know. From birth.
"Tell me, are there fish in Komar?" Crucian carp or roach?
"You're completely crazy. Sleep, please, it's already the second hour...
"No, tell me, is there any fish there?"
Elena Antonovna opened her eyes wide and looked into the darkness.
- Yes, there was. Once there were a lot of crucian carps there. Roshchin's
boys pulled them out of the silt with their hands. Especially in dry years.
"All right," said Bazanov.
"What's good?"
- That there are crucian carps there.

Now there is no doubt that the man who killed Grzhimailo is the same
one who copied Professor Kotonaev's equation from the blackboard.
Vasily Karimov told Bazanov in detail about the progress of the
investigation. The colonel only occasionally interrupted him with remarks
and questions.
- Did you wonder who was at that seminar?
-Asked. Everyone was there, except Molchanov and Samarsky. That
evening they were discussing something at Professor Sokolov's. They say
something very important...
- Important. And tell me, please, what is not important to them? In this
crazy nuclear physics, everything is important - every letter, every arrow,

200
every dash. So, you say, neither Samarsky nor Molchanov were at the
seminar?
-No.
-What a pity. Then the board would not remain unwiped. There are still
people who do not understand that their ideas are not their personal
property, but public property. Take, for example, Kotonaev. By the way,
how did he receive you?
- Well received. He sat me down and politely said: "Only, please,
quickly, otherwise I will have it in seven minutes..."
- Everything is clear. One hundred percent Kotonaev! Did you hint to
him that the board needs to be wiped?
"That's where I started...
"Well, what about him?"
"He said that it would probably make sense to wipe everything in the
brain after a day's work.
Bazanov grinned sadly...

3
Professor Sokolov did not study nuclear physics at home. Any other
science, but not nuclear physics. He observed this rule for
"self-preservation", so as not to degenerate into a narrow specialist.
His library amazed everyone with an abundance of rare books,
monographs and magazines. If acquaintances came to see him, he took a
volume out of his book piles with a cunning smile, tapped it meaningfully
with his finger and said:
"Here, I've got another thing...
The "thing" turned out to be a book by Rémi Chauvin about the life and
morals of insects, or Jackson's "The Brain as a Computing Machine", or
some abstruse philosophical work like Gellner's "Words and Things"...
Few people knew that one of the most frequent visitors to his house was
Kolya Molchanov. It might seem surprising that a person with the erudition
and experience of Alexei Vladimirovich was interested in spending time
with such a young interlocutor. And yet, there were reasons for this. Once
Sokolov said:
"At my age, you can amaze with knowledge, but not ideas.
On another occasion he altered this formula:
"Knowledge makes thinking conservative, but good. The lack of
knowledge and experience has its own charm: it is compensated for by the
boldness of hypotheses and conclusions. However, they should always be
carefully checked.
Today, the conversation between Nikolai and Alexei Vladimirovich did
not go well. They immersed themselves in reading.

201
 "Alyosha, Alexander Andreevich has come to see you," Sokolov's wife
said.
Bazanov entered the office. He stood at the door, hesitant.
"My God, you'll be a millionaire!" Sokolov went to meet Bazanov. How
long have you not seen each other, my friend? He began to forget me
completely. How is life, Alexander Andreevich?
"Nothing..." Bazanov stammered. -Difficult.
He smiled sheepishly. Then he waved his hand, saying that it was not:
"So difficult that I came to you for... How would it be better to say, for
advice or consultation.
"I'm at your service." And Kolya Molchanov...
"Oh, what are you talking about. Let him stay. I would like to hear your
opinion on how, using modern physical methods, it is possible to transmit,
say, a letter from one point to another... Actually, this is not a letter, but
rather a short note...
Sokolov felt that Bazanov could not fully reveal to them the essence of
the matter, and involuntarily thought not about his question, but about what
he needed to send.
-Knowse, on the islands of Polynesia, the natives communicate with the
help of drumming...
"I understand," Sokolov brightened up. "Well, you can transmit the
message acoustically. Do you remember the American movie in which
spies transmitted messages using jazz music?
"It does," Alexander Andreyevich said decisively.
Sokolov coughed. He always coughed when suddenly something
became very clear. He coughed and fell silent.
"With a knock of some kind... Over the wall, or... No? Ahem. A strange
case, really...
Bazanov sighed sadly. His broad cheekbones became sad. And then
Molchanov intervened in the conversation:
"There is also an optical method. Light signals.
Bazanov looked attentively at Kolya and shook his head again. "Lord,
what a hellish job they have..." - thought Sokolov.
- Then the hydroacoustic method...
- Which one, which one? Bazanov stood up.
- Hydroacoustic. Sound propagates very well in water. All sonars work
on this principle.
Bazanov got up and slowly approached Kolya.
"What a clever girl you are!"
-Guessed? Kolya fidgeted in his chair like a boy, and his face lit up.
-Guessed! By God, I guessed...

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 4
Cosmotrons began to work in a new mode, and soon it became clear
to everyone that if you follow the path proposed by Kotonaev, then
even one gram of anti-iron will have to be produced for several years.
Years! At the institute, only the director Professor Lvov and Professor
Khlebnikov knew about it. They consulted with the leading physicists
of the institute, and there was only one opinion: it was necessary to
urgently build new, even more powerful devices. And this means not
only devices, but also power plants and, perhaps, entire power plants...
At both consultations, Professor Kotonaev was irritated,
hot-tempered, shouted that he was forced to do menial work, that he
was not trusted.
"The energy, the instruments, the wire, and everything else are none
of my business. Think for yourself! If anti-iron is needed, then it is
necessary to organize its production. It's none of my business.
- Valery Antonovich, look at the problem with different eyes. We
live on earth, with earthly difficulties and with earthly opportunities. I
am sure that we, having accidentally attacked the fact of the production
of heavy antinuclei in colliding beams, decided that this is the only
method. Probably, there are some others...
"Well, maybe. As for me, the picture is very clear to me. The physics
of the phenomenon follows with iron logic from our equations...
"Not only ours," they gently prompted him.
- Of course, a few people in the world are good at relativistic
quantum mechanics...
Seeing the open dislike of himself on the part of those present, he
stopped and reluctantly said:
"Okay, I'll think about it again...
What he proposed did not change the essence of the process,
although it improved it somewhat. A small success was achieved due to
the very hard work of the theoretical group under his leadership. The
institute's computer was given to him at his complete disposal, and
many employees lost the opportunity to perform current calculations
during the working day. They switched to night work. Dozens of
experiments were conductedand hundreds, but at whatever angles the
proton beams met, nothing radically new happened. It was clear that the
efficiency of anti-iron production rested on the energy of the devices.
By this time, the first magnetodynamic traps had been created, and
Samarsky's group finally managed to obtain a few micrograms of
anti-iron for the first time in terrestrial conditions.
The unearthly grain was tossed about in a complex electromagnetic
field and, as the instruments showed, gradually melted. A very high

203
vacuum was needed, vessels made of a material that would not
evaporate at all, and no one knew how to approach all this.

5
The airfield from which Kolya Molchanov and Bazanov were supposed
to fly on their unusual business trip was far beyond Roshchin.
The plane was an ordinary "corn man", and it was piloted by a very
young boy, almost a boy. He pointed to the seats behind him and handed
over two leather helmets. Just before the start, he asked:
"So, are we going to poison the midges?"
Kolya Molchanov looked at the guy in surprise and was even more
surprised when he heard Bazanov's stern voice:
"Yes, it's high time.
We flew at a low altitude, no more than a hundred meters. Soon the
institute appeared, behind it the railway track and even further Lake Komar.
"I beg you, Kolya, to carefully examine the lake and the river from the
point of view of the conversation we had at Sokolov's.
The plane circled the lake three times, once very low at Bazanov's
request, and flew eastward, along a river that was also called Komar, a tiny,
cozy river with swampy banks overgrown with thick grass. The channel
was almost straight.
After flying about five kilometers, they found themselves over a small
wooden dam, behind which they could see a pond and the buildings of a
collective farm. Turquoise water was discharged through the dam in a stream.
"Now back."
Molchanov guessed why Bazanov decided to repeat the route in the
opposite direction. The fact is that three kilometers from the dam, leaning
against a willow, a man was sitting near the shore.
- Lower, very low, and at the tree, turn towards the meadow and there
begin to scatter Parisian greenery.
The pilot did so. Nikolai noticed that the man on the shore raised his
head and looked up. A thick green tail stretched behind the plane. The
powder smoothly settled on the swamp.
"The same thing in the opposite direction," Bazanov commanded.
The pilot carried out the order. Now it was clear that the man had risen to
his feet, twisting his fishing rods. During the third approach of the plane, the
fisherman was already walking towards the dam.
The plane scattered the Parisian greenery for another fifteen minutes and
finally turned to the airfield.
Only in the car Bazanov asked:
"Tell me, Kolya, is it possible to transmit messages along this river by
hydroacoustic method?"

204
 - Of course, you can. All the way to the dam. You can't go any further.
-Good. We will have to fly over this area for another two days...
"I don't understand, what does a midge have to do with it?'
"And without the greenery of Paris, flying would seem suspicious.
-To whom?
- Well, for example, fishermen who fish.

ALARM
1.
The book was in a soft purple cover, with no title. Only by turning the
cover could one read: "J. Steinley Hall. Aging".
Saccoro, in a long shaggy dressing gown and oriental sandals, walked
on the soft carpet. He read:
"When a person is old, very old and used to life, it is very difficult to
die. I think that young people accept the idea of dying more easily and
perhaps more willingly than old people. And when a person knows that
death is near, and can no longer doubt it, then a deep sorrow takes
possession of his soul."
Saccoro stopped. An evil smile played on his yellow, thinly wrinkled
face. He threw down the book.
Sadness? Not the right word at all. I feel like someone sentenced to
death, knowing my day and hour. Maybe someone feels sadness. Let.
Probably, there are those who have no choice but to feel sadness. But not
me! I don't feel any sadness. I am jealous. And hatred for those who will
live, for those who have not yet been born. And especially to those who
insist that life on earth will be eternal...
He leaned back on the sofa and rubbed his hands.
Are young people more willing to accept the idea of dying? That's
good. I hate them, and I will give them the opportunity to die easily. Oh, it
will be a very easy death! A flash - and that's it! They will all die before
they have time to realize what happened! Only as soon as possible... I will
also disappear, but I am young again, because I live in this sweet, happy
expectation...
Jallab entered the room silently and asked:
"Mr. Saccoro, do you want to bring coffee?"
-A what? Oh, it's you," Saccoro grimaced painfully. - No, you don't.
However, bring it, but not coffee, but gin. A bottle of gin and lemon juice.
He drank in small sips, closing his eyes, leaning back on the sofa.
Without opening his eyes, he whispered:
"It will be so. A very small airplane, well, just a crumb, will rise into the
air and carry across the ocean something that even the pilot will not know
about. Some trifle, a box. Just a gift to someone out there... It will be in a

205
box! It will contain death and a clock tapping the last minutes of the planet's
life... Everything will be calculated to the second. I will know exactly the
hour and minute... Oh, I am well aware of this latest military invention:
"The dead take revenge on the living!" On the other side of the earth, the
solar fire will flood cities and villages, continents will flare up like
gasoline-doused carpets, and tongues of flame will rise to the highest
clouds. And when all living things are scattered by the red-hot wind, the
bowels open, the automatons open the underground storages, and
thousands, and maybe more, of the same parcels will fly to this side of the
globe with death! "The dead take revenge on the living!"
He imagined a blue glow over the planet, hovered in his thoughts over
the raging ocean of unearthly fire, and felt like a great and merciless
avenger punishing the Earth...
He drank more and suddenly felt a sharp pain in his heart.
"Oh, there it is, damned reminder," he whispered, rising. A reminder that not
everything is done yet... We must hurry, hurry, otherwise it will be too late...

2.
The meeting was opened by Semvol.
- We are pleased to congratulate Dr. Dolori on his first major successes.
Finally, we began the actual production of this wonderful substance. Could
you please tell me, how much of it do we have now?
"Something like a gram," Dolori replied and looked at Rodstein
inquiringly. He nodded his head affirmatively. It was Rodshtein who set up
accelerators and traps for anti-iron.
- If this amount is expressed in energy, then how much will it be?
"Ten in the twenty-first erg," Frank said.
Semvol smiled guiltily. The number didn't tell him anything at all. Sol
Crow lazily explained:
"Energy enough to boil about a million cubic meters of water...
A tiny old man came out of the corner of the room and introduced
himself:
"I am General Dortmund, retired. Sorry, but boiling water is not very
interesting to us yet. It is interesting to know what will happen if this piece of
anti-... As you call it, antiferrum is just... blow up. Which way will the calories go?
"Is Rodshtein really right? Was Faith right? Are they really..."
Frank bit his lip.
- I don't know where the calories will go. And why should you know
this? We produce antiferrum for reactors of a new type. I think it is very
easy to make a controlled reactor...
"Yes, yes, of course," Dortmund interrupted. "But we must know this in
case suddenly... if by chance this devilish anti-ferrum does not stay

206
trapped and touches the walls.
Frank immediately realized that Dortmund was blatantly lying.
- Do you want to know how the energy will be distributed in space
during the explosion? Frank spoke very slowly, pronouncing every word.
"I understand you. I understand you very well. So, Mr. Former General.
What is the configuration of the explosion, I do not know. And as for the
safety of antiferrum storage, it is guaranteed.
Semvol realized that the conversation had gone in the wrong direction
and that the general was asking questions without sufficient tact.
"What do you need to do, Frank, to increase the productivity of the
machines?"
- A lot of energy is needed.
- What's the performance like now?
- About half a gram per month.
Dortmund again intervened in the conversation. He was no longer
speaking to Dolori, but to Stokink and Crow.
- Is it possible to theoretically calculate the configuration of the
explosion?
"What the hell?" What the hell, I'm asking you? Frank shouted. - Do
you think you plan military operations, where it is necessary to take into
account the configuration of the explosion?
Semvol interrupted the conversation again.
"Frank, we must think about the safety of the island, about its
inhabitants, about you, Frank, about your fiancée... In a word, let Müller
postpone the reactor and deal with this task. Think carefully, and you will
understand that posing the question is timely.
As they left Semvol's villa, Gene Stokink caught up with him.
"By God, you're making a fool of yourself. Don't you still understand
where things are heading? Well, let it be... You can't stop it...
Looking at Frank with undisguised contempt, Rodstein said:
"This snot, who knows nothing in life, is just afraid to think. It had not
yet dawned on his mind that by taking on such a job, he had actually sold
his soul to the devil.
This time Frank looked into the old fat man's eyes imploringly.
They dispersed at the wall of the accelerator. After her,There was a dull
rumble.

3.
Rosa and Maria... A moonless night with rare stars in a black sky. Frank
pulled a spare cigarette from his breast pocket and lit it. Leaning against
Rose's trunk, he inhaled the bitter smoke several times.
So he stood with his eyes closed, listening to the faint splash of the sea

207
waves and feeling how the washed-out trunk of the palm tree shuddered
from these almost imperceptible touches of the ocean on its roots.
Frank shook himself. A faint rustle of sand reached his ears.
-Liz!
"It's me, Frankie!"
Frank ran between the sand hills to meet her...
- Go to Rosa and Maria. I love to hear the sea murmur," Liz whispered.
"Here we are with you again," Liz said, stretching out on the warm
sand. "Only mad physicists like you don't see anything significant in it.
Frank bent down and found her lips in the darkness.
"Frankie, it's very good with you. Lately, I have been constantly
dreaming that we will always be together, and there is silence around, the
blue sea, white seagulls in cloudless blue and our children on the shore...
You and I, Frankie—" Liz clung tightly to him.
Frank could hardly breathe and it seemed that something was about to
explode in him, and he would forget everything in the world... But
somewhere deep, in the deepest corners of his soul, vague images of ugly
monsters crawling on all fours, raising their heads up to the sun, which
they would not see, surfaced...
- What if we have freak children? he whispered.
Liz jumped to her feet. In the silence, barely broken by the light splash
of water, she could hear how impulsively she breathed.
"What do you say, Frankie?"
"No, you answer directly!" And what will happen if we have freaks?
Children with two heads, with one leg, overgrown with hair,
hermaphrodites...
"Oh my God, stop it!" I beg you, stop it, Frank.
She sank down on the sand and cried softly. Frank lit a cigarette. The
silence was broken by the fractional knocking of pumps at the compressor
station. He felt very sorry for Liz.
"I'm sorry, I can't shake off the thoughts that came into my head after
the article in the Biological Review. Science has always brought
happiness to people... When I was a boy, I thought it would always be like
this...
"I've been thinking about it, Frank. Why do we always say that you,
modern physicists, have brought misfortune to mankind? And why, when
we talk about Russian scientists here, do they emphasize that they try to
adapt all their discoveries so that people live more happily? Aren't their
physicists like you?
"They're just like us. But... one and the same discovery can be turned
into good and evil...
... After a long silence, Frank asked,

208
 "Liz, would you agree to be the wife of a murderer?"
"My God, what's the matter with you, Frankie?"
"You answer... This is very important to me...
-Killer? Of course not. God, a thousand times no, even if it were you,
Frank! Are you being forced... Oh, it can't be... You'll never agree!
Liz snuggled up to him again, often inhaling the cool, salty air. A light
gust of wind came from somewhere, and the leaves of Rose and Mary
rustled.
"I'm scared, Frank. MIt does not seem that today is the last time we will
see each other.
The sea stirred, the siren howled in the town - motorcyclists drove
around the buildings of the nuclear center.
"Don't, Liz," Frank whispered in a choked voice. "If I didn't love you
the way I do... We'd better get out of here... Leave.
They got up and walked through the sand dunes. They walked huddled
together. And the fact that they felt each other's warmth and felt each
other's breath seemed to them the greatest happiness. And from that
moment on, they realized that great human happiness must be won
somehow, otherwise it will not exist.

4.
Frank abruptly got out of bed, pulled back the curtain and looked
through the window at the asphalt road and further to the sea. From there
came the dull roar of the surf, and if you looked carefully into the
darkness, you could see the foamy waves glowing with bluish light rolling
over the sandy beach. Against the background of the blue shimmer, the
silhouette of a sentry with a machine gun in his hands moved slowly... He
personified the anxiety and distrust that reigned in the world. He reminded
that fear and enmity still prevail among people.
On the floor below, in Rodshtein's apartment, the wall clock struck
three. Rodstein loved these watches and often told Frank that at every
battle he woke up and stretched sweetly. Frank imagined this fat German
with virtuoso hands. Now he stretched out his short legs and yawned
sweetly. Happy man! He is not tormented by any questions. He has a
primitive, but still philosophy. And what is your philosophy of life, Frank?
At night, the most unexpected ideas come to people's minds. What if
we woke up Rodshtein? Frank pulled on his robe, walked down the
brightly lit staircase, and knocked on the door.
- Who is there and what is needed?
"Rod, it's me, Frank.
The door opened, and he saw Rodstein in a long nightgown.
"I always thought you were a psychopath and would end badly sooner

209
or later. Enter.
"Thank you for the truth, Rod. I was woken up by the chiming of your
watch. I decided to watch you stretch in bed...
Rodshtein, without answering Frank, went into the depths of the
apartment, turning the switches as he went. Rodshtein's apartment was a
hopeless, cigar-soaked mess.
"Sit down," Rodstein said, pointing to Frank on the sofa. -Anything to
drink?
-Anything.
"I've got some wonderful rum." Do you want strong tea with rum? I'll
brew it now.
-Ok. To be honest, I want to.
Rodshtein shuffled his shoes and disappeared into the kitchen.
"By the way, I figured out how best to evacuate the gas from the
injector," Rodstein said.
Frank has always admired the German's peculiarity of talking about the
most interesting things in a sleepy, everyday tone.
Rodstein poured two glasses of very strong tea and poured a shot of
rum into each of them.
-Try. I think it's great.
Frank greedily took a sip of the bittersweet hot liquid.
"Well, how?" Rodstein asked.
-Ok. I'm lucky you're my neighbor. It's bad when neighbors are
teetotalers.
- When you have children, you won't care who your neighbors are.
- Rod, do you believe in God? Frank asked.
- A typical question from a night owl. During theIdiotic thoughts come
to mind.
-Still. Tell me, do you believe in God?
Rodshtein chewed the tip of the match.
"No, I don't," he said.
-Why?
"Because I don't know what it's for." It is enough for me that everything
in nature is subject to strict laws.
- Don't you think that someone established these laws?
- No, I don't think so. If they were set by some higher intelligence, they
would be much smarter. I cannot accept the idea that a higher intelligence,
a god, created human beings to devote their lives to finding the means to
kill each other. There is no logic here.
- When you talk about logic, you mean our human logic. Or maybe
there's another, higher logic," Frank said. - Maybe the logic is in the
second law of thermodynamics: chaos must triumph. For the triumph of

210
great chaos, primitive human reason is needed. Do you understand?
-Nonsense. We do not invent logic. Nature has put it into our heads.
Frank shrugged his shoulders and drank a few sips of tea. Then he
suddenly asked:
"Do you think it's scary to die?"
Rodshtein stopped drinking.
"You've got a good rest, Frank." Why do you think about it?
"I don't know, I don't know. Maybe it's just because we so often look at
our death, which is constantly fluctuating there in those damned magnetic
traps. Sometimes I think what would happen if someone blew up the
power plant on Owori or just pulled out the switch that supplies power to
our island.
"Listen, Frank. I don't know what you're talking about. I only know that
you shouldn't blow up the power plant on Owori. After all, the switch that
feeds the traps is in our laboratory. If you have such thoughts in your
brain, it is better to refuse to work. After talking to you, I don't really like
that you are the owner of the switch that powers the antimatter storages.
Frank laughed.
"Are you a coward, Rod?"
-Not at all. I do not believe that you will ever dare to pull out the switch.
You love life and your Liz too much. Lovers are always cowards.
"You have a strange logic, Rod," Frank said after a moment's thought.
"Either you express fear that I am the master of antimatter traps, or you
tease me that I am a coward in love.
"Have a drink, Frank," Rodstein said. "Have a drink and stop talking
nonsense." I'm sure you'll be laughing at yourself tomorrow morning. You
will meet Liz and start dreaming of a coral island in the Pacific Ocean...
- And what will other people say? Freik asked suddenly. - Would you
like to be cursed by millions of people?
Rodshtein stood up.
"I advise you to take a vacation. Take a journey. Let Liz get pregnant.
And only after that, return to work.
Frank stood up too.
"I'll think about it." Maybe I will.
And Frank went up to his apartment and looked out of the window for a
few minutes. A bright electric light illuminated the asphalt road and a
section of the shore fenced with barbed wire. On the other side of the fence
stood a soldier with a machine gun and looked in his direction.

211
 FOG AT THE CROSSROADS
1.
It is impossible to plan openingsIf it were possible to make a plan for
making discoveries, then no matter how complex it is, it would be worth
working on.
Discoveries, as a rule, stand outside the high road of science. Very
often they seem small and insignificant to a contemporary, and no one
pays attention to them.
After a discovery is made, it passes into the stage of "development",
everything that can be extracted from it is extracted, all possible direct and
indirect conclusions are drawn from it, it takes the main path of science
and gradually loses its novelty. It is used in practice.
Professor Kotonaev was mistaken, considering the data already known
in science to be quite sufficient for the creation of antimatter. Thousands
of experiments on the production of antiparticles hypnotized and created
the illusion of the ease of the problem. Kotonaev insisted, and in
Roshchina it was decided to take the fortress by storm.
This was the case with many problems of applied physics. Everything
was logical and wrong at the same time. It is not true because of the
incompleteness of human knowledge and, perhaps, because of logic itself,
in which there are always propositions that can neither be proved nor
disproved. In these cases, new, previously unknown facts are needed, a
new discovery is required.
Microscopic fractions of anti-iron obtained at the Roshchino Institute
persistently dissolved. It was possible to increase the productivity of
cosmotrons by about an order of magnitude, but this did not save the
situation. Measurements made by Nonna Kirillina showed that the rate of
resorption of antimatter increases in proportion to its quantity.
Nonna and Nikolai Molchanov sat in the laboratory and stared
motionlessly at the straight line of the rate of anti-iron annihilation. The
red line passed a terrible verdict on the work done. Tens of thousands of
devices, dozens of grandiose buildings and structures, millions of
kilowatts of energy - all in vain!
Is it in vain? Or maybe it is necessary? Maybe there is no other way!
Are there any openings planned? Was it possible so simply, sitting at a
desk and doing calculations, to foresee all this?
"So what do we do now?" Nonna asked. - You know, I want to cry...
Molchanov smiled sadly.
"Of course, don't cry. New ideas are needed...
"Kotonaev hammered his plan into our heads, and now, except for him,
there is nothing else. Counter bundles displaced everything. Sometimes it
seems to me that in order to solve problems like ours, it is better not to

212
know this method, or, in any case, to forget everything and start from
scratch. It is very difficult to get rid of the usual way of thinking,
especially when you know that everyone who works here thinks so.
Professor Sokolov entered silently and for some time also studied the
straight line in Kirillina's notebook. Nikolai and Nonna looked into his
tired eyes with confusion and hope.
"Just don't be angry with Professor Kotonaev," Sokolov said quietly.
He did everything he could. He and his group are now the hardest of all.
Kotonaev is a wonderful physicist, an outstanding scientist. But we have
no right to demand from him, as well as from any scientist, that he foresee
everything.
- But someone is to blame! Nonna exclaimed, unable to stand it.
- No one is to blame! It's always like that in science. There are problems
that cannot be solved by known methods.
Molchanov realized that it was necessary to do something, something
urgent, immediate, anything, just not to sit like this, withThe bed of the
hand.

2.
In a world that has achieved the unprecedented ability to concentrate
fantastic energy in a small volume, the once absurd idea of a sole ruler has
acquired a frightening meaning. One rich maniac or a group of maniacs
can prepare the death of millions with devilish persistence.
However, in order to produce the smallest amount of antimatter, it is
necessary to create such grandiose structures, devices and devices, to draw
such colossal masses of ordinary fuel, that it is virtually impossible to hide
anything from the eyes of the all-seeing and attentive world. Antimatter
cannot be prepared secretly, in the basement of a house, or in an
abandoned barn. It cannot be a byproduct of some innocent study that is
used as a disguise. That is why, despite the observance of all the laws of
the "sacred and inviolable" property of the territory where the Saccoro
research center is located, the analyzes of scientists, the random
statements of eyewitnesses, the observations of sailors soon allowed the
whole world to know what was being done on the islands of the
archipelago.
Only the successes were not clear. And this worried people, aroused
protests, mass demonstrations with demands to immediately send an
inspection team to Saccoro.
And while decisions on this issue were "formulated", "clarified" and
"agreed" in commissions, committees and subcommittees, feverish work
was going on on the islands. It could be judged by the continuous flow of
oil tankers that left different ports around the world with the same

213
destination: Owori Island, Sakkoro Island. It was there that the power
generators that powered the two huge twin accelerators roared day and
night.
Lvov shivered at these thoughts and took up the phone again. Before
dialing Kotonaev's number, he thought again for a minute. What will
Valery Antonovich say now?
Through the open window, a merry summer burst in. The streets of the
town were so peaceful and sunny, and it was hard to believe that dark
clouds were gathering over it and over thousands of other cities.
"Please, Alexei Vladimirovich, come to me," Lvov said on the phone.
The director of the Institute of Applied Physics was excited.
Today, the newspapers reported another postponement of the formation
of the inspection team, and correspondents immediately pointed out that
the amount of oil Saccoro was buying had almost doubled recently.
Have they really succeeded there? This predator is Saccoro?..
When a pirate feels power, he does not pay attention to treaties. What
are they to him?
Looking at the sunlit multicolored roofs of the houses, at the boulevard
filled with people, at all this life-loving, calmly bustling world, he felt
anger, anger at the one whom he had never seen in person and who seemed
to him a suddenly revived skeleton, death itself, trying to drag it all with it.
Kotonaev entered without knocking. The professor had hunched over
and faded in recent days, somehow sagged, became smaller. He walked
silently to the desk and held out his hand. The hand was sluggish and
heavy.
"Let's wait a minute. Professor Sokolov will arrive soon. Here he
comes! Come in, come in, Alexey Vladimirovich! Lvov exclaimed, and
immediately stopped. Why was he so happy to see Sokolov? It was no
longer tactful. Sit closer, comrades," he said in a formal tone. - There is a
very important conversation. I should know your opinion.
The scientists moved the chairs to the table, but sat at a distance from
each other. The director of the institute said dryly:
"Things are bad. Saccoro, the production of anti-iron is apparently in
full swing.
"So how?" Sokolov asked with a grin.
"Apparently, it doesn't disappear, it doesn't annihilate them...
-No way!
- Imagine, maybe. The accelerators are working at full speed there, day
and night... What do you say, Alexei Vladimirovich?
Professor Sokolov glanced at his colleague.
- Valery Antonovich is right. This cannot be. Anti-iron must be
absorbed...

214
 - Why do you think so? Lvov asked.
"I've recalculated everything again based on the latest experimental
data. We were on the wrong track...
"I also counted," Sokolov confirmed.
"You've counted everything, but there, with them, the anti-iron doesn't
disappear. Otherwise, why would they be racing their accelerators
continuously?! Do you see what that means?
"That can't be," Kotonaev continued to insist.
Lvov sank heavily into his chair.
- Try to think this through not yet based on your calculations.
Kotonaev glanced at Sokolov.
- If they repeated what we did, then they should not succeed, as well as
us.
"And if they come up with something like that... In general, any
improvement?
- The idea itself is flawed. It cannot lead anywhere.
These words of Kotonaev sounded almost like a sentence to himself.

3.
For two weeks in a row, theoretical seminars were not held at either
Kotonaev's or Sokolov's. The participants regularly came to the offices,
sat down, waited and silently dispersed.
When the last grain of antimatter "melted" in the trap, Alexander
Samarsky, who was called the "Lord Keeper of Antimatter", cursed loudly
and, slamming the door hard, left the laboratory. He wandered around the
deserted territory of the institute for a long time in search of Nikolai
Molchanov. No one knew where his comrade had gone, and then he went
to the theoretical sector.
Paushev carefully drew integrals.
"What do you think?" Samarsky asked in an indifferent tone.
Semyon took a deep breath.
- Pythagoras said that the world is a harmony of numbers. Damn it. The
world is a terrible mess. What harmony is here! The ergodic hypothesis
alone is worth something. Seen! This is the Lebesgue integral. And how
did Gibbs without the Lebesgue integral come up with the ergodic
hypothesis? Genius!
"So, a dead end," Samarsky stated gloomily.
-What did you say?
- A dead end, I say, I don't know where to go next...
"Listen, Lord Keeper. Did you know that there are no dead ends in
nature? Nature is like a huge forest. Something like a jungle. Go wherever
you want, it is not prohibited. But know how to choose the road, And the

215
one who seeks will always find...
Without looking up from the integrals, Semyon began to sing a song.
Samarsky thoughtlessly looked at his pencil, which slowly, lazily wrote
out formulas. Sasha was about to leave.
-Wait! You asked what I calculate, didn't you? Aren't you already
interested in this?
-Interests.
Semyon circled the equation with a pencil and sighed with relief.
-What is this?
-Nonsense. Solution to the "Dawn" problem. This is the true solution.
Xa-xa-xa! Kotonaev will die of envy! Who is this blockhead Paushev,
Senka, redhead? No way! It was someone who told him. Sasha, you are a
witness. I'm the only one here and I've done everything on my own. Isn't it
true that I'm one of the whole theoretical group here? The final result was
obtained in front of you. Remember, Sashenka, this formula. It expresses
nothing more than the probability of colonization of metastable states of
the nuclei of element X by nucleons.
Semyon leaned back in his chair and stretched sweetly.
"I'd give you an A to see Kotonaev's face when he finds out what I've
come up with!"
Paushev's face became serious.
"Here's the thing, Lord Keeper. So be it, so that you don't suffer...
- And I don't suffer.
- ... so that you do not suffer, I will reveal to you a terrible secret. Only
- between us! And swear that you won't run to the director now and say
that you have a brilliant idea.
- May it be for you, Senka! Well, dump your idea.
-Swear!
Paushev got up, approached Samarsky and solemnly raised both hands
at once.
-I swear! Samarsky barked. Semyon went to the door of the office and
turned the key. Then he tiptoed to the desk.
"We'll shoot, but quietly..." Sashenka, what if Einstein's formula is read
topsy-turvy, having previously divided both the right and left sides by the
square of the speed of light. Just like that. Does that tell you anything?
- Any schoolboy knows this.
"Exactly, my lord.
Paushev's voice was gentle and extremely snide.
"We've been banging on the wrong door all the time. Mutton effect.
One ram is thrown overboard, the rest of the sheep follow him completely
voluntarily, out of solidarity, without batting an eyelid.
Samarsky frowned.

216
 "Who do you consider a sheep?"
"It doesn't matter now. He's already overboard. We need to save the
herd. So, you, that is, we, until today thought that we were looking for a
way to turn mass into energy. And this in earthly conditions is nonsense!
-That is?..
Paushev suddenly stammered. His eyes squinted to the side, he
listened. Quietly approaching the door, he put his ear to it. His face froze.
-You what? Samarsky asked him. Semyon smiled guiltily.
- Sashenka, I'm sorry, but I won't tell you anything more...
Samarsky's eyes widened. Is he crazy, or what? Semyon continued to
smile guiltily, and his hands feverishly collected papers from the table.
"You see, Sasha, I can't... I can't tell you anything. The thing is... And
you know it yourself... At our institute...
Samarsky began to guess. He also felt a little creepy.
- At our institute, they say, it has started... This, of course, is ridiculous.
And who knows? The main thing is that they are looking for him... So
you'll forgive me...
Both of them tiptoed to the door, opened it noiselessly, and looked out
into the corridor.
There was no one there.

4.
"Come, show me what they have figured out here?"
Bazanov turned the fishing rod in his hands, stretched it outHe
stretched it out all over his arm and said:
"It won't work.
-That is?.. Molchanov was confused. "Everything here is as you
said.
- Too chic. No one has ever seen anyone with such fishing rods
here. If the boys from the collective farm find out about this fishing
rod, you will not be able to stop them. We are reconstructing it. After
all, as far as I understand, it's all about the line and this float?
-Yes. And in this box. Here is a magnetic recording...
-It's cool. We will cut a stick out of a hazelnut tree and attach this
technique to it. Lord, how much scientific people are detached from
life! They think that if they demand a fishing rod, then it should be
made as for an exhibition.
Nikolai went to the suburban forest and carved a long clumsy rod.
At home, he fiddled with a new rod until midnight, carefully
smeared the barely noticeable thin braided wire with mud. Nikolai's
heart clenched in anticipation of what he could "fish"...
Here, at this lonely willow on the Komar River, a thread as thin as a

217
spider's web began, which stretches far, far away. One wrong step and
it will break! Now it is absolutely important that it does not break.
"For orientation, keep the following in mind," Bazanov told him. A
man works on a collective farm as a watchman. His work is at night.
Therefore, he can fish during the day. Understand?
-Got it.
"Sit and fish with him." Ok?
Molchanov walked on the wet grass, bypassing the lake. It was very
cool on this August morning, but he didn't feel the coolness. He
walked like a real fisherman, waving a fishing rod and a jar of worms.
The water in the river ran to the lake in barely noticeable waves.
Occasionally, the silence was broken by bursting bubbles of swamp
gas. Several times, frightened frogs, experienced divers, threw
themselves into the water right from under their feet. Everything was
so close and so familiar that it was simply impossible to believe that
something alien and disturbing could be happening in this calm and
shallow river.
And then a lonely willow appeared. In the east, it was lightening,
and it stood out clearly against the pink sky. Once upon a time, such
willows grew along the entire coast, but they were very old and their
rotten trunks could no longer hold heavy crowns above the water. Now
only damp rotten stumps remained on the shore.
Before reaching the willow, Nikolai stopped, sat down at such a
stump and began to unwind the line. He hooked a worm and threw it
into the water.
Almost immediately, the float dived under the water, and Nikolai
pulled with all his strength. First prey! A small fish dangled on the
hook. He took it off and threw it into a wicker net, which he had
previously fixed on the shore.
A few minutes later, there was another sharp bite, and again the
prey, this time a larger fish. The fishing had started damn well, more
successfully than he would have liked. He kept casting his line, and
the fish was not long in coming.
"How is it caught, young man?"
It was already quite light, but the sun had not yet risen. In front of
Nicholas stood the same old man, Kalym.
Nikolai smiled and nodded in the direction of the woven mesh. The
old man silently approached her and looked at the fish.
-Minutiae. Uninteresting. You will lower the sinker closer to the
bottom. Sometimes a pike walks there. The pike is worth waiting for.
Nikolai nodded, examining the face of the man - an old manOh,
tired, with a protruding lower lip.

218
 - Are there pikes here? Nikolai asked.
- Of course! Recently, in an hour and a half, I caught as many as
three, two small and one kilogram per one and a half. What a beast!
Kalym measured thirty centimeters on his fishing rod.
"I advise you to get closer to the bottom. Here the depth is about
three meters.
With these words, the fisherman went to his willow. Nikolai
watched sideways as he unwound his fishing rod. It seemed to him that
the old man had hidden something in his pocket before casting the
hook.
Molchanov felt in his pocket for a tiny tape recorder and clicked a
button. He saw the old woman sit comfortably, leaning his back
against the trunk of a tree.
Following the old man's advice, Nikolai fiddled with the sinker and,
pretending to have baited the hook, threw it empty, "Now there will be
no bite. Or maybe there will be the most successful bite..."
For the sake of decency, Kolya pulled the rod up several times and
deliberately swore like a fisherman.
"Fell off, damn it...
- Take your time. You need to hook short and sharply. Just like that!
And again a large fluttering fish on the grass. Nikolai even became
jealous.
The sun gradually rose, began to get hot, and the old man began to
collect the tackle.
"It's time to go home." Now there will be no more biting. And it was
exhausted after duty. I want to sleep.
He approached Nikolai and looked at the motionless float for a long
time.
"Yes," he drawled. "In vain did I advise you to lower the sinker.
They would have caught a roach. Will you come here tomorrow?"
"N-I don't know... If it is caught like this, then it is unlikely. He put
the fishing rod on the grass and fell on his back. If only the old man did
not notice the thin hair of wire that reached into his pocket...
"Let's go, or what?" Kalym turned to him.
"No, I'll lie down a little." The sun warms very well...
"Well, as you wish. Good bye.
"Do not rush home. And in general, never rush..." - he remembered
the instructions of Bazanov, who seemed to foresee that after the first
fishing Nikolai would want not to go, but to run...

219
 EPIPHANY
1.
Juan Rodores looked up from his eyepieces and looked at Frank
wearily.
"We've aged a lot over the years, Frank. Do you remember how it
started? Enthusiasm, energy, fever... We ourselves helped the concrete
workers to build this basement. It seemed to us that we were building a
golden gate to paradise, or at least a triumphal arch leading to the
promised land...
Frank put his fist on his chin and watched as Juan slowly walked across
the tile. He had soft, sluggish steps, like those of an old, exhausted man.
Lately he had been seized with fits of melancholy, and he began to
philosophize.
"You know, I've decided to quit this job," Juan said suddenly.
-Get away? Where to?
"Of course, I can't leave the island until the contract ends. And I
decided to change my place of work. I don't want to be a part of it, Frank.
I'm disgusted and sometimes... it is frightful. I often think of a pilot who
went mad after dropping an atomic bomb on the Japanese.
As if shaking off the delusion, Rodores explained in a businesslike
manner:
- You know, I'm not a nuclear scientist, but a radiophysicist. While it
was necessary to create the generators and waveguides you needed here, I
was at work. And now all this is behind us. I have nothing to do here.
Frank's heart sank. Probably, like Rodores, all his old friends will
gradually leave him, and he will be left all alone... So he had decided to
leave the nuclear laboratory! Frank often had such an idea, too, but he
remembered Professor Feith's suicide note and the French proverb: "If not
you, then who? If not now, when?"
Rodores seemed to guess his thoughts.
"You and I, Frank, and many honest physicists were idealists in our
youth, and thought it a blessing to be at the forefront of science. We did
not realize then that it was really a spearhead and that sooner or later its
form would manifest itself in all its hideous reality. Without noticing it,
we turned from researchers into hired laborers, thoughtlessly making
something vile... You probably haven't listened to the radio for a long time
and you don't know what's going on in the world. How often our island
and Faith's last name are mentioned on the air, both yours and mine.
Everyone is talking about us, from ordinary speakers at a street rally to
lawyers from the international court. Do you understand what that means?
Frank smiled wryly. Passive resistance? Evasion of responsibility? No,
it's not in his nature...

220
 "Are you afraid of the trial?"
"No, I'm afraid of death, I'm afraid of a ridiculous death because of
someone's madness. And if this continues, death is inevitable.
Rodores walked over to the quartz cylinder in the corner of the
laboratory.
"Here, Frank, you've driven her into this trap. But no one in the world
can guarantee that she will not escape from there.

2.
"We need to act! Resolutely and immediately..." The decision was
finally ripe and now seemed so flawless and simple that he was even
surprised that he had not come to it earlier. He became thoughtful, silent,
absent-minded. His comrades knew that Frank always had this in front of
the next brilliant scientific idea.
In the dazzlingly bright early morning, he jumped out of bed, took a
cold shower, swallowed his scrambled eggs, and ran out onto the quay. He
felt like a well-trained athlete before a competition.
"I'll bet Ovori and Las Palmas will soon be talking about Mr. Dolori
again," the cigarette salesman said to him, smiling.
As he lit a cigarette, Frank nodded his head.
"I think this time I will be talked about far beyond our archipelago!"
He headed for the crossing to Sardoneo. This time there was no timidity
or embarrassment in him, he was convinced that he had solved a problem
that only Müller could solve. From today on, they are on an equal footing!
He found Müller at home.
"Hello, Peter!" Why the hell are you stuck in your kennel on a day like
this? I offer you a boat trip.
Müller looked up at him in surprise and quickly scribbled on a scrap of
paper:
"Why is that?"
"I can't stand the heat," he said carelessly.
"This is very important. Take with you a notebook with problem
number 330."
"It is not allowed to take out papers."
"I'll put them in my pocket."
"Anyway," Müller went on, "as you like. If you are not tired of me, I
can accompany you.
They walked quickly to the boat station.
"You can't swim further than three kilometers," the sentry warned them
on the pier.
"Get the hell out." I'm the boss here today, understood?
When they were about two hundred yards from the shore, Müller asked,

221
 "What's the matter with you, Frank?" It seems as if you are under the
influence of a drug.
"Something like this. Have you solved the problem of explosion
distribution?
"No," Müller replied firmly.
"I don't believe you haven't solved it.
"It's up to you.
- Get behind the oars and paddle slowly. So that your back covers the
village. I'll look at the notebook.
They switched places. Frank pulled off his shirt and took off his trousers
as if to sunbathe, and pulled a notebook out of his pocket. The silence was
broken only by the light splashes of oars. The heat was getting stronger.
"You didn't do what you had to do," Frank said angrily.
"I have solved what I could," Müller replied.
-No. You won't rub my glasses. You repeated the derivation of the
formula for energy balance. Why?
"For the sake of exercise. I like this conclusion," Mueller said
ironically.
"For God's sake, don't make me angry. Tell me, why don't you want to
solve the problem that I proposed to you?
"Then I can't," Müller replied.
- You can, you can a thousand times. I'm sure of it!
Müller shrugged his shoulders and made no reply. For a few minutes
they swam in silence.
"If you tell me the equation for the configuration of the explosion and
the law of energy distribution in the core, I promise to repay you with very
useful advice.
Frank emphasized the word "very."
"I don't need advice," Müller said mockingly. - You can entrust this
task to any other theorist or solve it yourself. I can't do it.
"Get aft." Let me bury it. Let them think on the shore that we are
sunbathing.
They switched places again, and Müller reluctantly pulled off his
trousers and shirt.
"Take off your T-shirt too," Frank ordered. - We will swim from the
boat. It will be very natural.
Müller smiled miserably. In his huge blue eyes there was either
embarrassment or anxiety.
- I have very sensitive skin to the sun. I can get sunburned.
Compared to Frank's chocolate-black body, the German's arms and legs
were petty white.
"Listen, Peter, it's sickening to look at you!" Have you never sunbathed

222
in all this time?
Müller shook his head. Frank was attacked by boyish mischief. He put
the oars on the sides of the boat and, still laughing, exclaimed:
"I'm going to undress you and throw you out to sea!"
"Don't be silly, Frank. For God's sake, leave me alone. You really
behave like a drunk...
"Well, let it be!" Let those who watch us from the shore think that you
and I are two fools playing in the sea air!
Müller clung convulsively to Frank's arms, and he tried to pull off his
T-shirt.
"What kind of eccentric are you?" March in the sun! March into the
water! I know you're a great swimmer.
Frank's strong hands pulled his shirt up. He xhunted like a madman.
- You definitely need to get a tan! Don't resist, or I...
Something red like blood flashed before his eyes, and at that very moment
Müller turned over his head with lightning speed and jumped into the sea...
Frank froze with his mouth open. Müller was in the water, holding on to
the stern of the boat, breathing loudly.
They looked into each other's eyes.
"What's on your chest?" Frank whispered.
-No problem. Wound...
-Wound? A strange wound. Show.
"No," Müller whispered.
-Show! Otherwise, I...
"Then one of us will have to feed the sharks," Müller said.
Frank thought again of the red streak on Müller's snow-white chest, and
he saw that it was not just a streak, but a series of letters, big blood-red
letters. Frank had a photographic visual memory. He read what was
written in blood-red letters on Müller's chest: "Communist."
"Who are you?" Frank whispered.
-None of your business...
"That's my business. Now much has become clear.
"Then swim to the shore and report everything to your superiors. I'll
wait for you here.
Frank realized that he was not going to get out of the water.
"I won't say anything to anyone if you tell me the equation of the blast
wave.
-Wow! Müller said in the tone of a man who has nothing more to lose.
You are paying dearly for satisfying your vanity. You won't get a decision
from me alone. I don't want to be an accomplice to murder.
"And if I tell you that I don't want to either?"
"Then why do you need this equation?" Your conscience will be clear if

223
someone else tells them this equation.
"Is your conscience clear?" You hid that you... This inscription...
"You're a boy, Frank." I am proud of this inscription and that is why I
will not tell you the equation.
Frank fell silent. Seeing that Müller had resolutely sailed into the open
sea, he shouted:
"Don't do anything stupid, Müller! To hell with it, with your equation. I
know approximately without you what should happen in an explosion.
Perhaps that will be enough for me. I just didn't want to...
"What didn't you want, Frank?"
"I just didn't want innocent people to suffer...
Müller returned and grabbed the side of the boat.
-What are you up to?
"It's none of your business. Crawl in here and go to the shore.
"Really, Frank, what are you thinking?" Müller's voice sounded
anxious.
Frank didn't answer. Müller climbed into the boat. He took off his
T-shirt and began to squeeze the water out of it. Frank stared blankly at his
chest.
- Was it very painful?
- Yes, very much.
"Where are you?"
- In my homeland. The fascists have good experience in this regard.
"Did you scream?"
"I don't remember, I guess so," Müller replied and busily pulled on his
damp T-shirt, "And now we're sailing to the shore."
Dolori rowed very slowly.
- I need an equation for the distribution of the explosive zone for
myself.
"If I tell you this equation, what then?" Müller asked.
"I promised to give you good advice.
- Good. Listen up. This is a lemniscate.
-Options?
Müller gave three figures.
-Thank you. Now listen to me. Go to Europe. The sooner the better.
Müller burst out laughing.
"You're kidding, Frank!" You talk as if a trip to Europe is to me what a
trip to Las Palmas is to you!
Frank stopped rowing and stared at Müller.
- Think of anything, but find an excuse to leave immediately. Tell them
that you have forgotten something very important for our business. Say
that Dr. Roberto is not dead and you know where he lives, make it up.

224
 Müller made no reply. He dressed and looked at the approaching shore.
When they got out of the boat, the soldier with the binoculars said:
"Well, you ransomed this German, Herr Frank!
- It was worth buying back. He's worth it," Dolori muttered absently.
Approaching Müller's apartment, he stopped.
"I'm sure our executioners are as good as yours.
Müller shook hands with him in silence. Entering his room, he sat down
in an armchair and thought deeply. Then he went to the telephone and
asked for Colonel Semvol's apartment.

3.
"At last," thought Semvol, getting into the speedboat. "Something will
be clarified in a moment." Maybe he has found a solution..." He entered
Müller's apartment noisily and cheerfully.
- Good afternoon, old man, good afternoon, our scientist giant!
"Alas, Colonel, far from being a giant. Müller embarrassedly handed
Semvol a chair. "I decided to confess to you...
"Oh, wait!" I feel that you immediately want to talk to me about some
matter that probably does not interest me. Let him catch his breath. It's so hot.
After a short pause, he said:
"If you have anything to drink, old man, I will not refuse," he said,
trying to be as simple and friendly as possible. In fact, he was feverishly
thinking what this "not a giant" could mean...
Müller poured a glass of cognac and waited for Semvol to suck it in
small sips.
"So I listen to you, old learned wolf," said Semvol. "Dump what you
have...
"The fact is, Mr. Colonel, I have nothing...
"Well, you're being modest. I know that tasks don't stay long in a head
like yours. So, let's solve problem 330.
"I can't solve it," said Müller.
"Can't you?" Semvol exclaimed.
- No, I can't. And in general, they created not quite deserved fame for
me here. Until now, I have used what Dr. Roberto once put into my head.
All the tasks that I have solved here have already been solved. They were
solved by Roberto back there, in Germany... And the problem that is
formulated in task 330 has already been solved.
"Lord, why the hell are you fooling me. Let's drink cognac and rejoice!
Semvol exclaimed, amazed.
"I will be very happy to share your joy after the decision is in our
hands," Müller interjected hurriedly.
"In our hands?" And in whose hands is it now?

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 - Now in a draw.
Semwol leaned back in his chair and stared at Müller, trying to
understand what he is saying...
He was confused.
"I don't understand you.
"When the Separate Laboratory still existed, there, in Sonderstadt,
Roberto undertook to solve this problem. Roberto had a gigantic intuition,
and he calculated the shape of the explosion when matter combined with
antimatter...
-And you? Didn't you participate in this work?
-No. I insisted that no time should be wasted on such a disembodied
theoretical work.
Müller fell silent. The symbol looked at him with open suspicion. He
already imagined how much effort it would take to verify Müller's words.
- What happened next?
"On the day when we, that is, Dr. Roberto and I, were fleeing from your
air raid, my master suddenly felt weak and sat down on the side of the
road. He had the last calculation with him, his theory of explosion hidden
in an aluminum cylinder...
As if stung, Semvol jumped up from his seat.
"Where is he?"
"At the request of Dr. Roberto, I buried it... I swore an oath to him to do
it, and I did...
At the thought that such important calculations had been lying
somewhere in the ground for a long time, Semvol's hands trembled.
Maybe there is no road there anymore, maybe everything has been dug up,
maybe an aluminum cylinder with precious papers has been found and
fallen into the wrong hands...
- In what place did you bury him, where? He shouted, clenching his fists.
"It's hard to explain... On the east bank of the river. There was one path
that Dr. Roberto liked to walk on... And also a spruce, an old spreading
spruce. I buried the documents under it...
"What is to be done, what is to be done?!" Tell in detail where you
buried these papers! Everything, to the last detail.
"I'm afraid it won't be easy for me to recall the details. Müller stood up.
Colonel, I want to offer you one option. Only I can find these documents,
and if anything has changed there during this time, I will still recognize
the forest, the path, and the spruce. I recognize among thousands of other
paths and fir trees...
"Do you want us to let you go there?" Semvol asked, even more
amazed.
Müller smiled bitterly.

226
 "I understand you don't believe me. But I can't do anything alone. Let
your people accompany me.
Semvol grabbed his chin and began to rub it violently. He understood
that now he was facing a difficult task. Maybe Müller wants to escape.
Maybe he's telling the truth. And in general, you never know what could
be hidden behind what he just heard!
"Müller, I don't believe a word you say. It seems to me that you are
cunning. I need proof, or you will feel bad.
"I want to present the evidence, Colonel," Müller said in a firm voice.
"Not far from that place are buried my papers, my calculations... But only I
buried them on the west bank of the river. I can give you their exact address.
-Say!
- Where the pontoon bridge was built, there used to be a large stone one.
During the war, it was bombed. There were granite bulls left, two on the east
and two on the west bank. If you go to the bridge from the west, then at the
base of the second granite bull, on the right, you can see a section paved with
stone, so that the sand is not washed away during floods. We need to pull a
stone out of the ground at the very top, closer to the shore... At a depth of fifty
centimeters lies an aluminum cylinder with my papers...
Semvol stared at Müller for a few seconds, his bloodshot eyes. Without
saying another word, he went out.

NONNA
1.
Nikolay Molchanov's "fishing season" ended with the first frosts. They
came at once, unexpectedly, turning the damp swamp hummocks into
hard stones, overgrown with yellow bristles.
Cowering in his quilted jacket, he came to his place and for the first
time did not find the old man there...
The colonel was sitting at the table in front of a bright table lamp.
He turned to Nicholas:
"So, your mission is over. Listen to what you managed to fish. Do not
think that it will be any pleasant music. But listen to it, and very carefully.
Karimov entered the office and, without saying a word, put some
device on a chair and plugged the plug into the socket.
"There, there... there, there, there... there..."
The sounds that came from the apparatus were very strange and at the
same time very familiar. Molchanov began to painfully remember where
and when he had heard them. Unusual, and at the same time everyday, and
even annoying blows...
"There, there... there, there, there, there..."
The beats followed one after another with short and long pauses.

227
 "There, there..."
-Understand? Bazanov asked.
Kolya shook his head.
- It seems that a bell is ringing under the water...
Bazanov looked at Karimov with a smile.
- Turn up the volume.
Now the blows sounded throughout the office. And yet it was not a bell,
but something quite different...
-Where do you live? Bazanov asked.
- Like where, in the apartment...
- What kind of heating is there?
-Steam...
-Well?..
- They are repairing pipes! - exclaimed Nicholas, - Exactly. When they
knock on the pipes, such a sound is heard!
Bazanov nodded affirmatively.
So there it is! Someone, tapping on the pipe, transmitted messages!
- Listen carefully. An old trick in a new design. A plumbing network
for sound like a telephone network.
"If so, then you can...
"Yes," Bazanov interrupted. - It is possible, but it is difficult. We found
a pipe that goes into Lake Komar. They traced it to the walls of the
institute. And yet, it has not yet been established where the transmission is
coming from. It is almost impossible to control all the pipes of your
complex water management, especially since he can use a water or sewer
pipe anywhere in the institute for transmission.
"What is to be done?"
- Listen carefully, if we suddenly hear something like this at the
institute, then...

2.
Clouds of yellowed leaves were rushing along the sidewalks, the
ground in the squares was gray, passers-by were in a hurry to hide in the
houses. Professor Sokolov, holding his hat in his hand and bowing his
head low, walked along the main street of Roshchin. He had never been to
Kotonaev's apartment. He walked reluctantly, against his will, as a man
goes to the dentist. There was simply no other way out.
Sokolov willingly talked with his colleague within the walls of the
institute, but there everything concerned only business, and conversation
at home suggested a certain degree of intimacy, which Sokolov feared
most of all.
A little panting, the professor stopped near a large oak door, on which

228
hung a bronze plaque: "Kotonaev". He pressed the bell button.
"Leave the mail in the box to the right," he heard Kotonaev's sharp
voice.
- This is not the mail, Valery Antonovich. It's me, Sokolov.
A short pause.
- Alexey Vladimirovich?
-Yes.
-My god! One second, I'll clean myself up. Or no, come in.
The latch clicked, and the door swung open.
- Come in, Alexey Vladimirovich, I'll be right away! Go straight to the
office!
Kotonaev in his pajamas disappeared behind the side door, and
Sokolov went into the office.
Everything about it was modern. Instead of a desk, there is a light
secretaire. On the extended shelf there was a portable typewriter. The books
are located on hanging shelves, comfortable and beautiful. There were few of
them and, apparently, the main library of the scientist was not located here. A
low ottoman, a modest but elegant armchair, a few light chairs.
Sokolov noticed that behind the glass of the secretaire there was an
unusual portrait of Albert Einstein. A great old man in a coarse woollen
jacket was writing formulas on the blackboard, supporting his trousers
with his hand. A familiar lion's mane, a disheveled mustache...
Sokolov peered for a long time into the tragically wise wrinkles of the
great scientist, who all his life struggled to reveal the mysterious harmony
of the universe.
"A curious portrait, isn't it, Alexey Vladimirovich?" It was given to me
at Princeton.
-Remarkable. Good afternoon!
The scientists shook hands. Sokolov noticed that Kotonaev's smile was
not so much cheerful as guilty.
Valery Antonovich began to speak first:
"You know, what Einstein did in the field of creating a unified field
theory is not as senseless as some people try to assert. Now I have
collected all his latest works and found a number of interesting ideas in
them. The old man just didn't have enough time.
- Do you study field theory?
-Yes. It's a damn fascinating thing. It seems to me that Einstein's
determinism is not devoid of deep physical meaning.
Kotonaev spoke quickly, as if afraid that Sokolov would interrupt him.
He did not even ask why his colleague had come.
"Remember, Niels Bohr said that the future physical theory must be crazy,
and he rejected Heisenberg's ideas because they were too primitive. Reading

229
Albert's works, I came to the conclusion that, translated into our language,
Bohr's statement should be understood as follows: the future physical theory
must be very nonlinear. Einstein's equations are damn linear, which means
that he could not shake off the obsession of considering the phenomena of
nuclear physics in isolation from the universe. And what did Fred Hoyle say?
The confusion in the world of elementary particles will disappear if we are
able to connect the laws of nuclear transformations with the laws of the
Universe. Damn grandiose, isn't it?
-Very much...
"It's one, one!" You need to find a connecting link. Look, Alexei
Vladimirovich, what I managed to show.
He opened a folder lying on the ottoman with written sheets of paper.
- I managed to show that it is possible to construct functions that
smoothly describe the strong, weak, electromagnetic and gravitational
interactions. If we take the Klein-Gordon equation...
Sokolov laughed and raised both hands in the air.
"Rid me of Klein-Gordon!" I barely had time to get to them!
Kotonaev fell silent in mid-sentence.
"I'm a bad diplomat, Valery Antonovich," Sokolov began restrainedly.
Therefore, I will begin directly with a matter, or rather, with one question.
Why did you practically leave your job at the institute?
Kotonaev, of course, was waiting for this question. But he did not
answer immediately. He bit his lower lip, put his hands behind his back,
and walked to the far corner of the office. There he stopped, turned to
Sokolov and asked:
"Why are you asking me about this?"
"Just because I can't understand how you can leave your job at such a
moment.
-Leave? Kotonaev laughed theatrically. "Do you have to ask about it,
Alexey Vladimirovich!
-I see it. You were offended that you were not in charge of the end of
"Breaking Dawn". I suppose that you do not yet understand why it is not
you, but me.
"No, not at all," said Kotonaev. - Frankly speaking, at the first moment
I really felt offended. And then I came to the conclusion that this is even
better. Behind all the applied nonsense and technical calculations, I began
to forget real, big physics.
- And you took up the general field theory?
- Yes, by the general field theory.
- Do you think this is consistent with your duties to society?
-Quite. General field theory is the number one task today.
Sokolov approached the portrait of Einstein and, pointing to it, said:

230
 "He was also engaged in general field theory. Not a year or two, but forty
years. And when there was a smell of war in the air, he wrote to the President
of the United States of America that it was necessary to immediately deal
with the atomic bomb, or, in your language, applied nonsense.
- He did not write a letter, he was offered to sign it. Others wrote.
- His signature is worth many volumes of some works. He was old and
weak. But he was in favor of preventing the atomic bomb from falling into
evil hands. It was a matter of his conscience.
- The bomb still fell into evil hands.
Sokolov shuddered.
- I don't like your analogy, Valery Antonovich.
"I don't like yours. You're only looking at the first half of the story. And
I - the whole story.
Sokolov and Kotonaev stared at each other. For Sokolov, something
new and deeper was revealed now than he had imagined. Kotonaev's
usually lively and youthful face became wrinkled and stone. No, he wasn't
as young as he seemed! Rather, he was old, too old...
"Life arranges exams for us, Valery Antonovich. Cruel, merciless
exams. At the very first one, you failed. You don't know what is personal
and what is public. And you don't understand the role of the scientist in
modern society, here and there...
"Where should I go, I'm not a party member.
Sokolov frantically tapped his fingers on the table and said in a choked
voice:
"You can feel it. In everything. However..." He came close to
Kotonaev. - We only know about this conversationOh, you and I. I don't
believe you think so. A personal resentment speaks in you, petty and
unnecessary. Think carefully about how you will feel if they are the first to
do so. If the people find out that you have contributed even a microscopic
fraction to our defeat, you will be pelted with stones. "Dawn" concerns all
of humanity, and there may be a lot of stones... I'm waiting for you at the
institute. Good bye.

3.
- Nikolka! Silent! Nonna exclaimed, and rushed to meet him. Finally
arrived. Without you, everything stopped. My brain was numb from
idleness. Boredom, like at a lecture on love and friendship. Flies fly in the
accelerator chambers. They are called cosmofuses!
He carefully freed himself from her embrace.
"Is it really true?"
"Well, maybe the flies in the chambers don't fly and don't even die. But,
to be honest, Nikolka, there is an ideological vacuum in the atmosphere. I

231
never thought that physics was like a litmus test. As soon as brilliant
leaders turn sour, everyone begins to turn blue.
"Well, what have you been doing all this time?" By the way, the litmus
from the acid turns red," Molchanov corrected her.
She walked over to some tattered tube circuit and casually pointed her
finger at it.
-Here. I mounted a new logarithmic amplifier. And now I put the meter
in order, I don't know if it will come in handy... And one more thing...
"What else?"
"I was thinking about you...
Nikolai ignored this. She's always like that, this Nonna...
He sat at his desk, got up, and went to the window. The volleyball court
was covered with dirty snow, black shrubs could be seen behind it. A dull,
lifeless landscape... At the very fence there was a building of a mechanical
building and a high tower in which there was a water pump and a transformer
station. The fence ran along the edge of a deep ravine. In summer, its slopes
were overgrown with wild raspberries, blackberries and nettles. During the
lunch break, the girls went there to pick raspberries.
He looked attentively at Nonna. She lost a little weight, her face did not
look as round as before, and her eyes... Indeed, how could he not have
noticed her eyes before? Big, light gray and honest and honorable... Like a
very small child.
"Can I work with you now?"
- This must be agreed with the director, after all, you are doing other
work.
"Ochhor!"
And she ran away.
Molchanov thought for a moment and did not notice how Nonna
returned.
-Dance! Lvov allowed me to work with you even in the evening.
-Let? What for?
- To entertain you. So that you don't fall asleep. To make you happy!
Nikolai grabbed the phone, but the girl unfolded a green book right in
front of his eyes, a night pass just like his.
- That's right, comrade scientific supervisor. I ask you to give me a task.
I am admitted to your experiments.
"What a girl! What a stubborn one! I can imagine how she attacked
poor Lvov."
- No tasks now. The working day was over. And tomorrow...
-No. I decided to start today. So to speak, to get involved gradually.
He shrugged his shoulders.
"Then finish your logarithmic amp.

232
 -How about you?
-GoCome! I'll go to the darkroom. I will test new emulsions.
"Ochhor!"
He left the darkroom at ten o'clock in the evening, when it was
completely dark outside the windows. As he thought, Nonna was sitting at
her diagram and, burying her nose in a downy shawl, was dozing. Nikolai
went to the wardrobe and began to dress slowly. Nonna shuddered and
raised her head.
"Kol, where are you going?"
"I'll go and walk." I'll get some fresh air...
"Can I go with you?"
"You know, dear, sit down. I want to wander alone...
"Ah," she said. "Just don't linger, because I'm scared alone!"
Nikolai slammed the door abruptly.
A cold wind hit his face. He threw dry dust mixed with fine snow in his
face.
The asphalt path ended just behind the volleyball field, and then a path
stretched, barely noticeable among the bushes. It was covered with snow,
and the light of strong lanterns installed on the roof fell on it.
Dry branches of bushes swayed in the wind and rubbed against each
other, grains of sand hit somewhere on a sheet of paper.
Silence, restless, windy silence...
He walked past the water pump and further along the fence to where the
warehouses stood. The fence was made of barbed wire, and a deep ravine
was darkening just beyond it.
It was quiet here too, but in the rustle of branches and in the rustle of the
wind, Nikolai caught another sound. Yes, he remembered that there was a
small stream at the bottom of the ravine.
He moved on, towards the brick oblong sheds and suddenly froze. He
heard a faint sound: "There, there, there... Over there... there..."
He stopped breathing, turned and listened. "There, there... there..."
With quick, springy steps he walked back. With each passing second,
the familiar sounds grew louder and louder. They were very quiet, but his
ears, attuned to these sounds, amplified them, and they seemed to resound
to the whole world: "There, there... there, there..."
There was no doubt, the knocking was coming from the bottom of the
ravine! He quietly climbed between the barbed wires and came to the
edge. "There, there... there, there, there..."
You can't see anything. The gray slopes of the ravine were hidden
behind a thick wall of bushes, and there was a thick haze below. Go
downstairs? No, you cannot. A branch trembles, a random stone breaks
off, and everything is lost...

233
 "There is no need to hurry, there is no need to hurry," he said to himself.
And if it's the last gear? What if the opportunity no longer presents
itself and he leaves? With impunity, unknown, uncaught?
Nikolai was feverishly thinking what to do, and the clatter of metal on
metal continued...
How does he go down there? And what does it knock on?.. Oh, yes,
there's a drainpipe...
Suddenly everything stopped. Molchanov listened for a long time, and
only the rustle of branches and the hiss of sand reached his ears...
He took a step towards the edge of the ravine and froze. Soon he heard
the branches cracking and someone noisily and ponderously climbing
upstairs towards him. The one who climbed did not care at all to do it
unnoticed. On the contrary, he went ahead, and in addition he sang an old
Russian song in a low voice.
Nikolai was dumbfounded. It was beyond his comprehension. He stood
and could not move, and only when an unfamiliar dark figure with a
bucket in his hands, groaning and heavily,Sha emerged from behind the
bushes, he quickly snatched an electric torch from his pocket and directed
a sharp beam of light into the stranger's face.
And then he vaguely remembers what happened. A huge ball of fire
flashed in front of his eyes, a mighty blood-red flame that struck him in the
face with almost material force, blinded him, burned him. Curses were
heard, then a heavy fall down, the crack of breaking branches and a noisy
splash of water...
When he woke up, he heard many voices near him, among them
acquaintances. He tried to see what was happening, but he couldn't. It
seemed to him that he was dreaming, he tried to roll over on his side to get
rid of the nightmare, and at that time someone touched his face and said:
- Nikolka, be careful...
It was Nonna's voice.
- Nonna, why is it dark? Turn on the lights... I don't understand
anything...
"The light is on, Kolya..." the girl said slowly. "Doctor, what's wrong
with him?"
He felt that someone was bending over him.
-Can you see me? An unfamiliar female voice asked.
"No," he whispered. "I don't see... Did I...
- Blindfold him. Immediately," the woman ordered.
His head was raised and caring hands put a bandage over his eyes.
"Let him stay here until morning," said the doctor. "He shouldn't be
taken now. Will you be on duty?
"Yes," Nonna answered.

234
 "All right, stay. He has nothing special. Nervous shock. Good night...
When the door slammed shut, Nikolai raised himself on his elbow and
asked:
"Who is here?"
"I am," Nonna answered.
"Can you explain to me what happened?"
"After, after." The main thing is that he did not go far...
-Who?
"The one you wanted to identify. He blinded you, silently and surely
blinded you.
-Blinded?
-Yes. Laser, a good pocket ruby laser...
"So I...
"God, how careless you men are!" If I knew... I would never let you go
out alone.
She put her hand on his forehead.
"Am I—"
"Don't think about anything, please." Try to sleep. Are you so pleased?
He felt her warm cheek press against his.
"Your cheek is wet. Are you crying? Nonna, why are you crying?
"Shut up, silly. Shut up...

4.
He was lying quietly. Not a single muscle moved on his pale face, a
plump snow-white bandage covered his eyes. In order not to disturb him,
Nonna took off her shoes and walked around the room in only stockings.
A clock ticked on the shelf with books, gas hissed in the kitchen.
Is he sleeping or not sleeping? One hand is under the head, the other is
stretched along the blanket.
She sat down very close to him and began to examine his face. Once
again... Yesterday evening she had given him an electric razor in his hand
and watched with purely feminine surprise as his blackened face began to
lighten. Now, in the semi-darkness of the early morning, his cheeks
darkened again...
Here he moved his hand. Maybe he is not sleeping, but thinking about
something? It is difficult to distinguish a person who is asleep from one who
is immersed in deep thoughts. And if he thinksWhat is it about?
Dr. Lavrentiev said that he had a retinal burn.
Scary or not?
-Who knows. Previously, this was very rare in the practice of eye
diseases. Modern civilization constantly poses more and more new
problems to medicine. Radiation sickness, chemical toxicosis, many

235
new lung diseases. And now this. Probably, in connection with the
invention of lasers, ophthalmologists will have to seriously deal with
the problem of restoring the retina destroyed by light...
As he was leaving, Dr. Lavrentiev stopped in the hallway.
- Methods for destroying the human body are being developed faster
than methods for its restoration. In the future human society, this
should not happen.
What Lavrentiev said did not sound very comforting. Nicholas
himself did not ask a single question. As if his fate did not interest him.
Or he reconciled with her in advance. He reluctantly stood up, the
blindfold was removed from his eyes, and he obediently opened his
eyes.
"Do you see?" - "No." - "And so? And if you press it?" - "Oh no!"
In this "No!" there was bitterness, irritation and annoyance at the
same time.
When the doctor had gone, he took Nonna's hand and shook it gently.
"My father," he said, "was a liaison officer during World War II and
was attached to the American Army. Once, at the front in Italy, he met
soldiers who were carrying their wounded comrade on a stretcher. He
had a cigarette in his teeth, and when he sighed, the smoke came out of
his right lung, which had been torn apart by a mine. The battalion priest
walked ahead and muttered a prayer. When they stopped, the wounded
soldier spat out a cigarette and said, "Father! Don't pray for me. Pray for
those who are still alive..."
After a pause, Nikolai added:
"He was a brave soldier. Wise...
Is Nikolai really thinking about it now? Or is he sleeping? Suddenly
he stirred and raised his head. Nonna quickly approached him.
"What do you want, dear?..
"Are you still here?"
-Yes. What do you need?
-No problem... I just remembered...
"Haven't you been asleep?"
-I don't know. Maybe he was asleep.
She took Nikolai's hand and bent over him so that their cheeks
touched.
"You wanted to tell me something." What do you remember?
-Yes... You see, when we started working on Breaking Dawn, I
thought about the problem for a long time, it seemed to me even then
that we formulated it incorrectly...
-That is?..
- Everyone, including me, understood the task as follows: it was

236
necessary to establish the production of antimatter.
-Faithfully.
- No, it is not true. Very wrong.
Nikolai sat down, leaning on the headboard.
- The fact is that the creation of antimatter has nothing to do with
energy. We will never get any gain in energy in this way. Vice versa...
If we spend a certain amount of energy in cosmotrons, we will get an
amount of antimatter much less than the Einsteinian equivalent. The
efficiency of production is negligible...
"Have you been thinking about it all the time?"
"And what am I supposed to think about?"
Nonna bent over him very low, and then quietly put her head on his
lap. He was not at all surprised, and his slender fingers slid through her
golden hair...
- In short, we did not create energy. We just preserved it in the form
of anti-iron...
-Yes...
Nikolai laughed embarrassedly...
"Maybe it's an idiotic idea, but it came to me right after he hit me in
the eyes with a beam of light... Are you listening?
She nodded her head, hiding her face in the blanket.
- If we are talking about conserving energy, then why is it necessary
to create antimatter? Why not use the principle of a quantum generator?
"Stop it, I beg you," whispered Nonna.
But he did not listen to her.
- Of course, ordinary lasers are not suitable for this. Only a tiny
amount of power can be hidden in them. In addition, this power cannot
be stored for a long time. It is difficult to charge a ruby rod, say, in
Vladivostok and transport energy to Moscow. One crazy quantum of
light, and everything will fly out... Induction radiation... But I think the
problem is solvable... For example, if you lower the temperature and
move the spectrum of thermal radiation far into the long-wave part...
-My god! And you've been thinking about it all the time?
"No, Non, listen!" And what are the obstacles to the creation of
lasers that conserve energy at the nuclear level, eh? I assure you, none!
In this regard, I remembered the Mössbauer effect... Honestly, you can
go this way! You just need to think about it... Hm, curious! Our
cosmotrons may still come in handy...
Nonna raised her head and stared at Nikolai's thrown back face: there
was a satisfied smile on his lips, and it seemed that there was no
bandage on his eyes, and he saw something wonderful, something that
no one had seen.

237
 She couldn't hear what he was saying anymore. She felt rather than
understood. Some new path, a new loophole in the labyrinth of science,
an unexpected path found at such a high price. She looked at him with
happy eyes and saw only the lips and the folds near the lips, and the
moving chin, and the resolute nods of the head, and the bold
movements of the hands.
Brilliant improvisation, a surge of scientific inspiration, when unexpected
discoveries are made, bold steps are taken over barriers and abysses...
They were afraid to move, he and she... They listened intently to the
unusual silence, and breathed very quietly so as not to disturb it...
"Would you like coffee?"
"Yes, dear...
"Be careful, it's hot."
"Give it to me, I'll do it..."
"No, you'd better open your mouth..." Just like that... Will you let me
give you water and food?"
He laughed softly and kissed her on the forehead.
"Do you really think I'm going to retire?"
-Of course not!
She clung tightly to him.
"I wanted to tell you...
She put her hand over his mouth.
-Shh! Don't say anything! If you only knew how happy I am!
"But I...
"Not a word!" Talk about quantum generators, talk about the
Mössbauer effect, talk about stars, about the universe, about anti-iron.
About anything, but not about this...
But he didn't talk about nuclear lasers anymore. He was suddenly faced
with a completely new, huge problem that he had never thought of before.

COUNTERATTACK
1.
There were no formalities at the airport. The passport with the
inscription "Saccoro Electric Concern" had a magical effect.
A small shabby car of an outdated model, but with an excellent engine,
was waiting for them. Müller determined this as soon as the car started.
Familiar asphalt roads with lindens on the roadsides. The roads are not
wide, but straight, without bumps and potholes. Behind the lime trees
stretched yellowed fields, from behind the tall trees that began to lose their
leaves, red brick buildings of farms, sheds and cattle pens loomed out...
Müller opened the window. His face smelled of cool autumn air, such
as he had not known for many years and which now seemed so dear to

238
him. He thought he was used to the sea and the sands, to the faint smell of
fish and rotting seaweed. But no!
The absence of seasons and the unchanging pictures of the tropics are
more like collections of masterpieces of art in a museum, which are
pleasant to admire, but difficult to live with all your life...
Many years spent on the islands made him sedentary and sluggish,
passive and slow. More and more often the thought occurred to him that of
all the most painful and difficult trials that had befallen him, "free" life in
foreign lands was the most terrible ordeal.
And now, when the cool autumn wind ruffled his graying hair, tickled
his nostrils and stroked his cheeks, he came to life! He shivered from a
pleasant, sweet surge of energy and will, from the fact that something
unknown and unexpected could happen now, when he needed to make a
quick decision and be ready for a desperate fight...
Here they are, familiar solid villages, houses made of traditional red
brick, streets, strong stone fences built of granite blocks.
Even then, before the war, he lived in one of these villages with Dr.
Roberto. It was still a long way from the organization of the Separate
Laboratory, and they wandered for hours along such streets and along
asphalt roads connecting lonely brick islands.
Roberto said:
"Yes, man is a social animal. But how far does his innate collectivism
extend? Don't you think, my young colleague, that the social instincts of
people operate only as long as the individual needs the help of the
collective? As soon as he receives from society everything that is
necessary for a separate life, does he run away from it?
It was a rainy day, the streets of the town were deserted, and it seemed
as if the old cottages had shrunk from the gusts of autumn wind. They
were somewhat reminiscent of slumbering angry dogs with their noses
buried in the warmth of their red fur. The very appearance of these
fundamental, built for centuries brick houses seemed to confirm Roberto's
reasoning. But for Müller, this was not an argument.
"It's all about energy," Roberto continued. - Bread, wool suits, and
semiconductor receivers can all be made from earth and air. If there is
energy. I foresee a time when the energy of a powerful power plant can be
carried in your pocket. And, of course, the natural direction of scientific
creativity will be the development of methods for creating a miniature
civilization for such a brick fortress.
"If you say so, I dare say that you understand modern civilization
simply as a sum of good and convenient objects. You reduce it to bread,
suits, warmth and everythingcar, car and cottage on the seashore.
"I don't understand civilization that way, it's them.

239
 - And why do you think that when the time comes for pocket energy,
people will be like them, and not like you?
- Because there are more of them!
Müller laughed:
"My dear teacher! Only ten thousand years ago the earth was chiefly
inhabited by savages.
Roberto frowned and looked at Müller from under his brow.
- When I was younger, I read the books of a great scientist... Clever
compositions. Mathematically honed logic. He also considered society in
historical terms... But I'm too old to wait a thousand years... First of all, I
am worried about what will happen in a year, two, five...
A year after this conversation, the Second World War began...
Look at her slowly healing wounds...
There were few trees on the roadside, and where they grew, there were
small hollows covered with yellow stems of fallen weeds. In the open field
there was a piece of red brick wall, also overgrown with grass, and next to
it several concrete obstacles, and behind them a zigzag strip almost
leveled with the surface of the ground.
-Familiar? Sullo asked insinuatingly. Müller's thoughts were
interrupted, and he immediately felt himself not in his homeland, but on
the battlefield, at the front!
"Oh, yes, of course! Native places!
-Relatives?
Sullo chewed his gum.
- Do you know what village we have just passed?
"Of course," Müller replied. -Kessel.
- And what will be the next one?
"Karlsdorf...
Three people were sitting at a long wooden table. In front of them were
some papers and a geographical map. Their expressions were indifferent
and tired. It was very smoky here. When the guests appeared, they did not
stand up and did not greet each other. Only one of them, tall and
black-haired, moved away from where the two empty chairs stood. It
seemed as if Müller and Sullo had only left for a minute, and now they
were back to continue the meeting. Müller thought: "The greatest miracle
is modern communication. This gathering is prepared and functioning
well, although its participants are separated by tens of thousands of
kilometers!"
"Is everything ready?" Sullo asked.
"Yes," said the black-haired man.
"Who will come with us?"
- Scarth. He knows this place.

240
 Scart, a broad-shouldered, youthful fellow, raised his head reluctantly.
- Everything is clear to me. Let the professor rest. They were used to
sleeping at night, he added ironically. - And today the regime will have to
be broken...
"Let's go," Sullo commanded.
Müller realized that he would not be informed of any details of the
upcoming operation. It is a thing that will be carried, carried, if necessary,
destroyed... "Indeed, we need to rest. And get some sleep." He began to
undress, when suddenly the door swung open and Sullo literally flew into
it, out of breath.
"The first cylinder has already been gutted there. Tell me, is your
second vault there on the other side also full of useless nonsense?
Müller was dumbfounded.
"Why?.. I don't think so...
-See!..
Sullo went out. A chill spread through Müller's body. He was anxious,
wondering what these questions were aboutSi? Why so suddenly?
He looked longingly at the old brown cabinet in the corner, where a
dusty bust of Goethe stood upstairs. The poet smiled slyly and asked:
Did I not heal you for a long time
From the painful blues of imagination?
Müller smiled back and quickly fell asleep.

2.
Scart's plan was striking in its impudence. The place for crossing the
border was deliberately chosen as the most open and inconvenient. Flat,
devoid of vegetation banks, a wide river, on the opposite bank - the new
brightly lit town of Sellinger. It was a Sunday evening, and music was
coming from the other side.
Scart sat down at the oars and began to row. Sullo held the steering
wheel.
Scart rowed hard and confidently, as if he were taking an evening boat
trip. With each stroke of the oars, the bow of the boat jumped high.
"Have you forgotten what to say?" Skart asked in a whisper. - We are
foreign tourists. We hired a boat in Sonderstadt and decided to see the
eastern coast. Border? And we didn't know. Is it really not allowed? That's
amazing! In this case, please allow us to return. That's the whole
conversation. But I think that it will not take place.
Scart put his oars back on his shoulders.
The boat had reached the middle of the river and was now following the
shore. There was a city park there. Electric lights stood right on the
embankment, and the light splashed restlessly in the cold water. Müller

241
had a good view of the quay, the wooden booms, and the large boat dock.
"Just like a kettle," Skart chuckled as the bow of the boat touched the
dock. But where is Simka?
They began to climb up the gentle staircase. Suddenly the lights went
out. All the lanterns went out, and the electricity went out in the windows
of the houses. Scart grinned.
- Everything is going according to notes. Let's go quickly.
They walked past the restaurant. Dance music was playing, loud voices
and laughter were heard from the dark windows.
- It's strange, Simka doesn't meet us. yes, here's someone...
They walked more slowly. Sullo followed Müller almost closely,
sometimes a hard and sharp object hidden in his jacket pocket touched
Müller on the side...
"No, it's not Simka," Scart whispered.
A tall, broad-shouldered silhouette in the middle of the road. There was
no face to be seen, only the light of a cigarette reddening in the darkness.
- Where is the wind blowing from? A thick, hoarse bass asked. Three
stopped dead in their tracks.
- Where is the wind blowing from? The bass repeated.
"The wind is blowing from the west," Skart said. - Where is Simka?
- Bakes pies. He is in place. We will return in another way.
Scart nodded his head. They left the park and saw a large truck with a
van right on the pavement. Scart stopped.
- Why a truck?
"The Opel is there... It will take you north. You can't do it here...
"I don't like it," said Sullo.
"As you like," said the bass. "You can go back while it's dark." The
lights will be turned on in ten minutes.
"All right, let's go," Scart said firmly. "What's your name?"
-Willie.
"Well, Willy, you will get into the van with this gentleman," he touched
Sullo's hand, "and this gentleman and I will ride in the driver's cab.
Müller listened to all this with apparent indifference. He tried to
imagine furtherIn the 19th century, the Communist Party
Müller sat between the chauffeur and Scart. He opened the window
slightly and put his elbow on the windowsill. As the truck drove through
the asphalt streets of the city, Skart purred a song.
The town ended, the car crossed a small field and went deeper into the
grove. Here the road was unpaved, abandoned, overgrown with weeds.
Suddenly, the car braked sharply and stopped. Scart's hand was in his
pocket with lightning speed.
-What's the matter? he asked.

242
 "Where now?" Here is a fork in the road.
"It's your turn to command, Professor.
"To the left, closer to the river.
They drove very slowly, and Müller could hear the low branches of the
trees scratching against the canvas wagon.
"You have a good memory, Professor," said Scarth, and lit a cigarette. -
How many years have passed since then?
- More than two dozen...
Scart whistled.
"And after that, do you still remember the road?"
- Of course. There was a bomb shelter here. Be careful, driver, there
will be a ditch now...
Indeed, the car bent down and began to descend slowly.
- Excellent memory. You'll just be jealous! Skart admired. "And you
remember even the tree?..
Müller shrugged his shoulders slightly.
"We need to drive up to the place where the laboratory was. And then
I'll get my bearings," he said.
"And yet you're a good fellow, Professor," Skart went on admiringly. "I
thought you were some kind of timid and faint-hearted intellectual. There
is always a lot of fuss with such people. Like with a thin barrel from which
oil flows...
Müller made no reply.
The forest immediately ended, and ahead, very close, lights shone in
the windows of multi-storey buildings. And very close, behind the
clearing, a black strip of asphalt road was visible. She went down to the
river. It was the same road. A terrible picture flashed before Müller's eyes;
flaming trees, two huge bombers and an exhausted Dr. Roberto on the side
of the road...
"It was here," he said in a hoarse voice. -Outside...
They went out. Müller walked slowly along the edge of the forest, over
the damp withered grass, peering into the damp earth... He never imagined
that during this time a new city would grow here with large houses full of
light and life. The city began very close, just behind the asphalt road. Here
it is, ineradicable life!
He was followed in single file by Scarth, Sullo, and at the very end by
the huge, broad-shouldered Willy. Müller was well aware that now every
wrong move, any suspicious step was inexorable and would inevitably
become his last. His escorts did not conceal from him their determination
to put an end to him, if only a shadow of suspicion appeared. They were
well-trained professional killers, for whom death had long since become a
familiar craft and source of livelihood.

243
 He stopped and looked longingly at the glowing windows of tall
modern houses. Behind these windows lived people, men and women. In
their apartments, together with their children, they were there and did not
suspect that very close to them and for the sake of their lives, one person,
distant, unfamiliar, now, at this moment, was taking cautious steps along
the edge of the abyss. And even if he was destroyed and his corpse was
found tomorrow, none of them would know who he was or why he was
here.
-So? - heard aboutbehind his back.
"Have I made a mistake and my countrymen have become so careless
that they did not notice us?" thought Müller.
"There must be a path to the forest here," he said in a hollow voice. My
heart was pounding hard.
Sullo walked beside Müller. He could be heard chomping as he chewed
his eternal cud. Müller felt terrible.
"Still far away?" Skart asked.
-No. A hundred steps.
They heard the wheels of the car rustling on the asphalt and how it
stopped smoothly.
- yes, Simka. I know his Opel. Let's go faster.
The path was completely overgrown, and Müller was pushing the
branches apart with his hands. They were wet, cold and prickly.
"Hush," Scarth threatened. - You break branches like a hippopotamus.
They came to a small clearing.
"Okay, now here. Fifty paces to the east.
Müller was breathing heavily, even though they had walked only a few
dozen meters. The silence was ominous and silent. Sometimes heavy
drops fell on his face from above.
"Fifty paces," whispered Scarth. Müller stopped. Pitch damp darkness
and anxious silence.
Alone among predators...
"Aha, here," he said at random, pointing to a tall tree.
"It's not a spruce, it's a linden," said Sullo.
"Damn it, really. There must be a spruce. In the darkness his eyes
wandered to find at least some spruce...
"And not that one?" He heard Willy's voice.
A spreading tree towered among the shrubs.
-Yes! Müller rejoiced for some reason. "I have ten more steps at my
disposal..." Something sharp scratched on the side. I see, Mr. Scarth...
"Dig here," Müller whispered, panting.
- No, you dig. It's more handy that way," said Scarth. Sullo stood in front of
him, Scart behind, Willy on the left... The shovel plunged into the tight turf.

244
 -Faster. Cars can't stay here for long. Shh...
Everyone froze. A slight rustling was heard among the branches.
-Wind. Dig faster.
His eyes adjusted to the darkness, and Müller could clearly see that
Sullo was standing with a pistol in his hand, and Scart was holding a long
knife. "Is it really the end.."
The shovel suddenly rested on a thick root. He knocked on it. Willy
came up and cut him with a small hatchet in one fell swoop.
"Your treasure couldn't have grown in that time," Skart wheezed. "I
can't believe there's anything here...
"Right here...
Müller gritted his teeth and began furiously throwing the splinters out
of the pit.
-Hush. Don't sniffle like that...
And suddenly! A shot rang out in front of his face, and he saw the gun
in Sullo's hands, twisted upwards by someone's hand. Müller involuntarily
covered his eyes with his hand. Behind him someone, probably Scarth,
hiccuped, then a dull thud, and he hiccuped again and fell heavily.
"Willy, be careful. They must be taken alive! Müller heard a loud voice.

3.
Life on the island of Las Palmas has come to a standstill. Under the
pretext of the Christmas holidays, Saccoro invited all the inhabitants not
only of Las Palmas, but also of Cuello and Sardoneo to go far south, to
Puerto Rondo - a small paradise island with lush virgin vegetation, golden
shores and warm lagoonsmi.
Frank got up very early and went to the sea. There was not a single
person on the island. There was not even a sentry at the pier.
After swimming, he went to the eastern shore of the island, where there
was a football field behind a high wall. An ampoule of anti-iron will be
delivered here and detonated in the presence of Saccoro.
Before reaching the fenced area, Frank waved his hand resolutely and
turned back.
At the entrance to the concrete bunker, he saw the first man. A young
man in the uniform of the "Saccoro troops" guarded the entrance. At the
sight of Frank he smiled, shook his trump, and stepped aside to let him
pass. Frank thought for a moment, looking at the sentry.
The central laboratory was hidden deep in a concrete basement. Next to
it was an anti-iron vault. About forty grams of this terrible metal have
accumulated in magnetic traps. Spherical clumps, born from the chaos of
colliding nucleons, made rapid oscillations in cylindrical quartz bottles.
They were safe as long as an electric current was supplied to the

245
electromagnets. A complex interlocking system ensured a continuous
supply of electricity to the storage facility, and everything was arranged in
such a way that in case of any conceivable accident, the electromagnets
continued to work. For safety, several cascades of battery stations were
installed, which, if necessary, were instantly turned on.
First of all, it was necessary to disconnect these emergency battery
stations...
Frank opened the heavy metal door and stood in amazement at the
threshold. The laboratory was flooded with light, and at the entrance to the
battery room sat ... Onto Saccoro. At the sight of Frank he sprang to his
feet and put down the magazine.
For a few seconds they stared at each other in silence.
"I didn't expect it!" Frank exclaimed. "Why are you here so early?"
Onto hesitated. Then he nodded at the iron door, behind which there
were magnetic traps, said:
"I have come to help you get ready... After all, today you have no
assistants.
-Got it.
Frank was feverishly thinking about what to do. The cable from the
battery stations ran into a concrete wall, and access to it was walled up.
Only in one place, known only to Frank, was the wall thin, only a few
centimeters. It had to be hollowed out. The presence of the younger
Saccoro greatly complicated the matter...
Frank walked over to a large titanium press and turned on the switch. He
pressed a button, and the multi-ton colossus fell silently onto the steel plate.
- What is this for? Onto asked. "I have to be angry with him. Otherwise,
nothing will come of it..."
"Give me that oscilloscope over there."
Onto held up a metal box and placed it on the table next to the press. He
unscrewed the cable and watched Frank sideways, and Frank pressed the
button a few more times, as if to make sure that the press was working
flawlessly.
How to get rid of a young Saccoro? And then he remembered Liz! yes,
now it seems that he can get angry!
He stopped and asked,
"Well, how is your family life?"
Onto shrugged his shoulders.
"I wouldn't start this conversation today.
"And yet?"
"You know, the game was fair...
Indeed, the game was fair. Frank silently otmHe didn't feel any anger
towards this guy.

246
 Onto and Liz, Liz and Onto! After all, this is such nonsense compared
to what he has planned... Still, he needs to get angry.
"Give me that roll of paper over there." There is a diagram on it.
"You know, don't lecture them. They're stupid and won't understand
anything anyway, Onto advised.
Frank was touched by his directness. How to get rid of him if he does
not harbor any dislike for him?
"Liz is a good woman," Frank said, hanging the diagram on the board.
He really wanted to get mad at Onto because of Liz, but he couldn't do
it.
Time was creeping up to nine in the morning. In an hour they will begin
to come here...
"Admit it, you took it from me," Frank said not very confidently.
-No. She came to me herself. I once hinted to her that if you refuse her,
she may come to me. And so it happened...
- Everything is ready. You can rest.
They sat down opposite each other. Frank saw a faint look of anxiety in
Onto's eyes. The concrete bunker was as quiet as a crypt. The noise of
transformers from the storage was barely heard here.
-It is frightful? Frank asked.
"Why do you ask?"
"Here we are sitting next to you, and there, behind the wall, forty grams
of instant death.
Onto pulled out a cigarette and lit a cigarette.
"You've changed a lot in the last few days, Frank. I'm getting old," he
said, blowing thick clouds of smoke.
- When you are next to this every day, you will get old... Where is Liz
now?
"What did it give you?" I went with everyone to Rondo.
Frank walked back to the press. Again, the same silent, instantaneous
movement of a multi-ton titanium bar up and down.
What to do, what to do?
"Are you worried about something?" Onto said. His voice was hollow
and anxious.
"And you?"
Onto hesitated. His eyes darted anxiously along the walls of the
laboratory.
His hands frantically fumbled in his pockets for a lighter. The cigarette
went out. At last he managed to find a lighter, lit a cigarette, and took a
deep breath. Then he burst out:
"I don't want to die!" You understand? I'm scared. I don't know how it
will happen, but I'm sure that's what you're up to. Be silent and do not say

247
a word. When you chased Liz away, everything became clear to me. I
wanted to kill you. Yes. One night I was on your heels. But I wasn't sure. I
don't want to die, Frank. I know that my old man is a terrible man. And
you know it. I'm from a different breed, a different generation. I don't
know what I'll be like at his age. But now I don't want to, you know, I don't
want to!
His voice trembled, his eyes wandered, he was shaking.
- What can I do now? Do you know why I came here so early? I wanted
to kill you. Yes, look," he pulled a small nickel-plated Browning from his
pocket. "Take it..." I can't use it... I'm just not sure if I'm right. Or rather,
maybe you are right and your decision is the only right one. It is useless to
kill you, because nothing can be stopped by it. Everything has gone too
far. And these bottles of yours with a cursed substance... Lord, what will
happen! Are you really today...
His eyes became completely insane, and his hand slowly reached for
the Browning.
Frank beat him to it.
"Tell me, did you really plan this?" Tell only the truth! I beg you. You
deliberately demanded that everyone go to Rondo! All but the most
important ones. Do you know well what would happen if you gave the
damned substance to them? They have already hired three pilots. Huge,
reckless guys. Suicide bombers. They drink and walk on Ovori. They're
ready to take off... Tell me, what should I do, what should I do? I may be a
coward and you despise me, but I don't want to evaporate with you! You
see, I don't want to! Frank, tell me what to do?..
Frank stood up. He was pale and shaking all over. God, how pathetic he
was now.
"Get out of here," Frank whispered at last. "Get out at once!"
Onto backed away to the exit door.
-Wait! Frank shouted. "I'll take you to the pier." I don't really believe
that you have the courage to even run away.
What a dazzling sun! Not a single cloud in the sky...
"You're going with this guy," Frank said, pointing to the sentry.
In response, he heard only the clanging of teeth. Onto hunched over and
hurriedly strode to the pier.
"Let's go," Frank said to the sentry. "You are escorting Mr. Onto to the
island of Puerto Rondo.
"Yes," said Onto. "I'll make it, Frank, we'll make it?..
"If you hurry, you'll make it."
Onto jumped over the side of the boat, followed by a sentry who did not
understand anything. Frank unhooked the boat from the dock. The engine
rattled. Onto looked at him with staring, unseeing eyes.

248
 "Goodbye, Frank... Oh, damn you..
His clock showed half past ten. There were thirty minutes left to wait.
He returned to the concrete bunker and began hammering into the wall
next to the iron door. He cut the cable in the niche with a knife...
After that, he opened the vault and walked over to a quartz bottle
encased in a massive iron casing. The trap was heavy, and he barely
dragged it to the press. Rubber-insulated wires dragged behind her.
He set the trap with anti-iron so that its axis went into the ocean... He
knew the shape of the explosion, and now he could make sure that no one
was hurt... Neither Liz nor the others...
Now that's it. The switchboard with switches stood right next to the
concrete wall. If the power is turned off, the electromagnets will stop
working, and the devilish metal will fall on the walls of the vessel. If you
do not turn off the switch, the same thing will happen when you press the
press button. The circle is closed. This will happen in any case.
The phone rang.
He picked up the receiver uncertainly.
"Hello, hello!" He heard a familiar female voice. "Frank Dolori!"
God, that wasn't enough! Liz!
-Hello! she insisted. "Put me in touch with Dolori at once!"
"I connected," the impassive voice of the telephone operator was heard.
"Frank, can you hear me?"
"Yes," he said.
"Oh, Frank!" It's so good that I contacted you. I'm going to see you right
away!"
-A what? Are you crazy! No way!
- I'm leaving. Right away. Rodshtein said...
-No way! Onto has gone to you!
"I don't need Onto. I understand everything now. I'm going!
"I order you to stay where you areE! he cried desperately. Stay put!
- Rodshtein said... I'm going anyway!
He hung up the receiver and wiped his sweaty forehead.
He felt the horror of his situation. Before the bell rang, he acted like a
mindless automaton, included in a deadly chain of inexorable events. Now
he was horrified to imagine that Liz would be next to him. Oh, that
damned German, Rodstein! What could he say to her? A what?
Frank began to walk around the laboratory from corner to corner.
Rather, I would like to end everything as soon as possible. She will arrive
no earlier than in an hour. If he does not use a seaplane. It would be better
if she went on a boat! Liz, Liz, what are you stupid doing!
Footsteps outside the half-open door of the laboratory made him wary.
He stood near the press and blocked the trap with his back. It seemed to

249
him that the electric light had dimmed. Finally! Now he will act quickly
and decisively...
Saccoro, Semvol, General Dortmund, and three other people he did not
know entered. They had serious, tense faces. Semvol was the first to
approach him and silently shook his hand. The others bowed and sat down
in all places. Frank noticed that old Saccoro was a tiny, shrivelled old
man. It seemed to be completely dry. Only his eyes glittered feverishly...
"It is very good that it has finally happened," said Semvol. His face
twitched. "Start, Dolori, every minute counts...
"We don't need a detailed explanation. You'd better show me..."
Saccoro pointed with a bony hand at the three young guys. - Show them
how to use it.
Frank clenched his teeth tightly. Now nothing was hidden from him.
Okay, I'll show you now!
"Here, look," he began, stepping away from the press. "There's a
magnetic vault here, and there's forty grams of stuff in it. It is safe as long
as the storage is powered by electricity. Once you turn it off, then...
- How can it be loaded onto a plane? Saccoro asked hurriedly.
- First of all, you need to install a power source on the aircraft. Multiple
batteries. The storage with anti-iron must also be transported to the airfield
without cutting off the power supply...
Rodshtein flew into the laboratory, out of breath.
-Genus! Frank exclaimed. -Why are you here?
Rodshtein, as if not hearing him, ran up to the press. He wiped his
sweaty face with a handkerchief and looked around the crowd with
bulging yellow eyes.
"It's a splendid gathering," he muttered. - I have long dreamed of
meeting everyone together!
Semvol sprang to his feet. He sensed something unkind.
"Stop, Mr. Former Colonel," Rodstein shouted and busily pulled a huge
Mauser out of his pocket. "I've been meaning to talk to you for a long time.
Everyone looked at the fat German in horror. He smiled maliciously...
Keeping his eyes on Saccoro, Semvol, and the pilots, he turned to
Frank:
"Nothing will come of what you have in mind. Go to the shore. Liz is
waiting for you there!
-Genus!
"Go ashore, I tell you!" There is nothing else for you to do here!
Saccoro shouted hysterically:
"Throw out this vile monster? What are you worth?
"One move and you're dead."
Rodshtein raised his pistol.

250
 "Frank, don't be a fool and get out of here!" -Cdhe hiccuped.
"You're crazy," whispered Frank, who was beginning to think he was
going crazy.
Rodshtein began to laugh disgustingly.
"I would be the last brute if I allowed this bastard to take possession
of...
He continued to laugh.
"You're not a physicist, you're a blockhead, Frank," Rodstein shouted.
"A long time ago, I switched poles on a mass spectrometer!"
-You?..
-Yes. Now get out quickly. Liz is waiting for you.
Frank backed toward the door.
-Wait! Semvol cried. "Where are you going?"
"Go, go, Frank. I'll deal with them myself!
"I changed the poles, I changed the poles..."
The sun is dazzling again!
He ran out of the bunker and rushed to where a small boat swayed on
the waves. Liz stood in the open cockpit of the seaplane and waved to him.
- Changed poles! The lineage has changed polarity! Frank shouted to
her.
"Hurry, hurry," she called.
- Rodstein changed polarity! They don't have any anti-iron, they have
ordinary iron!
-I know! Rather...

BLUE GLOW
1.
"Professor Müller, we are very grateful to you for agreeing to come
here and help us in one important matter," Bazanov spoke excellent
German.
This caused Mueller a subtle surprise. Then he furrowed his brows and
pondered. Did he meet this Russian somewhere? Have you met?
"If I really help you, I'll be very glad...
Bazanov handed Müller cigarettes and flicked his lighter. While he was
lighting a cigarette, the colonel also looked attentively into his face. And
suddenly...
"Comrade Peter?" Bazanov asked.
Müller shuddered - he recognized. How long ago was it..
... The first year of the war. New Year's Eve. A village near Moscow,
lost among dense, impenetrable forests and deep snowdrifts... He
remembers these spruces and these snowdrifts especially well.

251
 Müller, a radio operator-cipher at the headquarters of one of the special
units of the tank division, entered the hut holding a radiogram in his hands.
The hut was smoky and barely smoking a kerosene lamp. Senior German
officers gathered around the table to celebrate the New Year. Next to each
- a glass of vodka.
The radiogram spoke of the losses of the German army near Moscow.
Terrible losses. There were only a few minutes left before the New Year
when the general read the report. He pulled out his pistol, stood up, and sat
down again.
"Here's the thing, Oberleutnant," he said to Müller. - Probably, with
your position, you have not yet managed to kill a single Russian. There, in
the barn, sits one, their scout. Take him and shoot him at midnight. The
god of war demands sacrifice.
... They walked through the snow. Russian - with his hands behind his
back. Müller followed him with a pistol. It's strange - this Russian is
singing! In a low voice, he sings a merry song. He is barefoot, his legs
must have been stiff for a long time. Müller was frightened by this
detachment, by this fearlessness of the man whom he had to shoot.
- Don't get hooked. There are tree branches here in the snowdrifts," the
Russian warned.
"Here are my boots for you, run!" Müller whispered.
-And you?
- I will say that I was attacked by partisans. Take and overcoat.
-But...
"Run, run...
- You are a wonderful person! What's your name?
-Peter.
"Good-bye, Comrade Peter.
When the rustling of the branches subsided, Müller shot upwards
several times...
He did not suspect then that SS-Sturmführer Reinmacher was such a
shrewd man. Müller was easily caught in a lie. The Russian, it turned out,
was an important bird.
Müller learned what torture is. This is how a blood-red inscription
appeared on his chest. And then he fled, Dr. Roberto helped him...
"I think it was not easy for you there, on the islands," said Bazanov,
looking at Müller with laughing eyes.
- The most unpleasant thing is that everything dragged on for decades. It was
a test of patience, often of impotence. It's terrible when you can't do anything...
In recent years, I have had this very often. I saw them moving forward and could
not interfere. I kept waiting for some international commission to come to the
islands and start an investigation. But she did not come.

252
 Bazanov pressed the button, the adjutant entered.
- Let them bring in Gribenko.
"Gribenko?" Müller asked.
"Nothing special, it seems. Mechanic, plumbing specialist. It may turn
out that you know him.
The door opened and a short man in a leather jacket appeared. He kept
his hands in his pockets and insolently examined Müller and Bazanov.
There was silence for a moment. Müller's eyes narrowed, his lips
tightened, and his face hardened.
Something familiar, very, very familiar... Some heavy, painful
associations. Those reddish hair, pale blue eyes, wide cheekbones. But
now there was no malice or cunning on his face, but mocking impudence.
"Haynes," Mueller whispered, and stood up. -Haynes!
"What have you deigned to say, citizen?" Gribenko asked, "I don't
understand your language.
"Your name is Haynes, you worked in a separate laboratory. We saw
each other for the last time in an old castle in Bavaria, at a certain Mr.
Semvol!
Gribenko's face tensed for a moment, but immediately took on its usual
expression. He shrugged his shoulders in bewilderment.
"The training is excellent!" thought Bazanov.
"Where did you go after visiting Semvol?" Did you improve your
specialty? You were a very unskilled spy. With Roberto, we knew who
you were.
"I don't understand anything," Gribenko said guiltily. - I have always
been bad with German at school... They did not instill love.
It did not escape Bazanov's eyes that Gribenko began to gradually lose
self-confidence.
"I've had enough of these stupid talks," Gribenko roared. - You will still
answer for trying to influence my psyche! Not a single normal person can
stand it here... If you like, I'll start saying something like that now, too, and
then...
He froze with his mouth open and his eyes bulging. Accompanied by a
soldier, Sullo entered the office. As always, he chewed.
He was very free, this Sullo: he approached everyone in turn and
looked into everyone's eyes. He came very close, as if he were
short-sighted. Near Gribenko, he stopped and bent his face close to his.
This was the very method with which he used in the camp.
"I've always thought you're a bag of shit, not a spy. Because of you,
Haynes, we're all screwed...
Jumping to the window, Gribenko-Haynes shouted at the top of his
lungs:

253
 "Betrayed! Damned, betrayed! You are all on the same page with them!
Betrayed! So perish all to one! Death, it is with them, it is with us, it is
everywhere..
Even Sullo spat and turned away.
"That's all, I think," said Bazanov.

2.
Two planes were flying very close. It seemed like a few steps across a
fluffy cloud field, and you could go from one plane to another. Their
shadows jumped on the cloud hummocks, keeping up with one another. At
an altitude of six thousand meters, there were no signs that a blizzard was
raging under the clouds, over the ground, that it was these seemingly
gentle, weightless clots of vapor that carried a ferocious charge of winter
weather for months to come.
Nonna looked thoughtfully out the window at the cloud mountains,
valleys and ravines floating below, and occasionally glanced at the second
plane. Its silvery hull shone in the sunlight, and its broad wings sometimes
swayed gracefully, as if expressing the excellent health of a mighty
machine performing useful and pleasant work in its native element. In the
second plane were professors Lvov, Khlebnikov, Sokolov, heads of
laboratories, sectors and groups of the institute. Professor Kotonaev was
also there, whom she, Nonna, would never have invited to these tests. But,
they say, Valery Antonovich again came up with something incredible.
Maybe she judges him too harshly? Perhaps her dislike of the scientist, as
well as the dislike of other collaborators, was caused not only by the
qualities of his character, but also by the fact that it was accidentally
discovered that he was not a god, but an ordinary mortal?
People do not forgive if they are betrayed by the gods. This is a desire
to have a strong patron since childhood, a desire to withdraw from the
control of one's fate. You rely on them, you believe them, and suddenly it
turns out that they are not omnipotent at all, they cannot do something,
they are mistaken in something...
Nonna sat next to the dozing Nicholas. Now she knew when he was
dozing and when he was thinking.
Ahead are the correspondents of newspapers and magazines. A
typewriter was knocking behind him. A young girl, a journalism student,
wrote down her impressions, afraid to miss even the smallest trifle. She
was so lucky, this unusual business trip.
The plane shuddered, and a huge silver wing stretched out before
Nonna's eyes, which covered the second plane. A red panel lit up in front:
"Fasten your seatbelts! No smoking!"
- Nikolai, landing! Nonna said. He shuddered and straightened up in his

254
chair.
"And pull on the bandage." I know you sleep and see when you throw it
away. The doctor said I needed to walk for another week, and then take it
off in the evenings...
Nikolai grimaced. He looked around with one eye, but Nonna's resolute
hand lowered the blindfold.
"Wait, wait..." grumbled Molchanov. - It's idiotic to go to the tests
blindfolded. It's like going to the dining room with your mouth sewn shut.
- Nikolka, I will tell you everything.
- The bandwidth of the auditory communication channel is a hundred
times less than the visual one.
"I'll talk a hundred times faster, and we'll compensate...
At the airfield, Professor Sokolov approached Molchanov.
"Kolya, there is a curious matter," he said, taking him aside.
-What?
- Whatever they say about Kotonaev, he is really a giant. He found a
way to make antimatter stable!
-No way! Molchanov exclaimed.
-Yes. He explained his ideas to me on the plane. We figured something
out with him, it turns out great.
"So, our kosmotrons will still be useful?"
-Very much! After Lyubomirov's theoretical work on the topology of
quantized space, it became clear that annihilation interactions can be
localized within...
Sokolov said the most important thing in a barely audible whisper.
Molchanov smiled broadly and nodded his head.
-Ingeniously!
- Kotonaev really asks you to work for him.
Nikolai was stunned and wanted to object to something, but Sokolov
warned him.
- I said that you, of course, will agree, especially since the organization
of work will now be completely different. There will be no strict division
of the group into theorists and experimentalists.
"Yes, but...
- I knew, Kolya, that you would agree. I'll tell him so...
Nikolai heard Sokolov's quick retreating steps.
"What did he tell you?" Nonna asked.
"Me and, of course, you, we will work at Kotonaev's. A new direction.
Nonna was silent for a moment, then, like a schoolgirl, whispered:
"What a cunning old man of ours, it's just terrible!

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 3.
Nonna sat next to Nikolai in the driver's cab and chattered incessantly.
- Nikolka, now we are driving along the bottom of a deep ravine. To the
right and left there are hills, very high, about a hundred meters each.
"Two hundred and seventy," corrected the driver.
"Yes, two hundred and seventy. Here the road turns north...
"To the east," the driver interjected.
"To the east, Nikolka. Very beautiful. Snow hangs on the branches of
fir trees. Such huge white caps of snow. The miracle of the winter here...
"Rubbish, not a miracle. Blocking the road...
"They say Nikolka is rubbish, not a miracle. There is a clearing ahead,
the hills end, wooden barracks are visible.
"Not barracks, but dugouts," the driver corrected.
"Are they like dugouts?" Nonna asked.
-Kind of.
- You can see dugouts like dugouts. We drive closer. A fat uncle in felt
boots comes up to our column...
- Stitch.
"And who is he?"
- Test Supervisor.
"That's right, Nikolka. This is the head of the tests. Stern, thick
Stitches...
"Not a harsh man, but a very cheerful uncle," the driver interjected and
stopped the truck. "Come out, radio commentators, we've arrived."
She took Nikolai by the hand and led him to the beginning of the
column, where all those who had arrived gathered near the first car. In the
center of the circle stood Stezhko and cheerfully told how they lived here.
"A thousand kilometers there, a thousand kilometers there, and not a
single soul. Only wild deer. Bears come across... Well, let's go, comrades.
We'll have lunch, rest and get down to business...
"Soon the boys from the neighboring institute will demonstrate their
work," Nonna said.
Nikolai shook his head.
It's a pity that we have nothing to show...
Sokolov replied:
"If it were not for you, they would not have succeeded either.
Nikolai nodded knowingly and sighed. He painfully wanted to return to
Roshchino and immediately begin work in a new direction. Kotonaev or
not Kotonaev, what difference does it make. The idea is brilliant. He
remembered several experiments that he had not been able to explain at
the time. He discussed them several times with Samarsky, and he also did
not understand anything.

256
 "I have the same thing," said Samarsky, "the regularity that Nonna
noticed is fulfilled only on average. And there are no details. The anti-iron
melts, melts, and suddenly - stop. Annihilation stops for a minute, two,
three. Once for as many as ten. And then it melts again..."
Probably, these stops in the self-combustion of antimatter were
foreseen by Kotonaev. A new scientific direction is often born out of
inexplicable, seemingly random trifles. When his comrades told Nikolai
that "in general, the law of decay is like this," or "if you average it, you get
such a smooth curve," he always frowned. He was afraid that behind these
"in general", "average" a precious grain would be lost...
- Nikolka, aren't you offended that your idea of a nuclear laser has
already been implemented?
- To be honest, it's a shame. And on the other hand... This is not only
my idea. Senka Paushev, it turns out, had the same idea. He even
calculated it. The crew was sent to another institute, and there the theorists
began to laugh. They said: "I invented the bicycle. He created differential
calculus three hundred years after Newton." Don't tell Semyon about it...
The twilight quickly thickened, the clouds dissipated and the stars
glittered. The air became elastic from the frost. Forecasters predicted this
weather a week in advance, but no one believed them. And now it is a
clear, windless, crystal-clear evening, and everyone has forgotten about
the forecasts of the weather forecasters. Let them predict the next bright
evening in a week, in a month, in a year. This is their job. If they guess,
they forget about them, if not, they scold what the world is worth...
Stezhko seconded a guide to each group of scientists, and they
dispersed to the observation dugouts.
In the dugouts, everyone received dark glasses.
"Let him put it on just in case," the conductor said persistently, handing
the glasses to Nikolai. - You need to look at that hill over there. The launch
will be from the seventh square...
This was the first mention of the launch of...
Molchanov touched Nonna.
"Tell me in great detail," he said. "Start now, so that I can get a good
idea of everything...
She peeked out from behind the wooden edge of the dugout.
"We're in a shallow dugout now. The walls are sheathed with wooden
boards. No fortifications. This means that no explosion is expected. Ahead
of us is a wide, white field, which is now not white, but dark blue. There is
not a cloud in the sky and many, many stars. They almost do not flicker.
Such calm, neat stars. They seem to be waiting for something...
Nikolai smiled and pressed her warm mitten to his cheek...
"Further, behind the field, there is a gray low hill. Gray, because there

257
are trees on its slopes. If you look closely, there is some kind of tower at
the top of the hill. No, this is not a tower, this is a parabolic antenna. So
far, nothing more is visible ahead. On the right is some low building. The
lights have just been turned off.
Her story was interrupted by a loud voice from the loudspeaker.
- Put on sunglasses! Put on sunglasses! The start will begin with the last
beep of the electric clock...
The clock was striking so loudly that it seemed to Nikolai that he was
standing not in a dugout in an open field, but in a large reverberating hall.
"They're knocking well," he said to Nonna excitedly. "Don't forget to
tell me the most important thing...
-Ok. I'll try. Just put on your glasses, please...
"Why do I need them?"
-Put.
She put his glasses on top of the bandage.
"It's going to start now," she said, and the clock stopped striking and
there were beeps just like the radio time.
"Well," Nikolai asked impatiently.
"Nothing yet. Behind the hill... Aha, it has begun! Something flashed
behind the hill. Brighter, brighter... A bright orange glow... Now it's going
out... It got completely dark... Suddenly! Suddenly, a golden snake
crawled into the sky... Thin as a serpentine ribbon. It crumbles into sparks,
and a tiny orange firebrand shines ahead. Not interesting at all. Some not
very bright orange signal flare. Now it is barely noticeable... It will go out
now...
A distant rumble reached Nicholas's ears, like peals of thunder, like
artillery cannonade...
"It's extinguished. Strangely... About! Oh, my God! What a miracle!
Nikolka, what a miracle! Bigger, bigger, brighter, what is it!
"Speak, say, what?"
-The sun! No, more! More than the sun! A huge dazzling ball! It's like
he's being inflated and getting bigger and bigger! It is very high and very
huge. Bigger than the moon, bigger than the sun! It is not round, but
elongated like a cigar, and completely motionless! The night is over!
There is dazzling whiteness all around. It hurts to look even through black
glasses! No, not a ball! Something very blue... A strangely shaped
firebird! A dazzling blue white...
- Light penetrates through the bandage! Nikolai shouted.
He felt warmth on his face, a soft, fluffy warmth from an invisible
source.
"Speak, speak!" he shouted.
- He, this ball or cylinder is completely motionless. Hanging in the sky

258
and shining! The field has become completely white! I see it through the
crack... Ha ha ha! Nikolka, a herd of deer is rushing across the field! They
were frightened because suddenly the day came! Do you hear people
screaming all around? And the ball is still hanging and shining brighter
than the sun! Oh, everyone is rejoicing all around! And the deer, stupid!
They huddled in fright near the hill itself! And it is still shining, and the
light is so calm and even! Do you feel how warm it has become? The deer
ran! Into the ravine, between the hills! Stupid animals! Kolya, he's
swimming! To the West and Up! Faster, faster, very smooth! It rises very
quickly, it becomes smaller! Probably this is an aircraft!
A smooth, harmonious sound reached my ears, which became quieter
with every second...
"Less, less... Another strong flash! Like an explosion of light, far, far
away in the sky! Everything was gone... It's night again... You can't even
see where it was. It's completely dark... Now I see the stars again...
And then a huge radio loudspeaker hissed over the field again and a
loud, excited voice solemnly pronounced:
"Today, at twenty o'clock Moscow time, for the first time in the history
of rocketnuclear technology, the controlled space station "Foton-1" was
successfully launched, which was launched into orbit by three powerful
photon engines! For the first time in history, light is used as the energy of
the propulsion of a spacecraft.."
To the stars! Only light can carry a person to the stars. Only with the
help of light can he return to earth and tell about fantastic worlds, about
distant mysterious luminaries.
They shimmer in the depths of the universe and beckon, beckon,
beckon the restless seeker. They send him their thin, cold streams of light
and say: "Follow them, and you will get there."
It's simple and incomprehensible. Simply because the light is around
us, and incomprehensible because it is incorporeal and elusive...
The deep secrets of nature are hidden in the simple and everyday.
Whoever ceases to be amazed by the eternal radiance of the sun, who does
not notice the bright bunnies jumping on the waves, who does not think
about where the light of the candle disappeared when it went out, he will
not reach the stars...
The conqueror of the Universe will be the one who sets up mighty dams
on the turbulent streams of eternal light. Who will boldly seize the shining
firebird by the wing and bend it to his will..

259
 Two Minutes of Loneliness
1
Giacomo Carducci! Who in the scientific world does not know this
name! I met him at the World Congress of Biophysicists in July 19... years
and will never forget our first conversation. He showed me the
oscillograms of the electrical impulses of the excited visual, auditory,
tactile, and gustatory nerves of the frog. I showed him the same thing, but
obtained as a result of experiments on a rabbit. By chance, the
photographs got mixed up, and for a long time we could not figure out
which oscillograms corresponded to which nerve and which animal. I
mentally scolded myself for not making the necessary explanatory
inscriptions on the pictures, and Carducci looked at me with a smile in his
eyes.
"Young man," he said, "don't try. It doesn't matter.
"How so?" I was surprised.
It is not important what structure the electrical signal has, but what
nerve and address it is directed to.
I was stunned by this conclusion of the scientist, especially since in my
laboratory I was always trying to distinguish between signals of different
natures... As if summing up our conversation, Carducci explained:
"Nature would be hopelessly wasteful, attributing to the infinite kinds
of influences on a living being an infinite variety of ways of encoding a
signal...
But now I remember Carducci not at all in connection with his research
in the field of electroneurology. Arriving in Rome for the next congress of
biophysicists, I read a note in which it was reported that the famous
Italian... excommunicated from the church! There was no scientist at the
congress...
Once, having snatched a free minute between meetings, I went to the
professor — he had left me his address back in Moscow. At my call, a
plump woman peeked out of the half-open gate.
"Can I see Professor Carducci?" I asked in bad Italian.
"Carducci?" He doesn't live here anymore.
"Where can I find him?"
"Honest people won't be interested in where and how to find it... I don't
know.

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 The gate slammed shut, and no one came out to answer my repeated
calls.
Apparently, I called for too long, because the taxi driver began to honk.
"I heard you asked for a Carducci," the driver asked when I got back
into the car.
"Yes, Carducci. Scientist.
"Isn't this the Carducci who makes people unbelievers?"
"How does it make unbelievers?"
"Oh, yes. With the help of his communist science. You know, the
Communists have come up with an apparatus that makes people
unbelievers.
"You're talking nonsense. Grand Hotel.
We stopped at a brightly lit hotel in Piazza Isedra. Paying the driver, I
said:
"And get this nonsense about the apparatus that makes believers
heretics, out of your mind. Carducci is a great scientist.
The car turned sharply around the fountain and raced along the Via
Nazionale. From that moment on, I began to worry seriously about the fate
of the famous biophysicist.

2
I spent almost a day looking for Professor Giacomo Carducci. Finally,
his address was told to me under great secrecy by a young assistant from
the electroencephalography laboratory of the institute where he used to
work.
"Only, for the sake of the Blessed Madonna, do not give this address to
anyone.
I nodded knowingly and drove north in the first car I came across.
Here is a small village in the mountains, on the shores of Lake
Bracciano. Mud huts, thatched roofs. There was nothing here that
reminded of the Italy that tourists know. The shores of the mountain lake
were overgrown with tall reeds, which easily hid small shuttles in which
the peasants went fishing. At one of the boats I saw an old man. He stood
in the water and carefully rolled up the nets.
"Good afternoon, signor, good afternoon," I greeted.
You'd probably like to take a ride on the lake?
"Oh, no, thank you. I would like to try some authentic Italian spaghetti
and drink some young wine.
The old man winked at me cheerfully and whistled slightly.
"The old woman doesn't have spaghetti. For flour, you need to go to
Viterbo, or even to Rome itself. As for the wine—" He got out of the
water, lowered his rolled canvas trousers, and walked up the narrow path.

261
 I started talking about spaghetti and wine on purpose. The fact is that I
knew only the village in which Carducci was hiding, but not his exact
address.
We sat down on a wooden bench at a simple wooden table.
"Where did you come from, Signor?" The old man asked after the
second mug of light wine had been finished.
"Oh, from afar. You probably know such a country – the Soviet Union?
"It can't be!" Union Sovietico! It's so far away! The old man stood up
and looked at me incredulously.
Then I took out of my side pocket a postcard with a picture of the
Spasskaya Tower of the Moscow Kremlin and handed it to him.
"Polla!" Come here quickly! Look at this miracle!
A very gray-haired woman came into the room and, bending over the
postcard, looked at it long and silently.
"Well, what do you say?" And you said that an American had arrived!
"Holy Madonna," whispered Polla. "Is it really from Russia?"
I nodded my head, and the woman took my hand in hers and shook it
for a long time. Now I was sure that the meeting with Professor Carducci
would take place.
"I came here specifically to see an old friend of mine. He used to live in
Rome, and now, for health reasons, he decided to change the city for the
village. He's a doctor, and they say he's come to heal you.
I noticed how the old man and the woman quickly exchanged glances.
"Wait a moment, signor," said the old man, and they both went into the
next room. I heard a quick, muffled conversation in an incomprehensible
dialect. I understood only one thing: the woman did not trust me, and the
old man, pointing to the postcard as a gift, proved that I was an "honest
man." I got up and went into the room where the husband and wife were
talking.
"I know," I said, "that my friend does not want anyone from the city to
see him. Moreover, I do not insist on meeting him if he does not want to
see me. Fulfill my request: bring this note to him.
I quickly scribbled on a piece of paper: "Signor Doctor, I have come
from Moscow to meet you. Sergey Andronov." The woman took the note
and slipped out into the street.
We finished the jug of wine withabout the old man in silence, tensely
waiting for Polla to come. But then the door opened, Carducci burst into a
low room, and, seeing me, threw himself into my arms. We were left
alone.
"I'm so glad, so glad... You are here! It's incredible, Signor Andronov...
I've lost almost all my friends... Or rather, those whom he considered
friends.

262
 He spoke passionately and excitedly, like someone who had spent a
long time alone and finally met another person.
"The burning of Giordano Bruno, the condemnation of Galileo... All
this was on our land... Everything is the same...
"What's wrong, Professor?" What have you done? Carducci stepped
aside and looked at me slyly.
"And you're asking me these questions?" And does not every new
achievement of science undermine the authority of God and the authority
of the Church? You know the answer to this question very well. But what
usually happens after the first shock of a new scientific discovery wears
off, you may not quite imagine. At first, the church deals with its victim, at
the second stage it seeks to prove the divine origin of the new discovery.
However, why are we standing here! I have so much to tell you, so much...
"It's strange," Carducci continued to say excitedly, as we climbed the
narrow mountain path that wound along the edge of the cliff overhanging
the lake. — Three years ago, you and I met in Moscow as scientists who
are concerned about the same thing. And now you have come to me as one
of the few friends on whose support, at least morally, I can count.
"I'm sure you have a lot of friends here. Aren't the people around you in
this village your friends?
Carducci stopped, catching his breath.
"Yes and no... Especially the "no" applies to the local priest, Signor
Gregorio. He visits my house too often and asks who I am and why I came
here. As for the peasants, they are, of course, friends. But I don't know at
all how they will behave if they are told in church that I am their enemy.
"What bad can they say about you?"
Carducci did not answer for a long time. We climbed higher and higher.
It was only at the foot of a steep stone staircase carved into the rock, with
hop branches swaying above it, that Carducci stopped for a moment.
"What bad things can they say about me?" He repeated my question.
"They can say the most terrible thing: I have encroached on the right of
our god to rule the human soul. Yes, yes, don't laugh! You can't even
imagine what a terrible power is hidden in science, and not only in
biophysics! Everything seems harmless until people start enjoying its
results. Do you remember the story of nuclear physics? Who thought in
Rutherford's time that nuclear physics would turn the whole world upside
down? When lightning made the electric bell ring in the apartment of your
great compatriot Popov, no one could have imagined what a revolution in
technology would begin after that. Working in any field of science, we
cannot fully predict what it will do to people, to human society, to
philosophy, religion, art. And only then, when many, many years have
passed, we look back and say: "If Professor So-and-so hadn't started doing

263
this ten years ago, everything would be different today..." By the way,
here is my house. High, right?
The hut where the professor lived was nestled under the clouds, on the
edge of the cliff. From here you could see the whole lake, its the southern
shore, the sunlit roofs of the village, and beyond them the earthly hills,
between which an asphalt road ran north.
"And there is God's abode," Carducci pointed to a low building under a
red-tiled roof. "I don't believe that Father Gregorio comes up here to me
every other day of his own free will.
At the entrance to the hut we were met by two tall young Italians. They
took off their hats and bowed silently.
"This... These are my masters. They agreed to provide shelter for the
sick city doctor...
The young guys followed us with their eyes until we disappeared
behind the door.

3
"My story would be more informative if we were in the laboratory now.
There you could show something and even demonstrate it in action. But
you are so familiar with my work that you will have no trouble imagining
everything I am going to talk about. Moreover, your own research on the
electrophysics of the nerves of higher animals in some way served as an
impetus for the experiment that caused the disaster. Indirectly, in some
way, it's your fault that I'm hiding here!
I looked at Giacomo Carducci in surprise.
"Don't be angry with me, my young friend! I say this because I look at
things, in the words of Shakespeare, too closely. Remember Hamlet's
reasoning that the ashes of Alexander the Great can be used to plug wine
barrels, or that a king can travel through the intestines of a poor man. It
turns out that all people are to blame for each other's misfortunes, some to
a greater extent, others to a lesser extent.
I shrugged my shoulders and thought about it.
"Well, let's leave Hamlet alone. You, dear friend, have established that
the nerves of a living organism select signals from the entire sum of the
influence of the external environment by trial and error! After your work,
it became clear to me that all of nature, the whole world in relation to an
individual person is like a giant generator of noise, disorderly, chaotic
noise, and against its background there are signals that take away our
senses. We respond to signals that are appropriate for our existence.
"Yes, I suppose so.
"You've seen a thousand times that the same excitement can be caused
by different causes.

264
 "Yes...
— Remember, during the congress of biophysicists, I told you that if an
impulse from the auditory nerve is sent along the optic nerve, the brain
will perceive it as light. Electrical signals of any frequency can be sent
through any nerve, and the psychological interpretation will depend only
on the address at which the signal arrives. Whichever finger you use to hit
the same piano key, you will extract the sound of the same tone from it.
Carducci got up and walked excitedly around the room.
"I will tell you frankly, I was shocked to find in the work of the genius
Lenin an excerpt from the Conversation between d'Alembert and Diderot.
«… Suppose that the piano has the faculty of sensation and memory, and
tell me, would it not then begin to repeat by itself those arias which you
would play on its keys? We are instruments endowed with the ability to
feel and memory. Our feelings are the keys that are struck by the nature
around us and which often strike by themselves..." As a biophysicist, have
you ever thought about these words quoted by Lenin?
Carducci stooped very low to me and whispered:
"Now that we know how to strike the keys, the senses, naturally there is
a temptation to play on a feeling piano, on a person.
In my excitement I got up and instinctively took a few steps away from
the old Italian. His deep-set eyes burned, a sharp vertical crease cut
through his high forehead, and his black, pointed beard, like that of a
medieval Italian Doge, jumped up sharply every now and then.
"After biophysicists had largely unraveled the nature of sensations, we
all felt that creating them artificially, in laboratory conditions, would
reveal to us one of the most intimate secrets of the essence of human
consciousness. I decided to try the temptationIn order to find out what a
person's perceptions will be. Do you think the answer to this question was
completely clear to me? Oh no! But don't think that I decided to set up an
experiment just for the sake of an experiment. Do I need to explain to you
what the result of such an experiment means for science? You know better
than I do that electrical impulses from a healthy heart, recorded on tape,
cure a diseased heart. What if some of the feelings of a healthy person
were transferred to a sick person? You know very well what it means to
set initial conditions for a complex system. All her behavior in the future
depends on it. Man is this complex system. If the principle is true at all,
then we will be able to cure, say, the mentally ill. Such was my reasoning.
It was they who pushed me to set up the experiment. And only later did I
realize how deeply wrong I was. Looking ahead, I will tell you, I simply
underestimated the social meaning of human existence.
After calming down a little, Carducci sat down again and continued his
story:

265
 "That's how it was. I purchased a good noise generator, as well as a device
that generated impulses similar to those we see in human nerves. On my
instructions, a special tight-fitting suit was made in the workshops of the
institute: the rubber fabric in the transverse direction was pierced with tens of
thousands of thin conductors that touched the body. A special system of
conductors surrounded the eye sockets and temporal lobes. The ends of all
conductors were brought out and fixed on a glass plate, which was placed in
the bulb of a cathode ray tube. With the help of an ordinary television scan, I
could send impulse signals from my devices to any conductor and thus
alternately excite one or another key — the nerves of a person.
When my artificial "external world of man" was made, I tested it on the
same instruments, and it turned out that the picture that the beam drew on
the oscilloscope screen was exactly the same as that we observed in the
study of natural signals.
After the "music" and the "performer" were ready, it remained to find a
"grand piano"...
All this time, my employees worked with great enthusiasm, almost
with self-forgetfulness. There was much debate about what a person
would see, hear, and feel when placed in such an artificial environment.
Some claimed that he would not feel anything interesting, others said that
at best he would have some fantastic dream. Still others were afraid to
make any assumptions at all. But when the preparation was completed,
everyone flatly refused to test the effect of the device on themselves. Fear,
dear Andronov, deep fear kept my employees from participating in the
experiment! Its cause? At that time, it was unclear to me. Only after the
experiment was set up did I begin to understand the cause of this fear. It
turned out to be much deeper than I thought. Strange as it may seem, the
fear arose from the fact that all those who took part in this work had no
doubts about its success. Yes, yes, don't be surprised! They believed, as I
did, that the device they had created was capable of producing sensations
that they were accustomed to attribute to the movements of the soul. The
soul... After all, they are all Catholics! You just can't imagine how strong
the influence of the Catholic Church is even among scientists.
"Don't any of you want to go to another world?" I asked, opening the
door of a small thermostatchamber, which was completely isolated from
the outside world - neither sounds nor light penetrated into it...
My employees smiled guiltily and shook their heads negatively...
"No," I heard day after day.
Can you imagine my situation? I was literally trembling with rage. I
was angry with very good, very conscientious and intelligent people. I
used to say barbs to them, to accuse them of cowardice, until one day my
assistant, Alberto Tsamboni, said:

266
 "Instead of squandering the pearls of your eloquence, Professor, why
don't you yourself be alone with your generators?"
I rushed to the cockpit, but immediately froze at the door that led into
the darkness.
"And who will see what happens when I expose a person to my
devices? "Who will observe him, who will return the person to normal life
in time?" Of course, I can experiment on myself. But what is the use of it if
everything that I tell people after the experiment will seem to them an
ordinary fairy tale? No, I set the experiment, I am responsible for it and
therefore I am obliged to control it."
I had no right to become a guinea pig simply because in order to solve
the problem of the relationship between man and signals, someone had to
be an arbitrator, an intermediary between my hypothesis and the
evidential experiment. Only I could be such a person.

4
For several days I walked around completely depressed and
overwhelmed by my doubts. I didn't want to go back to the lab because
everything was ready for an experiment that I couldn't do. Those were
tough days! It was then that I understood the fatal meaning of
Hemingway's formula: "To have and not to have..." I knew that behind my
assumptions there was some great philosophy, perhaps a great discovery,
confirming or overthrowing established views and concepts, beliefs and
prejudices. But who will help me set up an experiment, who?
It was an unusually cold winter in Rome, it was raining heavily, and I
kept wandering the streets, racking my brains over how to solve the
problem.
One evening, when the weather was especially raging, and the cold
wind threw raindrops and flakes of snow behind my collar, I took refuge
in a small café on the outskirts of the city, near the river.
There were quite a lot of people here. I sat down at the table and
thought. Only after a while did I notice that the visitors were not sitting at
tables, but crowded around the walls hung with paintings and drawings.
"Another exhibition of some unknown artist," I thought, and I was not
mistaken.
The audience gathered at the wall next to the counter, and I approached
the paintings, near which there was no one anymore. Even in low light, I
immediately saw that the artist had an outstanding talent. His art, a little
old-fashioned due to the imitation of the technique of the old masters, was
sincere and inspired. The square of four fountains, where a group of
children feed pigeons. A few subtle watercolor sketches in Borghese Park.
The large canvas is a panorama of Rome as it is seen from the hill where

267
the monument to Garibaldi is. Several female portraits. The woman's face
was the same everywhere. It belonged to a young girl with a strange
expression in her eyes. She had cleanly combed black hair, a high
forehead, and large black eyes that looked somewhere through me...
Gradually, I came to the place where almost all the visitors were
crowded.
"And now this girl is completely crumpled, after a stormy night. Look
how it lies! And the legs, the legs! And most importantly, it lies on wood
sawdust! A red-cheeked guy with a thin black mustache, in a wide plaid
jacket, commented on the picture.
"It's not sawdust, it's sand!" Someone prompted him.
"And I didn't know that there were people in Fregen like this...
"She's consumptive!"
"And blind to boot!"
"Junk, not painting!" An insignificant medieval junk! After an atomic
explosion, such pictures will be used to plug broken windows.
And many, many more nasty things were said about the portrait of the
girl. Leaning against a stone, she reclined on the sand with an exhausted
expression on her face, staring with wide-open eyes through the cackling
crowd of the gathered.
Having laughed to their heart's content, people sat down at the tables,
and a guy in a plaid jacket approached the bar and stood next to a tall, thin
young man. He put his hand on his shoulder and said:
"You are a trash, not an artist, Renato! No one will buy this daub! I
advise you to kick this skinny model out of the studio, and go to Tritone
Square yourself. There, in one basement, you will see how to draw.
The petrified author of the exhibited paintings threw the guy's hand off
his shoulder, his face distorted by anger and rage.
"I will never sell my paintings to the scoundrels who live in the Via
Umberto!" I'll never go to Piazza Tritone! I will never paint empty cans
jars immersed in slops! And if you say a word more about Angela, I—"
"What am I, what am I?" You have no more strength left from hunger
than in a dried seashell. Well, touch me, touch me. Why do you stand and
swing like a pole in the wind? Your rubbish Angela, and that's it.
Renato crouched and hit his offender with all his strength. He did not
even stagger—it was such a weak blow—and went on, laughing, saying,
"Your Angela could have been dealt with when she was healthy and
sighted.
Renato hit the red-cheeked guy again, and then he, as if reluctantly,
struck back, after which the artist swayed and fell to the floor.
No one paid attention to him. I went over, picked him up, and sat him
down at the table. He cried...

268
 — Abstract painting, that's what is in demand now. People who
understand contemporary art are looking for unexpressed feelings,
subconscious emotions, unformed ideas on the canvas. They want
something subtle, sharp, unusual," the plaid jacket ranted in front of his
comrades. "And this half-born wants to impress a modern aesthete with
the image of a blind fool.
To the general laughter and hooting, Renato began to shoot pictures. I
helped him.
The two of us went outside and walked towards the low wooden barns
at the river pier... Along a slippery path from the rain we descended to the
very bank of the Tiber and stopped near an old barge with a wooden
building on the deck.
"Do you live here?" "
Yes, signor..."
"Alone?"
My heart sank.
"No, signor...
"Angela?"
"Yes, signor.
"Thank you for helping, I'll go alone."
"No, not at all. If you don't mind, I'll accompany you again.
Climbing the ladder, Renato said:
"Be careful, signor. The planks are broken here, and you can fall into
the water...
"Is your friend really blind?" I asked.
She went blind a year ago, after a policeman hit her on the back of the
head...
"And why did he hit her?"
"It's a long story... Angela is a complete orphan... It is not difficult to
offend a person...
We went down to the hold of the barge, and here Renato lit a match.
Squelching on the water, we walked along a narrow corridor and stopped
at a half-open door...
"Thank you, signor." Here I am at home...
I had been shivering from the cold and dampness for a long time. But I
trembled more when I realized that this was the house of a young artist and
his girlfriend.
"Renato, is that you?" I heard from within.
"Yes, dear, it's me... Good-bye, signor.
"Allow me to come in, Maybe I can be of some use to you."
"What are you, what are you, you don't need it!
— Renato, how is your exhibition? A quiet and calm female voice asked.

269
 "It's okay, Angela, it's all right... Only, for the sake of the holy
Madonna, don't say anything to her," Renato whispered in my ear.
He lit a candle, and it seemed to me that I found myself in a damp
coffin, which had been lowered with living people to the bottom of a cold
and dirty river. Only paintings, sketches and drawings hung on the plank
walls smoothed out this terrible impression. The girl, the one I had seen in
Renato's portraits, was sitting in an old tattered armchair with her legs
tucked under her. As we got closer, she smiled kindly and held out both
hands
"Renato, who's with you?" she asked.
"One signor, Angela." After viewing the exhibition, he came to talk
about buying my paintings.
Renato winked at me. I nodded my head.
"It's wonderful!"
"Yes...
"I want to shake hands with the good Signor."
Her hands were as cold as ice... Poverty and squalor crying out to the
whole universe! I pulled out the money and handed it to Renato.
"Here's a deposit for you. Come tomorrow to Via Nomentana, 14. We
will agree on the rest.
The artist looked at me in surprise.
"Yes, yes, Signor Renato. I'm serious. Be sure to come. My name is
Carducci, Professor Carducci.
With these words, stumbling upon piers, stairs and wooden ledges, I
ran out of the floating tomb.
Of course, you can guess that it was Renato who agreed to take part in
my experiment. Oh, how short-sighted I was then, blinded by an
irrepressible desire to stage my experiment! I did not imagine all its
consequences... Only now, as I consider the details of subsequent events,
do I come to the conviction that perhaps it is not at all a matter of
experience itself. After all, I was going to play a symphony of life on the
human soul, on the feelings of a person. But I did not think that each
person has his own feelings, and that life itself has prepared this way.

5
It was at night, or rather, at half past twelve at night. My laboratory was
empty. The employees have long gone home. I did not invite anyone to
this test. I didn't even hint to anyone that it would happen. Frankly
speaking, at the moment when everyone refused to participate in the
experiment, it seemed to me that the employees were working with me not
for the sake of science, but for the sake of the lyres that give them the
opportunity to exist as they see fit. They willingly do what does not

270
interfere with their ordinary existence, but they are not at all eager to know
the unknown. Therefore, I decided to conduct experiments without them.
"Isn't it scary?" The artist asked me, a little embarrassed. I noticed that
he was wearing a new suit and a new hat.
"How's Angela?" I asked, trying to leave his question unanswered.
After all, I myself did not know whether it was scary or not.
"She's very happy. We moved back to Signora Boldi's room. What am I
supposed to do, Signor Professor?"
"Oh, nothing special. To be in these clothes for two minutes alone, in a
dark room.
"Just?"
— Yes.
"And what will happen after that?"
"And then you'll tell me everything you've felt, experienced, maybe
seen..."
"Did you see it?" Is it possible to see anything in complete darkness!
"Well, maybe you'll have a dream or something."
"And why do you think that I will definitely fall asleep in these two
minutes?" I don't want to sleep.
"I don't think anything, Renato. But there is such a possibility. You will
be completely alone in complete silence, and it may happen that you fall
asleep. Be sure to remember everything you dream!
"But if I don't want to sleep, will that be good or bad?"
"How will it turn out... Now undress and pull on your suit.
He changed his clothes in the cell. When he came out, I couldn't help
but smile. A tight-fitting green rubber jumpsuit gave him the appearance
of a circus performer portraying a fantastic reptile. A cable with a huge
number of thin wires dragged behind him like a tail.
I checked the instruments, turned on the electrocardiograph, the
electroencephalograph, the blood pressure measuring device, and the
device for recording muscle tension. I wanted my experiment to be
accompanied by continuous objective control over the state of the
subject's body. I had to know when he would be calm, when he was
excited, when he was tired, when he was depressed... The data was
recorded synchronously on a magnetic tape... I left a separate roll of
magnetic tape in order to write down Renato's story. It was never useful...
I turned on the generators and waited until the vacuum tube mode was
established. The sweep of the cathode ray tube began to work. The disks
of the magnetic recorder began to spin slowly. Green waves floated on
four oscillographic screens. These are the beating of the heart, brain
biocurrents, blood pressure, muscle tension. The experiment began.
The world of artificial sensations fell on man... With some fear, I

271
looked at the slightly humming device, in which the whole universe was
now enclosed for Renato...
The first seconds were unremarkable. Isolated in the cell, the man was
in a state of complete rest, he breathed evenly, his heart beat rhythmically,
blood flowed confidently through the arteries. But then I noticed how the
electron beam on the oscilloscope of the electrocardioscope shuddered
slightly. Simultaneously His blood pressure rose slightly and his muscles
tensed. His blood pressure rose even higher, and his pulse began to
quicken. I turned on the microphone at the head of the bunk and heard the
artist's breathing become shallow, jerky, and rapid, like that of a man who
runs fast. A few seconds later, the symptoms of excitement repeated, then
they were replaced by rest again, and this happened several times.
"The readings of instruments can register the state of a person," I
thought, "but how negligible it is possible to learn from them about his
inner world! In fact, they practically do not say anything, but only record
rest or excitement..."
At the end of the experiment, when it seemed to me that my
assumptions were not correct, that nothing interesting came out of it, I
suddenly noticed a sharp change in the frequency of the biocurrents of the
brain. With each passing second, it became higher and higher. The pulse
exceeded one hundred and fifty beats per minute, and the muscles made
high-frequency vibrations - this usually happens only with strong muscle
tension. I heard the artist breathing rapidly. Breathing was sometimes
interrupted by a moan, gnashing of teeth... Renato tossed and turned on the
bunk, tried to get up, and suddenly screamed in an inhuman voice. I was
frightened and wanted to interrupt the test, but the excitement disappeared
as suddenly as it had appeared, although until the very end of the
experiment my heart continued to beat fast and violently. At the end of
two minutes, I turned off the generator and control devices. No sooner had
I done this than the door of the cabin opened and the artist appeared in it.
He quickly, without my help, began to take off his overalls.
"Renato, let me help you," I said, walking up to him.
"Nothing. I'm already used to this thing," he said, trying to unzip the
zipper that tightened the back of his clothes.
He quickly put on his suit and, tying his tie, came up to me. His
concentrated face expressed neither surprise, nor embarrassment, nor
timidity. It was, I would say, very businesslike.
"Well, how is it, Renato?" I asked, sitting down in an armchair and
looking him up and down.
"What's going on, Professor?" Give me the money as soon as possible,
and I'll go."
"Will you go?" Where to? I was surprised.

272
 As if you don't know. I need to go to Naples as soon as possible.
"Really, Renato, I didn't know you wanted to go to Naples. But, as we
agreed at the very beginning, you must, first of all, tell me about what you
felt, what you experienced...
An expression of annoyance appeared on the artist's face.
"I must disappoint you, Professor. And this time there was nothing
interesting.
"This time?" What do you mean?
"Oh, it's all over again," he said with annoyance, sitting down in a chair.
"Everything was the same as in the first, and in the second, and in the
tenth... In general, as always.
"I don't understand," I whispered.

"Strange. Last time you understood me perfectly, but now you don't.
Very strange. He looked me in the eye. Then, resolutely pushing his chair
towards mine, he narrowed his eyes and said in a low voice:
"You know, Professor, I've been thinking lately that you're in league
with them.
"With whom?"
"Don't pretend you don't know. I was foolish enough to tell you
everything a week ago, so don't pretend to be innocent. Or maybe you are
afraid that you will be accused of complicity? Ha ha ha! How did I not
come to head this thought earlier! So you should know, Carducci, if it
comes to court, then I will not be afraid to name the real culprits.
However, we will talk about this next time. And now, give me the money,
I'm in a hurry to Naples.
I went to the door of the laboratory and stood beside it. It was clear to me
that after being in the test chamber, Renato had turned into a different person.
Where had his timidity, his shyness gone? Where did he get the decisive
notes in his voice, confidence in gestures, in movements? What are these
hints at "the end time", "next time"? No, I couldn't let him go so easily.
"Renato, dear, sit down," I begged. You promised to tell me everything,
from the moment the cabin door slammed behind you to the moment you
returned.
"Dear Professor! he exclaimed, smiling merrily. — I have already said
that everything was as usual. I slept well.
Then a thought struck me...
"Renato, tell me, where have you been and what happened to you
before our meeting here in the laboratory today?"
"You know that. I was in Naples.
"In Naples?" But it was only today that you moved to Signora Boldi's
apartment!

273
 "Shhhh!" He hissed, coming close to me. "Madman!" Is it possible to
talk about such things loudly? It's not fair, Carducci. You promised me to
be silent. Hurry up and give me the money, it's time for me to go."
Otherwise I'll be late for the ten-o'clock bus.
I moved away from him and, without taking my eyes off him, said:
"Renato, it's midnight..."
At these words, his face took on a surprised expression, then fright,
then rage.
"Did you betray me?" Tell me, betrayed? What have I done to you?
Why are you at one with them? Oh, if I only knew..
He fell into a chair and covered his face with his hands. Then he said
decisively:
"All right, let them come." Let. I will tell them the whole truth. I don't
care now. Only I will curse you forever, you dishonest man. I believed you
so much, I believed you so much!
"Calm down, my young friend," I walked over to him and put my hand
on his shoulder. "Calm down. Nothing happened to you. No one betrayed
you. You came to this room at half-past eleven in the evening and have
been in it for only half an hour, of which two minutes were alone with
yourself in that cubicle.
"You always calm me down like that. But I don't understand why this is
necessary.
"I have never comforted you, and I have never spoken to you before. I
suspect that during the time of the experiment you had a dream, very vivid
and very meaningful, and you took it for reality. Believe me, Renato, you
are here for the first and probably the last time!
"A dream?" Are you talking about a dream? Well, here's the thing, dear
professor. I've had enough of these jokes. Stop it. I've heard this for at least
the tenth time. Dress!
"What?"
"Get dressed, I tell you: now I will show us whether it is a dream or not.
Get dressed and come with me." If I have not come to Naples today, I will
show you my dream in Rome.
He emphasized the words "my dream."
Can you imagine my situation? A person who had been under the influence
of my "external electronic world" for two minutes and who, no doubt, had
dreamed something during this time, was going to take me somewhere to
show his dream! Now I'm going to startIt seemed that I had gone mad and that
I was dreaming about this whole story with the experiment!
The artist's eyes were burning, he was nervously shuddering,
impatience and determination were felt in his face and movements.
"Hurry, why are you delaying!

274
 "Where are we going?" It's midnight," I pleaded.
"This is the time when I can best show you my dream.
On the street, we took a taxi, and Renato told the driver the address.
After a few minutes of silence, Renato asked.
"By the way, did you bring money with you?"
— Yes.
A few minutes later, we got out of the taxi, and Renato dragged me
across the square to a tall building. All the windows were dark, and when
we approached the entrance, I stopped. "After all," I thought, "it's just
stupid to obey a person who is, if not in a state of somnambulism, then at
least under the impression of the vivid pictures imposed on him by my
generator."
"Everyone in the house is asleep, Renato," I said.
Now you will see! Don't trust the sleeping city. Do not believe dark
windows and extinguished light. Do not believe the silence of the street.
They are deceptive, like the silence of a man who corrupts and kills, like
the silence of cemeteries where witches celebrate a sabbath seen and heard
only by those who are cursed by God. Come!
He confidently pushed open the heavy oak door, and we found
ourselves in a dimly lit corridor.
"Don't tell me who I am," Renato whispered.
He walked confidently in front, dragging me by the hand. We climbed
some stairs, descended into cellars, and I felt that every minute we
plunged deeper and deeper into the deep belly of the stone hulk created by
an unknown architect several centuries ago. It seemed to me that this
long-dead architect foresaw that future generations of people would need
deep holes to hide the vices of their age...
As we began to descend the wide, gilded staircase, covered with a rich
variegated carpet, I heard a faint hum at first, and then more and more
distinct.
"yes, a dream?" Do you hear? Renato exclaimed. "Here is a sleeping
city for you!
At the oak doors with heavy medieval carvings and with a clear motto
around the image of Satan "Forget that you are alive..." We stopped. From
somewhere behind the curtain appeared a fat man in a black mask and in
the robe of a harlequin.
"Give a hundred lire to this scoundrel." This is Cerberus, who guards
the entrance to the kingdom of Hades.
I barely heard Renato's words, because from behind the massive door
came terrible screams, screams, noises, howls, roars.
I handed the money to the harlequin, and he obligingly opened the door
for us. I jerked back, but Renato's grasping hands held me back.

275
 "Now look, look carefully!" he shouted.
At first it seemed to me that I was on a Sunday afternoon on the beach
in Fregena, where the population of all Rome had gathered on a very, very
narrow strip of sand between a pine forest and the sea. But after a moment,
it was gone. A thick, almost rectilinear cloud of tobacco smoke hung over
the huge crowd of people. It seemed that they were all dangling in it on
invisible threads. They swayed and writhed and screamed like cats
hanging over an abyss. People sat on tables, undressed, dressed, drank,
ate, dragged each other by the hair, grabbed each other by the throat,
gnashed their teeth, fell, got up, lay in the exhaustion, exhausted like
ghosts, wandered from side to side, writhed like snakes, fell and seemed to
die...
It was a nightmarish sight. A real hell, worse - a judgment day, a frantic
feast before universal destruction.
"Renato, my God, what is this?!" He
crossed his arms over his chest and stared for a long time with an
expression of the greatest contempt at the mad bacchanalia that was taking
place in this unclean human anthill.
"And the music!" Do you hear the music, Professor?"
Only then did I realize that those present in the hall were dancing! On
the left, on the stage, ugly and crooked, made of rotten boards, dirty stones
and sheets of rusty tin, musicians in torn clothes stood, sat and lay down.
They tormented violins and cellos, smashed pianos, blew saxophones and
trombones with such fury as if they wanted to blow the very soul out of
them. They crushed drums, small and large. A crazy creature stood in
front of the microphone. It was thin and long, and for some reason it
resembled a string on a guitar that was stretched to the limit so that it was
about to burst, then it was released, and it hung hopelessly, unable to make
a single sound. The singer periodically stretched out, rose on her toes. A
high-pitched screech escaped from her throat, capable of piercing the
thickest eardrums. The screech turned into the cry of a hungry jackal, into
the roar of an animal, into the neighing of horses, and finally died away in
a terrible wheeze. All this was dominated by some hidden pathological
rhythm. He hypnotized people, forcing them to obey the chaos of sounds...
At the end of the hall, behind the blood-red curtain, we found ourselves
again at the wide, carpeted staircase. The road was blocked by two female
figures, wrapped in shiny black robes, with masks instead of faces.

There was a dead silence upstairs. Deafened by the shouts of the

ballroom, I stood hesitant in front of the gilded lattice that separated the
landing from the long, dimly lit marble corridor.
Renato pushed the grate with his foot, and it swung open noiselessly.

276
Stepping on the soft carpet, making the steps completely inaudible, I
suddenly felt a slight intoxicating smell mixed with the smell of the
hospital... The farther we went along the corridor, the heavier it became.
My head began to spin a little.
"Where are we going, Renato?" I whispered.
"The next circle of hell...
Imagine a luxuriously decorated living room with antique furniture in
the Baroque style, upholstered in red plush, with round tables for playing
cards, walls covered with green silk, bronze figures in niches, holding
torches in their hands, in which electric lamps burned. By the walls there
are wide sofas... Two luxurious crystal chandeliers with a large number of
tiny electric bulbs are covered with black crepe. From somewhere came
monotonous music, a violin piece on one string, dull as the sound of drops
falling from a kitchen tap...
The drawing room was full of well-dressed people, motionless and
silent... Those who sat on the sofa sipped smoke through long rubber tubes
from a small flaming hearth, a bronze cup that stood on a flask of water.
Men and women also sat around the tables in relaxed, weak-willed poses.
Through thin glass tubes, they sipped something from glasses. Still others
in a weak-willed pose along thewere lying in armchairs. "Drug addicts!" –
I guessed.
It was a silent celebration of death. Only occasionally heavy sighs and a
slight moan broke the silence of the living room.
At the sight of this silent suicide I trembled as if in a fever.
"They are dreaming," Renato whispered. "Now they live, not here, but
somewhere far away, in non-existent worlds, in wonderful lands of
variegated and formless dreams...
The next circle of hell is an art exhibition. It was completely empty.
Only at the very end of the long gallery was the figure of a man crouching
in an armchair.
"And here is a real nightmare! Renato exclaimed.
His face was contorted with rage, his eyes narrowed like those of a
panther ready to pounce on its prey. He squeezed my hand convulsively.
"Look. Watch and remember. Everything we saw there is embodied here.
These paintings depict the world of those people! Here is the quintessence of
the degeneration of thoughts and feelings of doomed idlers fed up with life.
Their fear of the future, their horror of loneliness, their panic of inevitable
madness are recorded on the canvases. Here are two trembling parallel black
lines on a white background. Read, Professor! Here it is written: "Love...".
And here's more. A regular geometric spiral, broken by rounded pink
protuberances, reminiscent of the stumps of the armless and legless. This
picture is called "Tomorrow". Pay attention to this. A gray block, something

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shapeless under it and a pool of blood. And a background reminiscent of
delicate openwork lace. What do you think it is? This is "Philosophy". And
an ugly ball bitten by yellow teeth is "Disease". Here is the sculpture. Noble
Sicilian marble and a shapeless four-legged monster painted in oil paints in
purple and green! The sculpture is called "Dance". Doesn't it look like what
we saw below, Professor?
We wandered along the deserted gallery, and Renato, stopping at each
"work", with fury and disgust gave them murderous characteristics.
"And they wanted, and still want, me to write the same way!" he
shouted. "That will never happen, never!" They wanted me to starve to
death, they hounded Angela. They threw stones at her! And suddenly,
switching to a whisper, Renato added: "But I killed him, Professor.
"Who?"
"That corrupt soul, that freak, that creature of Sicco." You must
remember him. When we met for the first time, in a café on the Via Brava,
where I exhibited my paintings, he denounced them in front of everyone.
He is envious and mean, this Sicco. He was always jealous of my talent.
He could never write as I did, and so he began to imitate the ugliness on
display in this room. When he found out that ordinary people were buying
my paintings, especially those I had painted with Angela, he began to
persecute me. He appeared wherever I exhibited, he mocked me, insulted
me. Then he went to a terrible meanness. He decided to deprive me of the
nature in which all our life, all our troubles and passions, and all the
beauty that is still left is embodied...
One day, when I came to you to be alone with your devices...
As soon as Renato uttered these words, I seemed to see the light, my
dear friend. Indeed, what has my experience proved? What was the
meaning of those two minutes of solitude in the world I had artificially
created, where I had placed Renato? Only one thing: it is impossible to
detach a person from what he is used to, it is impossible to create for him a
world in which he will never livesilt. Whatever you do, no matter how you
play on his feelings, you can only resurrect in him what has been written
down by life itself. I suddenly felt a tremendous sense of satisfaction when
I finally realized that a person is created by the environment in which he
lives. And unless you disrupt his nervous system in the most radical way,
you will never be able to throw him into some fantasy world. Fantasy is
just an incomplete description of the world. My device affected all the
senses of the artist, and, therefore, he could not live otherwise than in real
life. The discovery, it seems, was worth the experience!
"Renato...
"Don't interrupt, Professor. Sicco got wind that I was getting money
from somewhere. He saw that I was not starving, that Angela was getting

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better. And that I write as I have never written. Now, a few weeks ago,
when I was in your laboratory again, he came to Signora Boldi's
apartment. He took Angela out into the street and, placing her in the
middle, began to shout to all the passers-by that she was a vile creature,
that she had lured him to her and robbed him, and this Sicco shouted
many, many other nasty things. And then the crowd began to beat Angela,
to throw stones at her, to trample her under foot, and when I came running
it was all over.
"Renato," I groaned. Only two days ago...
Not listening to me, he continued:
"Then I decided to take revenge on the scoundrel. You already know
how I did it. I moved back to the barge and sent him a note to come. I
wrote to him that I understood the meaning of the new painting and agreed
to work with him, that together we would create stunning abstract
paintings and soon become the richest artists in Italy.
And he came. He didn't know that I knew who was responsible for
Angela's death...
"Renato...
"He's here." Do you still remember the hold of the barge? I stood near a
steep wooden staircase knee-deep in water and waited until I heard his
footsteps. He walked quickly and confidently, whistling a song. Oh, how I
waited for him! I looked up through the square of the hatch, saw the stars
in the sky, and knew that his silhouette was about to appear. When he
appeared, I stepped aside and froze. Oh, how cold the water was that
night! My legs ached from the cold, but I didn't pay attention.
When Sicco's neck was at the level of my chest, I stuck a knife in it. He
died completely silently. He just fell into my arms, as if I had done nothing
to him and he died on his own. I dragged him down the corridor to the
stern and threw him into the river through a hole in the rotten boards.
For a few days I stayed with Signora Boldi, continuing to paint portraits of
Angela, although she was not alive. Then I learned that a detachment of
policemen had been on the barge. Then I moved to Naples, to an old friend of
mine...
We came to the very end of the art gallery and stopped at the chair in
which a man was sleeping, crouched...
"Now I feel at peace," Renato went on excitedly. "I'm calm about Angela.
I am calm about art. I am sure that the artists who paint this scum and the
sculptors of these monsters will perish. Some will die like dogs in lunatic
asylums, others will be destroyed by honest people, as I destroyed Sicco!
Renato shouted the last phrase in a hysterical voice. The man in the
chair shuddered, stood up, and rubbed his eyes. About! It was the painter
Sicco!

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 6
At this point Professor Carducci interrupted his story and walked
quickly to the window. He whistled lightly, and when he returned, he said,
"Excuse me, but you will have to go into the next room. Father
Gregorio comes to me again.
Shocked by the Italian's story, I did not immediately realize what to do,
and then the professor grabbed me by the arm and dragged me to the door
that led to his bedroom. Twilight had thickened outside the window, and it
was completely dark here.
"Sit here... I'll try to get him out as soon as possible.
The door was thin, and I could hear the whole conversation.
"Good evening, doctor," Father Gregorio said in a singing voice.
"Peace be upon your home, and may St. Peter protect your soul.
"Thank you, Padre."
Silence. Then again the voice of the priest:
"It's hard to go up to you, doctor. Oh, how hard! And it is hard for our
sick to come to you.
"They don't come to me, Padre." I'm the one who goes to them.
"So it's hard for you. You torment yourself in vain.
"What is to be done?"
"That's why I came to you. Why would you live on this rock? Come
over to me. The monastery is vast, there is enough space for you. More
people will come to you.
"I'm used to it here.
Silence again.
"Do you want wine, my father?"
— No, I don't. You can't, doctor. Sinful. This is what I wanted to ask
you, as an educated person. Have you heard of such a scientist, Professor
Carducci?
Pause. A long and oppressive pause. "No, no, say no," I whispered to
myself.
"I have. Of course! Perhaps this is the same Carducci who was
excommunicated from the church?
"He's the one, he's the one. Do you know... He used to live in Rome.
And now he has disappeared. He disappeared, by the way, on the day
when your learning deigned to do good to the sick and insane in our
village by settling here, so high above the lake.
"Strange... Why did he disappear?
"Exactly. If he felt guilty, he would have to repent and ask for
forgiveness.
"And what did this Carducci do?"
"He encroached on God's power over human souls, instilling in them

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unbelief and madness. This Carducci invented a machine that replaced the
commands of God. With the help of his infernal invention, he forced
people to live a life other than the one that was given to them from above.
"A terrible crime before God," said the professor hoarsely.
— Yes. Especially since it led to the death of a man, the kind and
humble Catholic Renato Carbonelli, an artist. Man cannot live in a way
that God does not want.
— And why do you think that Renato lived a different life from all
people? As far as I know, he...
"Oh, Professor, don't say too much!" I whispered to myself.
"Do you know anything, Doctor?" The Padre asked insinuatingly.
"No, I'm just...
"I understand you, doctor. You're excited about this story... But that's
not the point. Professor Carducci could have atoned for his guilt. He can
be received back into the bosom of the church.
"How could he redeem himself, Padre?"
"By transferring the power of his machine to the power of the holy
church and using it to convert the unbelievers and those who defile the
holy into obedient and praying people! Is it possible, doctor, do you
think?"
Carducci was silent. When he spoke again, his voice sounded ironic.
"But is such a hellish machine and churchCan they live together,
Padre?"
That was already an unnecessary question!
"Oh, if Professor Carducci's machine is going to serve good intentions
and holy purposes, then why not?" Do the servants of God neglect the
machine to go far away with God's word to those who long to hear it?
"It's all very, very strange," said Carducci thoughtfully. "What if the
professor doesn't want to hand over the car?"
"Oh, then the wrath of God may overflow. The professor will be
persecuted, and no one will shake hands with him when an angry crowd of
believers throws stones at him.
It was an unequivocal threat! Of course, Padre Gregorio didn't know
anything about what Carducci had done. He was simply carrying out the
will of those who sent him and who were able to understand the
professor's amazing experience in a timely manner.
Having anathematized Carducci, they wanted to suspend the experiment.
And then buy or intimidate the professor. They understood that the scientist
would strive to continue his work, and they did not want him to hide from
the eyes of the church.
The stool creaked. Heavy footsteps were heard. Closing the door, the
padre said:

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 "The Holy Fathers are waiting for Professor Carducci tomorrow,
Sunday, in St. Peter's Basilica..."
After a long silence, the door to the bedroom opened, and the silhouette
of Professor Carducci appeared in it.
"Come out, he's gone.
We were silent for a few minutes. Then I asked?
"What will happen now?" What do you intend to do?
"Really, I don't know. The devil pulled me to go with Renato to the
confessional... If I don't come to the cathedral tomorrow, this scoundrel will
set fanatics against me.
I took the scientist's thin hand and shook it firmly.
"Take courage, dear colleague. Ultimately, there is always a way out of
any difficult situation. It's still a long way from morning, and we'll figure
something out. In the meantime, tell me what happened next to Renato and
to you, and how the priests found out about all this.
"And then there was this," Carducci went on. Seeing Sicco, Renato
shouted in a voice that was not his own: "Dream! It's really a cursed dream!
You told the truth, Professor!"
Sicco, in turn, was terribly surprised:
"Hello, maestro! Finally, you have come to see real life and real art. But I
see you're pretty drunk and screaming like a mule with a broken back. Did
you get him drunk, signor?"
"Go away!" Leave quickly! I shouted at Sicco. "Go away, or there will
be trouble!"
"Why on earth should I leave?" I slept well. Anyway, okay, I'll go to my
beauties now, they're dancing downstairs. Come with me, Renato. The girls
there are not like your blind one...
Renato was completely numb, and only his huge eyes darted wildly from
side to side, as if in search of something that could save his life. Then,
broken and exhausted, he fell into a chair.
"Go away, please," I begged Sicco. "My friend feels bad.
He shrugged his shoulders and wandered to the exit from the gallery.
Suddenly Renato raised his head and said through his teeth:
"It's all your stuff, Professor. You can torture people with hunger, thirst,
pull them on their hind legs, put needles under their nails, but you torment
me more terribly than the Inquisitor. Now I know that you have invented
your infernal machine to unleash upon me a torrent of the most terrible
sufferings. My only consolation is that it is only a nightmare.
I wanted to protest, to say that now he was no longer asleep, that the
dream had been before, and now it was real real life, and that it was real life
that was to blame for all his suffering. But I didn't have time to say
anything. Renato jumped to his feet and ran.

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 "Renato, where are you going?" Where to?
"Don't you know?" After all, you came up with this? It was you who
came up with the idea to make it so! Pray! I'm going to pray to God!
At the tiny door under the very roof of the building, the monk stood with
his arms crossed on his chest.
"Well, what a clever idea you came up with with your car!" Even this
was foreseen! Pay him two hundred, no, three hundred lire!
I paid. The artist burst into the tiny chapel and fell at the feet of the priest.
I was petrified, shocked that religion had taken refuge in this cesspool of
disfigured human feelings. She robbed tormented, lost people trying to find
solace in God! Now I was ready to believe that it was all a sickly, protracted
dream!
"I listen to you, my son!" The priest said quietly, picking Renato up from
the floor. "Repent of your sins, and you will feel better.
Renato stood up and, turning in my direction, shouted:
"You are gone, padre! He invented you. He has a machine that creates
people, many people, entire cities, Rome, Naples, the Adriatic Sea. His
name is Carducci, Professor Carducci!
"Carducci?" The priest was surprised.
— Yes. His name is Carducci, padre. Renato fell to his knees. "I stabbed
a man. I stabbed Giovanni Sicco to death for the murder of my beloved
Angela. This man," he turned his head in my direction, "made Sicco come
to life! You see, Sicco is alive again! I just saw him with my own eyes!
Renato wrapped his arms around the priest's knees, hid his head in his
robes, and sobbed again.
"Holy Father, I will explain to you what is the matter," I began.
"Go on, my son, go on," the priest said gently. His thin fingers were
running through the hair on Renato's head, and his eyes were digging into
me like two needles. — Were you the one who wrote articles about the fact
that the human soul consists of only electric currents? The priest asked me
in a whisper.
"You are very primitive in your exposition my...
But he, not listening to my explanations, continued:
"And what is possible to know the structure of the human soul?
"Yes, but...
"Yes, yes!" Renato shouted again. "He controls the soul like the devil
himself. He creates this terrible house, he created you. And he is... The dead
never rise from their graves, do they? Do they not come ashore from the
waters of the Tiber like Giovanni Sicco? I myself killed him with these
hands and threw him into the water... And now it's there! Over there!
Below!
Renato ran up to me:

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 "If you are more powerful than God, why did you resurrect Sicco and not
resurrect Angela?" Why, I ask you? If you are an honest person, then you
should first of all resurrect her.
"My dear Renato! I didn't resurrect anyone. And your Angela is alive...
"Alive?" Are you telling the truth?
"Of course she's alive!"
"Then let's go to her, come on immediately!" Padre, you are a witness.
This man says that Angela is alive...
We ran out to Tritone Square when dawn broke outside. Two black
shadows followed me and Renato ominously, a priest and a monk who
guarded the entrance to the chapel.
It was quite daylight when we took a taxi into a lane that descended
steeply to the river. The car stopped at a gray two-storyAnd we ran to the
second floor up the creaking wooden staircase. Renato frantically banged on
the door. It swung open and the figure of a woman in black appeared in it.
"Signora Boldi, where is Angela?" Renato shouted.
"There—" She stepped aside, holding out her hand toward the rickety
door.
"There?" Renato asked uncertainly.
"Yes, there. But it is no longer there...
"Why not?" I cried.
"She was stoned by some scoundrels when she went to the barge to carry
Signor Renato's paintings. She was blind and could not run away from
them. She died two hours ago.
I heard nothing further. Renato rushed back. Stumbling and falling, he
went down the steep stairs.
"Sleep!" Untruth! Damned Carducci! Curse on God, who created
scientists!
An open military vehicle flew out around a bend in the street, packed to
the brim with drunken officers and women. They bawled at the top of their
lungs as they took their morning walk after a night's feast. Renato stopped
in the middle of the street, his arms spread wide:
"Damn you!
Before I knew it, the car knocked Renato down at full speed and threw
him against the wall. The driver did not even try to brake. The drunken
company rushed away.
Renato was still breathing for a few minutes.
"Renato, Renato, say something," I begged him.
The pulse on his arm was barely palpable. His heart was beating with
long, menacing pauses.
For a moment, he opened his eyes.
"Carducci?" You are a nice fellow... It's so good that these two minutes

284
of loneliness are over...
He didn't say another word.
The professor fell silent. I sat there, afraid to break the silence, and tried
to analyze his tragic story. It was very difficult, because everything about it
was unusual for me. Only one thing is clear: Renato, on whose feelings the
biophysicist so riskily "played", experienced a lot. He was ruined by real
life with its terrible impressions, sunk deep into his memory. The artist's
acute sensitivity led to the tragic denouement.
"Signor, may I come to you?" A tall man, one of the men I had seen as I
entered the hut, suddenly interrupted our thoughts.
Carducci shuddered.
"Signor, you can't stay here any longer."
"Why?"
"The village is restless. The priest preached a sermon against you today
at vespers.
"Oh! What should I do?
"We must go, signor.
"Where?"
"To the mountains.
"To whom?"
— To people who love and respect you.
I breathed a sigh of relief. So, after all, I was right, and the professor has
friends here!
"Are there any?" he asked.
— There are many of them in Italy. Come. Now is the time.
"But I don't know the way. Where will I look for these people?
"Antonio will see you off." He's here. Come in, Antonio.
An old man came into the room, the same one I had met when I arrived
in the village.
"Good evening, signori, hello, signor doctor. Let's go before it's too late.
Carducci looked at me hesitantly.
"Go." Go on, Professor. These are real people, good, kind and brave. For
a while, Carducci stood in the middle of the room, utterly bewilderedIn
the 19th century, the Then he impulsively came up to me, shook my hand
firmly, and resolutely left the hut, accompanied by Antonio and two tall,
gloomy fellows, his former masters.

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 Saboteur From "Jupiter"

I.
By order of the command, our company was removed from the aircraft
carrier Jupiter and transported to the coast in May 195... Year. Everything
was furnished with the greatest secrecy. The tug unmoored at night and
moored to the shore at night as well. Where and why we were going was
unknown. Only later did we learn that, according to the relevant
agreement, we were "invited" to this country to carry out some work on its
territory.
Now this is no longer a secret. The whole world knows about it. We
were preparing sites for the installation of medium-range guided missiles.
Who these missiles were aimed at is also well known.
So, our company landed on the coast late at night and, having marched
about two miles inland, settled in a small valley, among the gently sloping
mountains overgrown with forests.
We pitched tents and brought in all our soldiers' belongings, equipment
and tools necessary for work. The tug then returned to the carrier, leaving
us in the care of Captain Hooks, our commander, a lieutenant physician,
and one engineer-major who was to direct our work.
The work was usual for this case. We armed ourselves with shovels and
rollers and began to level the ground, on which it was later planned to lay
concrete and install the necessary metal reinforcement.
We worked lazily. The terrain was desolate, at least a hundred miles to
the nearest town.
This went on for about two weeks. Then, from somewhere in the
mountains, right through the forest, came a tracked tractor with two
trailers, on which secret equipment lay under a tarpaulin. Colonel Brady
stepped out of the driver's cab. He was tall and lean, and his prickly eyes
did not bode well.
On the day of the arrival of this train with equipment, everything began.
At the morning check-up, it suddenly turned out that Private Wilkins
was ill. He had a fever, vomiting, and was delirious.
"Too much or just a fever," our captain decided.
A lieutenant doctor was sent to Wilkins. After examining the patient, he
left the tent agitated and, calling the commander to him, said something to
him for a long time in a low voice.
"It can't be," we heard Hooks say. "They were here before us, and they

286
checked everything. Take a closer look at it.
Lieutenant Willard re-entered the tent. He left her half an hour later,
even more agitated. Then all the officers, including Colonel Brady,
gathered together and discussed something for a long time.
"I've got something serious," said the lanky Dick.
In the meantime the officers called Smith, our radio operator.
"Contact the X276 station. Now you will transmit a coded telegram.
Smith turned the radio around and sent a bunch of numbers written on a
piece of paper by Colonel Brady. An hour later he accepted the answer and
passed it on to the colonel. After that, the officers began to confer again.
Seeing that we were watching them anxiously, they lined us up in one
line. Colonel Brady made a speech:
"Soldiers. There is no reason to worry. Nothing special happened to
Wilkins. He has some kind of local disease. Tomorrow a helicopter will
come here with the necessary medicines. Rest assured, Private Wilkins
will soon be well and back in line. And now let's get to work, and God help
you.
Indeed, the next day a helicopter came. We were expecting him to turn
out to be some pretty miss with a bag across the plaand with a red cross on
his arm. None of this happened. Instead of Miss, a fat pilot's face appeared
from the fuselage door. When he saw us, he barked:
"Come on, let's unload." We dragged five heavy boxes to the ground,
wondering why Wilkins needed such a huge amount of medicine. The
smartest of us was the lanky Dick. He "accidentally" dropped one box,
which immediately shattered into pieces. Instead of pills and powders, a
device fell out of the box, exactly the same as we had seen on the Jupiter.
We all knew that radioactivity was measured with these instruments.
The engineer-major armed himself with this device and immediately
went to Wilkins. He came out smiling.
"There's nothing," he said.
–I knew it. Mistake, Mr. Doctor," the colonel quipped.
By evening, Wilkins felt worse. The lieutenant doctor did not leave his
side for a single step, monitoring his temperature and pulse. We were not
allowed to see our friend. Everyone who lived with Wilkins in the same
tent was placed in the others, leaving him alone.
After bedtime we could not sleep for a long time, wondering what had
happened to Wilkins and what the cursed place was.
Before going to bed, I heard Willard and Hooks walk past our tent. The
lieutenant said,
"I have no doubts. He has leukemia.
What the captain answered, I did not hear.

287
 II.
Wilkins was taken by helicopter to the hospital a day later, and a day
later Private Skart fell ill.
When, after the examination, Lieutenant Willard informed Colonel
Brady that it was "the same case," the colonel spat and cursed loudly.
"Take the equipment and search everything properly.
A lieutenant and an engineer-major, armed with indicators on long
poles, slowly wandered around the grounds. They then tested the
radioactivity in all the tents.
–No problem. Clean," the major reported to the colonel in confusion.
"You're doing something, Lieutenant," Brady said menacingly,
addressing the doctor. – This is not leukemia.
"Okay, I'll do a blood test.
Digging the ground, we watched Willard's tent, trying to guess from the
lieutenant's appearance what the analysis had yielded.
The lieutenant came out gloomy and concentrated. After looking at the
slide, he went to the officer's tent. After that, the colonel appeared and
again handed the paper with numbers to the radio operator Smith. Captain
Hooks, our commander, lined us up.
"You're going to be tested for radioactivity now," he said, frowning.
We looked at each other in surprise. The major came out and, walking
along the line with his probe, began to circle us with the indicator from
head to toe.
No radioactivity was detected. Before disbanding the formation, Hukes
said:
"I order you not to drink water from the springs, not to pick berries, and
not to pick fruit from the trees either. There is only what we brought with
us.
Two more people were sick that day: Private Brummer and Radio
Operator Smith. Panic began in the company. Smith was led by the arms
to the radio. Having transmitted the cipher on the air, he fainted. Three
hours later, a helicopter arrived with a new radio operator. We stayed up
all night, talking loudly and cursing those who brought us here.
In the morning, the colonel made a long speech in front of the ranks:
"Soldiers. Despite all the complexity of the situation, you must
maintain peace of mind. The command will figure out what is going on. I
have nothing to hide from you. We have already had four cases of
radiation sickness. We have a suspicion that this is the work of an
insidious enemy. We cannot detect radioactivity anywhere, and yet it
exists.
At that moment, the new radio operator gave the colonel a cipher.
"You see, I told you the truth. After the autopsy in the hospital, no

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traces of radioactivity were found in Private Wilkins...
"Is Private Wilkins dead?" The whole formation gasped.
The colonel realized his mistake.
"Yes," he said hoarsely, "may God save Private Wilkins' soul. Listen,
soldiers, go on. If radioactivity is not detected in the body and is not
present in the territory, as well as in food and water, then it is gamma
radioactivity. Someone irradiates you with gamma rays. Someone
infiltrates our camp and commits sabotage. Someone wants to undermine
our defense capability. Therefore, you are required to be vigilant. You
need to set up posts. You need to carefully inspect the area around. You
need to watch each other. Yes, yes, soldiers, don't be surprised. Perhaps
this insidious enemy is among us, standing next to you now and looking
into my eyes. But we will reveal it. We will find out everything. Let's get
to work, soldiers. The Motherland blesses you, may God help you.
After this speech of the colonel, we began to look at each other
suspiciously. Among us was Private Ribbon, who always walked with his
head down. He could not look anyone straight in the eye. For some reason,
everything was decided, that he was a saboteur, although there was no
evidence.
Before the evening check-up, the lanky Dick punched Ribbon in the
face. And at night Ribbon became delirious. He also fell ill.
In the morning, the helicopter took all the patients to the hospital, and
we wandered through the bushes, climbed trees, fumbled for stones,
looking for a saboteur or hidden stocks of radioactive substance. The
engineer-major ran from one soldier to another and kept asking:
"Well, how is it? Damn it, this cesium-137 is lying somewhere.
Lanky Dick, the smartest of us, said that radioactive cesium emits
deadly gamma rays that don't stay in the body.
In the evening, Captain Hooks assigned five pairs of soldiers to patrol
the area. In addition, a duty officer was placed in each tent. But this could
not have been done. We didn't sleep anyway. Everyone was waiting for
someone's hand to reach out and irradiate them with these damned gamma
rays of cesium.
No hand appeared, and when it became completely light, we fell asleep
in exhaustion.
There was no wake-up call that morning. We got up when the sun was
high. When we approached the officers' tent, we were informed that
Lieutenant Willard, our doctor, was ill.
A murmur began among us.
"To hell with this place!" Take us back to where we came from! Why
the hell are we stuck here? We were specially brought here to be sent to
the next world. We have wives and children.

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 Our commander, Captain Hooks, came out. He was pale, either from
insomnia or from fear.
"Calm down, soldiers. All this will come to light sooner or later. It is
quite clear that this is a sabotage. Subtle and insidious.
After that, we again climbed mountains, trees, bushes, again checked
for radioactivity, again looked at each other suspiciously and all to no
avail.
"We need to check our officers," someone said suddenly. "Why should
we think that a saboteur is among us?"
Everyone liked the idea, and we sent a delegation to the officers.
When Colonel Brady drove her out, we all crowded menacingly around
the officers' tent and shouted,
"Come out, Colonel! We need proof that neither you, nor Captain
Hooks, nor the major are saboteurs. We don't want to die thinking that the
scoundrel is among us.
At last the officers came out, and they were also groped with a counter.
Then they checked their tent. There was no radioactivity.
Lieutenant Willard died that night. His body was taken away by
helicopter the next day. After that, the diseases stopped. We decided that
Willard was the saboteur. We were glad that he died. "That's where he
goes, scoundrel."

III.
After Willard's death, normal life began in the camp. We dug the
ground and leveled it with rollers. We unloaded two road trains with
cement and began to fill the site. The colonel, major, captain and everyone
else were cheerful and joyful. We were promised a vacation home when
the work was over. We worked like hell. But when we began to install the
metal fittings, Private Seders fainted. Five minutes later the same thing
happened to the lanky Dick. A new doctor diagnosed them with radiation
sickness. It all started from the beginning.
We combed the entire area again.
"We're being irradiated from the sky," someone said. – From
high-altitude aircraft with the help of special searchlights.
We lifted our heads in horror, peering into the dazzling blue cloudless
sky. Is death really from there? We rushed into the forest and huddled
against the trees, as if that could save us from radiation. All work on the
territory stopped. A delegation was sent to the officers demanding that we
be taken away from this diabolical place. The delegation returned in panic.
"Colonel Brady is ill.
This overflowed the cup. We rushed to the officers' tent and, forgetting
about discipline, rushed inside. The colonel, pale and shaking, muttered:

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 "Sabotage... A terrible sabotage... Pass it to the center... Sabotage...
Urgently a commission to investigate... Sabotage...
The radio operator transmitted a new cipher. In the evening, a
helicopter appeared. He did not land as usual, but dropped the package to
the ground.
–Afraid. yes, damn it, he's afraid," we shouted and shook our fists at the
sky.
"We have been left here alone to perish from invisible rays.
Captain Hooks opened the packet.
"We are informed that a special commission will soon be sent to
investigate the whole story. In the meantime, it was ordered to deal with it
ourselves," he said.
Colonel Brady and Privates Seders and lanky Dick were taken away by
helicopter three days later. Soon two more fell ill. We demanded that
Captain Hooks get us out of here, otherwise we will leave on our own. He
said that he was ready to do it, but did not know what to do with the secret
equipment. The fact is that the night before, without his permission,
tractors with trailers left. The drivers belonged to another unit.
Then there was a period of calm again. However, now we were sure
that everything would happen again soon, and therefore we did nothing,
but only waited. We all moved to the forest, thinking that the saboteur was
only working against those who lived in tents.
Sometimes we got together and talked.
"We are being destroyed like the plague because we are doing a vile
deed.
"Who needs our lives if we behaved like decent people.
"Why the devil are we here?" Why do we need these stinking missiles?
"Let them be installed by those who came up with them.
– Or those who are going to launch them.
"No one is meddling in our country, and we have spread all over the
world.
Captain Hooks, our commander, heard all this and said nothing,
because he had nothing to say. The major was also silent. The doctor was
silent too.
Eight days passed in this way. During this time, we did not lift a finger.
It began to rain, and one by one, one by one, we crawled into our tents.
The radio operator received the cipher. An order came to finish work as
soon as possible. The most distinguished soldiers were promised a reward
and leave.
"It's time to get to work, boys," said Captain Hooks.

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 IV.
During this time, while we were here, our commander lost a lot of
weight and lost his face. He used to be cheerful and cheerful. Now he has
become somewhat sluggish. It rained continuously. The major wandered
around the camp with a meter and checked the radioactivity of the water in
the puddles. He said it was within normal limits.
Captain Hooks soon fell ill.
When it first started with him, he invited all of us into his tent. He said
this:
"Guys! This place is really cursed. But there's nothing I can do. An
order is an order. Let the high command figure it out. Here's what I advise
you to do. Gather everything you have. All clothes, uniforms, equipment.
Shoes, books, bags. Tents too. Leave only weapons and devices for
measuring radioactivity with you. Put everything else in a pile, pour
gasoline over it and burn, and scatter the ashes. If there is radioactivity
anywhere, it is only in our things. The saboteur hides it there.
"Why do you think so, Captain?" – we asked.
"I got sick because I slept in a tent. You have been sleeping in the open
air lately, and none of you have fallen ill.
Indeed, none of us got sick, except for those who got sick earlier.
Captain Hooks gave his soul to God after a week and a half.
After the death of our commander, we burned everything, and
ourselves, in our underpants, began to leave. We abandoned everything
except weapons and devices, and in the pouring rain we wandered into the
mountains along the track left by a caterpillar tractor. We decided that this
road would get us where we needed to go. Ahead of us was a major with
an indicator on a long stick. Next to him was a radio operator with a radio
on his bare shoulders.
When we were high in the mountains, suddenly a piercing scream was
heard. It was the major who shouted.
"Here he is, a saboteur!"
He made a huge jump away from the radio operator. We all scattered
and hid behind the trees. Only the confused radio operator with his station
remained on the road. Then we noticed that he was not alone. Next to him
stood all wet, ruffled from the rain, the favorite of the whole company, the
cat Joyce. He meowed hoarsely and rubbed against the radio operator's
bare leg. Then, from behind the bushes, first a stick with an indicator
appeared, and then the figure of the major. He reached out to the
uncomprehending radio operator. We were anxiously waiting for what
would happen next. The major moved the indicator up and down and then
shouted in a heart-rending voice:
"Drop the radio and run quickly. This is Joyce! Rays from it! It's

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radioactive as hell!
The radio operator rushed after the major into the bushes, and the
unfortunate Joyce, without thinking anything, rushed after them. We all
suddenly realized that the cat was radioactive. He slept with each of us. He
rubbed against our feet. We held him on our lap. We played with him. For
the night, Joyce chose the bunk of the one he liked best, according to his
feline mind. And everyone with whom he slept fell ill with radiation
sickness.
Now, breaking the branches of the bushes on our way, we fled from
Joyce as from the plague, forgetting about our soldierly dignity.
"Shoot him, someone!" Kill that damn cat!
As Joyce was running over wet branches to one of his recent friends, a
gunshot rang out. The cat yelped and, jumping high again, fell on the
grass. To be sure, he was shot several more times. His corpse was
bypassed, making a large detour.
Then, shivering with excitement and cold, we gathered on the road. The
major asked,
"Where did Joyce come from?"
"He's from the Jupiter." We took him with us.
"Was he like that there too?"
–No. He lived on the Jupiter for more than a year and no one fell ill with
radiation sickness. It became radioactive here.
–Why?
"Nobody knows.
Everything was cleared up when, after walking a few miles, we saw a
truck covered with tarpaulins moving towards us.
The colonel got out of the driver's cab.
"What kind of naked pack is this?" he asked.
"We're from the base...
"Why such a wild species?"
The major explained to him everything as it was.
"We have just shot the culprit of the sabotage, Joyce the cat.
"That's right, Colonel. That was my hypothesis," said a civilian,
sticking his head out from under the tarpaulin. "Tell me, has this cat
always been in the camp or sometimes disappeared?"
"Sometimes he went somewhere... Like all cats...
"Somewhere!" The colonel said ironically. "Do you know where?"
Two miles from your camp, among the hills, there is a ravine where local
fishermen dump fish rejected due to radioactivity. Our commission
managed to establish that during your stay several tens of tons of fish
poisoned with radioactive cesium were thrown there.
"What does Joyce have to do with it?"

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 "And when he got tired of your canned food, he went and ate
radioactive fish. It ate together with cesium and turned into a powerful
source of gamma rays. This cesium accumulates in the body of animals. It
has a half-life of six years.
The colonel was very pleased that he explained so popularly why our
guys fell ill and died.
– And why was the fish poisoned with cesium? Someone asked
suddenly.
– An inevitable consequence of testing atomic and hydrogen bombs.
Bombs need to be tested. To strengthen our national defense. The oceans
are being polluted. Naturally, fish is also contaminated. We shall certainly
protest to the Government here that it permits such irresponsible handling
of unsuitable catches.
The colonel pronounced the last sentence very seriously.
Then he got into the truck and ordered the driver to turn around.
"Our commission has nothing else to do here," he said. "Go back to
camp. Tomorrow everything you need will be delivered to you by
helicopters. And today shake in the rain. Hopefully, this will make you
wiser and more disciplined.
"Hey, mister!" One of our men shouted as the truck started moving.
"Why didn't Joyce himself die of radioactivity?"
"The devil knows. The cat's organism is apparently more tenacious. Let
scientists figure this out. This is not our business.
We went back and soon reached the place where Joyce had been shot.
We all turned our heads in the direction where his disheveled black corpse
lay among the wet bushes, radiating deadly rays in all directions.
And each of us thought: "Maybe it wasn't Joyce who should have been
destroyed? Or at least not him alone?"
However, no one said this out loud.

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 The Game
It was, as Professor Zarubin said, "a mathematical game of the purest
water".
Delegates of the All-Union Congress of Young Mathematicians were
invited to participate in it, and, to everyone's surprise, all fourteen hundred
people turned out to be interested. The game took place in the large arena of
the Lenin Stadium.
- Keep in mind that the game will last three or four hours. So be patient.
If someone does not stand it - everything is lost! - warned Ivan Klochko, a
young Ukrainian logistician. Zarubin instructed him to conduct all the
organizational work, which looked very strange.
- Remember the number of your team. You are assigned the number 10,
You yourself number each participant with ordinal numbers in the binary
system, 1st, 10th, 11th, etc., - Ivan said to the head of representatives from
the Russian Federation.
He approached all delegations, informing them of the conventional
index and explaining the order of numbering of participants.
It took all Saturday to "organize the game", and the gathering was
scheduled for 9 am on Sunday. It seems to me that not a single person who
took part in this amazing event will forget era for the rest of their lives...
At 9 a.m. sharp, we all gathered at the stadium. Professor Zarubin, his
assistant Semyon Danilovich Ryabov and Vanya Klochko were already
there.
The green field of the stadium was divided by orange ribbons into
squares and rectangles. In each figure there was a small wooden bedside
table, on the blue surface of which a number was written in chalk. We all sat
down on the grass, waiting for what would happen next.
Professor Zarubin disappeared somewhere, and soon we heard his voice
resounding on the radio throughout the stadium:
"A group of participants with index 1011, occupy a rectangular field at
the eastern end of the stadium. Arrange yourself in rows and at the back of
each other's heads, at arm's length, in ascending order of the serial number.
Seven people in the line, the depth of the formation is six people.
- Group with index 111, take the field near the south stands. Also, sit in
the back of each other's heads, at arm's length, in ascending order of
numbers. A group with the index...
For fifteen minutes, Zarubin instructed all groups of participants in detail

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to whom, where and how to settle. As soon as the professor called the index
of the group, the young people jumped up and ran in a flock to the specified
section of the stadium.
- Can you sit!? Someone shouted.
A few seconds later, Zarubin's cheerful voice said:
"You can! The main thing is to strictly observe the order that I have
indicated to you.
I belong to the so-called special team. My teammates and I had to
position ourselves between individual fields and, as Klochko explained, "be
liaison between the teams."
When the construction was completed and the stadium looked as if one
and a half thousand young men and women had gathered to perform
collective gymnastic exercises, the voice of Professor Zarubin was heard
again:
"Now listen to the rules of the game.
- Starting from the northern stand, or rather, from Comrade Sagirov,
numbers in the binary system will be transmitted. For example,
"one-zero-zero-one. Comrade Sagirov will report this figure to the neighbor
on the right if it begins with the number "one", and to the neighbor to the
left if it begins with the number "zero".
If the number is consecutively two ones or two zeros, then he must report
this hto the neighbor sitting behind him in the next row. Everyone, having
received a numerical message from his neighbor, must add his serial
number to it and, depending on the result, communicate it to the neighbor.
In addition, if a group has an index...
And so on.
The rules of the game were repeated three times, and when the whole
stadium replied in unison to the question: "I see!", Zarubin said:
"Then let's begin.
Standing between groups "110" and "1001", I saw that Zarubin's assistant,
Semyon Danilovich, was saying something to the delegation of the Georgian
SSR. Probably, some other special instruction was needed for them.
The game began exactly at ten in the morning.
I saw how, starting from the north stand, the heads of the participants
began to turn to the right and to the left, and this movement spread further
and further until it finally covered almost the entire stadium.
These strange movements spread over a large area like waves, running
from one person to another, from one group of participants to another. In
complex zigzags, the signal slowly approached me, and finally, my
neighbor on the right, having listened attentively to what he had been told
from behind, took out a piece of paper and, quickly calculating something,
touched me on the shoulder:

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 one-one-one-zero-one-zero.
According to the instructions, I had to discard all but the first four
numbers and pass them on to the next group.
"One-one-one-zero," I said to the girl in front of me.
In less than a minute, another binary number arrived at me and I passed it
forward again.
The movements among the players became more and more lively. About
an hour after the beginning, the whole field began to sway continuously, the
air was filled with monotonous but multi-voiced shouts: "One-one...
zero-zero... zero-one..." And the numbers kept running and running along
the ranks and columns of players... Now they were already advancing from
different directions, and the beginning and end of this strange game, in
which no one understood anything, waiting for the paradoxical end
promised by Professor Zarubin, were completely lost.
On the left flank of the entire formation was Ivan Klochko with a
notebook and a pencil. I saw how the corner player sometimes leaned
towards him and he wrote something down from his words.
After two hours, everyone was pretty tired: some sat down, some lay
down. A variety of non-game conversations began to begin among the
young people, which were interrupted for a second only when suddenly a
date was reported from somewhere, with which the necessary operations
were now carried out quickly, mechanically, and the result was
communicated.
By the end of the third hour, no less than seventy numbers had passed
through me.
"When will this arithmetic end," said the student of Saratov University
with a deep sigh. It was she who took the number baton from me and passed
it to the right, then to the left, then forward.
"It's not a very fun game, really," I remarked.
"Lost Sunday," she grumbled.
It was very hot, and every now and then she turned her red angry face to
the northern stand, where Zarubin stood. Looking at the notebook, he
dictated the numbers to the "beginner", Albert Sagirov.
"Another hour," I said dejectedly, glancing at my watch,
"zero-zero-one-zero!"
"One-zero-zero-one," my partner grumbled to the neighbor on the right.
"You know, I can't stand it...
"You can't leave!" Zero-zero-odin-one!
"One-one-one-zero!" Come on, to hell with them! Really, I'll go quietly.
I'm starting to feel dizzy...
And without saying a word, she got up and walked towards the western
stand, towards the exit.

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 "One-zero-one-zero," I heard from behind.
And since I had no choice, I told this number to the guy who was sitting
to the left of the disappeared student.
By the end of the game, five more numbers had passed through me.
About fifteen minutes after that, Zarubin's voice was heard;
- Game over. You can disperse...
We rose to our feet and began to look at the central tribune in
bewilderment. Then everyone spoke, waved their hands, expressing
genuine annoyance both in words and gestures.
"What is all this for?" Nonsense! Like a game of "broken phone"! And
who is the winner? And in general, what is the point of the game?
As if he had guessed all these questions, Zarubin said in a cheerful voice:
"The results of the game will be announced tomorrow morning, in the
assembly hall of the University..."
The next day we gathered in the assembly hall of the University to
discuss the last and most interesting question of our congress: "Do
mathematical machines think?" Prior to that, in the dormitory and in
numerous auditoriums, the participants of the congress hotly discussed this
issue, and there was no consensus on this matter.
"It's like asking if you think!" - my neighbor, the "inveterate cybernetist"
Anton Golovin, was excited. "How can I know if you think or not?"
And how can you know if I'm thinking? We just agreed out of politeness
that each of us could think. And if you look at things objectively, then the
only signs by which you can judge the mental functions of a person are how
he solves various logical and mathematical problems. But the machine can
also solve them!
"The machine can solve them because you made it do it.
-Nonsense! The machine can be arranged so that it can solve problems
on its own initiative. For example, insert a clock into it and program its
work so that in the morning it will solve differential equations, write poetry
in the afternoon, and edit French novels in the evening!
"The fact of the matter is that it needs to be programmed!"
-How about you? Aren't you programmed? Think carefully! Do you live
without a program?
"I made it myself.
- Firstly, I doubt it, and secondly, a large machine can also make
programs for itself.
"Shh
Silence reigned in the assembly hall. Professor Zarubin appeared at the
table of the presidium. He looked at the audience with a perky smile.
Putting the notebook in front of him, he said:
"Comrades, I have only two questions for you. The answers to these

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questions will be of direct relevance to the final phase of our work.
We waited anxiously for his questions.
- The first question. Who understood what we were doing at the stadium
yesterday?
A rumble swept through the room. Shouts were heard: "Attention
check..." "Checking the reliability of binary code..." "Guessing Game..."
"I see. You have no idea what we were doing yesterday. Question two. If
any of you know Portuguese, please raise your hand.
It was too unexpected!
After a second of silence, all fifteen hundred people roared with laughter.
Well, of course, none of us knew Portuguese. English, German, French, it's
Portuguese..
The hum and laughter did not stop for a long time. Zarubin also laughed.
Then he shook his notebook in the air, and when the audience fell silent, he
slowly read:
"Os maiores resultados são produzidos horn - pequenos mas continues
esforcos."
This is a Portuguese phrase. It is unlikely that you will be able to guess
what it means. And yet, it was you who translated it into Russian yesterday.
Here is your translation: "The greatest results are achieved by small but
constant efforts."
Note. The last word is meaningless. At the end of the game, someone left
the field or violated the rules. Instead of it, there should be "efforts".
"This is my neighbor from Saratov!" - flashed through my brain.
"It can't be!" Someone from the audience shouted. You can't do what you
don't know or understand!
"Aha!" This is exactly what I expected," Zarubin said. - This is almost a
solution to the issue on the agenda today. So that you don't have to guess,
I'll explain to you what the point of the game was. In short, we were playing
a counting machine. Each of the participants played the role of either a
memory cell, or an adder, or a delay line, or an ordinary relay...
As Professor Zarubin spoke, the roar, the conversation, the hubbub grew
in the hall, because everyone suddenly realized what role they were playing
in the stadium. Delight and excitement reached a point where Zarubin's
voices could no longer be heard, because fifteen hundred people were
talking at the same time. The professor fell silent and looked with
admiration at hundreds of excited young faces, mathematicians, who did
not need to be explained twice.
- This is genius! Someone shouted. - The experiment showed that the
supporters of thinking machines are wrong! They are put to shame!
And again noise, shouting, laughter. Zarubin raised his hand, and the
audience gradually fell silent.

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 - You remember the passage from the article of the American
mathematician Turing, where he says that in order to solve the question of
whether machines think, it is necessary to become a machine. Cybernetists
believe that the only way to be sure that a machine can think is to become a
machine and become aware of the process of its own thinking.
So, yesterday all of you became a car for four hours, and not some
fictional one, but a serial car of domestic production - "Ural". If there were
more of us, we could play Strela, BESM, any other calculating and solving
machine I took the Ural scheme and, of you, my young friends, as from
separate components, built it at the stadium. I made a program for
translating Portuguese texts, encoded it and put it into a "memory unit", the
role of which was played by the delegation of Georgia. The grammatical
rules were kept by the Ukrainians, and the dictionary necessary for
translation was kept by the delegation of the Russian Federation.
Our living machine brilliantly coped with the task. The translation of a
foreign phrase into Russian was made without any participation of your
consciousness. Of course, you understand that such a living machine could
solve any mathematical or logical problem, just like modern electronic
calculating machines. However, this would have taken much more time.
And now let's think about how to answer one of theThe most critical
questions of cybernetics: Can a machine think?
-No! The whole hall banged.
"I object!" - shouted my "inveterate cybernetist", Anton Golovin. - In
this game of car, we played the role of individual relays, that is, neurons.
But no one has ever claimed that every single neuron in the brain thinks.
Thinking is the result of the collective work of a large number of neurons!
"Let's assume," Zarubin agreed. "In that case, you must admit that during
our collective game in the air or in who knows where else, there were some
'machine superthoughts', unknown and incomprehensible to the thinking
parts of the machine!" Something like Hegel's world mind, right?
Golovin stopped and sat down.
- If you, the thinking structural units of a certain logical scheme, had no idea
of what you were doing, then can we seriously talk about the thinking of
electronic-mechanical devices built of parts, the ability to think of which even
the most ardent supporters of the electronic brain do not insist on? You know
these parts - radio tubes, semiconductors, magnetic matrices and so on. It
seems to me that our game unequivocally solved the question: can a machine
think? It convincingly showed that even the most subtle imitation of thinking
by machines is not thinking itself, the highest form of motion of living matter.
With this, allow me to consider the work of our Congress completed.
We saw off Professor Zarubin with stormy applause, which did not cease
for a long time.

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 Impulse "D"
I
Kyston raised himself on his elbows and looked into the darkness. The
train rumbled across the bridge, and silence reigned. Somewhere below, a
night bird squeaked hoarsely, and you could still hear your heart beating.
"Leddrel, Leddrel, where are you?" Kyston called in a low voice.
For a long time no one answered, and then he heard the rustle of
pebbles sliding down the mound from the right. Someone was moving
uncertainly in his direction.
"Leddrel, is that you?"
A silhouette of a man appeared against the black sky. Groaning, he sat
down and sat down beside Cayston.
"Are you hurt?" Leddrel asked.
"No, what about you?"
"I think it's all right. It's good that the embankment is not lined with stones.
They were silent for a few seconds.
"We can't stay too long," said Kyston at last. The express will arrive at
Longden by half-past eleven. They will immediately discover that we are
gone.
Leddrel rubbed his hands together on his knees and straightened to his
full height.
"They won't learn anything from us.
Both people, holding hands, began to descend. They walked sideways,
and in front of them a stream of sand and gravel rustled. It was cool and
damp below. The night bird cried out loudly and fell silent. For some
reason, you could still hear the roar of a departing train below. From afar,
the long signal of the locomotive was heard.
They went deep into the low thorny bushes and walked straight through
it, elbowing apart the elastic damp branches. Ahead of him was a dark
wall; probably the same forest that Leddrell was talking about. Behind the
forest is the seashore.
"How did it all happen?" Leddrel asked.
In the darkness, Kyston shrugged.
– Frankly speaking, I don't know myself. Or rather, he did not know.
– But did you assume that such a thing could happen?
– The fact of the matter is that it is not. I was just doing a set of
experiments according to Dr. Serge's program. There was no point in this

301
program. The old man just wanted to see how the rabbits would behave in
the pulse field.
"And you didn't know what all this was done for?"
–No. I took the work for pure research.
Leddrell laughed softly. He always laughed a silent, slightly artificial
laugh when he discovered that someone didn't know basic things.
"You're a naïve fellow, Kyston. By the way, what's your name?
–Douglas.
"You're very naïve, Doug. Can I call you that? What kind of fool pays
money for "pure research" nowadays? And are there such people?
"I thought there were.
"You're still very young. Go on, though. I am very interested to know
how it happened.
The bushes ended, and the first trees appeared in front of them - tall
pines, standing here and there among the tall thick grass. After the recent
rain, the soil was acidic and squelching under our feet. A few minutes
later, they went deeper into a dense pine forest. It was drier, smelled of tar
and rotten needles.
"Do you know the new generator designed by Wiesbach?" An ordinary
pulse with code-time modulation. Flexible device. The only drawback is the
high supply voltage. We had to drag a step-up transformer behind us. Very
uncomfortable. Then I called the technical department and asked to bring
three hundred and eighty volts to my laboratory. It was in the evening, about
seven o'clock. A guy with a stepladder appeared and began to fiddle with the
power shield. And at this time I was engaged in myand rabbits.
– Where did you study rabbits?
"In the same room." The rabbits had electrodes embedded in their
skulls. Well, you know, these are ordinary experiments...
"I wanted to ask you, Doug, how far away did the fitter work from you?"
Kayston thought for a moment, remembering the circumstances of the
event he was talking about. At last he remembered:
"Five meters from me. When I dialed another waveform and turned on
the generator, the lights in the room went out for some reason. I decided
that the fitter had turned off the switch. I sat down and waited. And then I
discovered that the laboratory became very quiet. Only the rabbits
scratched in their cages. Then I shouted, "Hey, boy!"
After that, something fell heavily to the floor. By the light of the lighter,
I saw that he was lying on the floor. "Electric shock!" I thought and,
jumping out into the corridor, called for help. And then you came in. You
know the rest.
The pine forest ended suddenly, and they heard the sound of the sea
surf.

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 II
"You are idiots, hopeless imbeciles, every single one!" The colonel
shouted, looking around the people gathered in the office with bloodshot,
bulging eyes. "Especially you, Growler, I'll never forgive that!" Why were
you sent here? Why were you hanging around here? What did you get paid
for? Your task was to observe everyone. And you behaved like the last
idiot. You've allowed people to work alone. You had no control over what
they were doing. You haven't read their journal entries. Instead of sitting
at the institute all the time, you wandered from restaurant to restaurant..
You... However, it will not work for you.
The colonel left the table and, passing between the chairs, stopped
beside Professor Serge.
"Now you!" Explain to me articulately how it could happen that your
subordinates got a result of which you have no idea?
Professor Serge got up from his chair and tried for a long time to put on
his pince-nez. His hands were trembling, and he could not do it.
"Sit, sit, damn you!" Why don't you know what the results of Leddrel
and Kyston are?
"You see," Serge began, "there were so many experiments that it was
almost impossible to keep track of the result of each one... Besides, I was
sure of...
"I know, I know, you were sure of their decency. So?
Serge shook his head affirmatively.
The colonel stepped into the middle of the office, spread his hands
wide, made a puzzled face, and addressed everyone at once:
"Gentlemen, I do not understand how it is possible in our time to be sure
of the decency of others, when we cannot vouch for our own decency. How
can we trust strangers in our time, when we lie to ourselves at every step?
At that moment the door opened, and a tall, slender blonde hurriedly
entered it.
"Here, Colonel!" This is Dr. Leddrel's journal, and this is Kyston's.
The colonel casually took two large lederin-bound notebooks, each of
which read: "Top Secret," and handed them to Professor Serge.
"Explain to us what is written in them. I don't understand anything here
anyway.
At last Serge fastened his pince-nez to his thin hooked nose, opened
Kyston's journal, and began to
chant "May twenty-third. Four rabbits – P-1, P-2, P-3 in P-4; Pulse
shape L-5. No result. Twenty-fourth of May. Three rabbits..."
The colonel sat down at his desk again. He squeezed his broad,
cheekbones face with his huge hairy hands and looked at Serge with fury
and contempt:

303
 "Stop at last!" Why do I need the twenty-third, twenty-fourth of May!
Read what happened on the seventh of July.
There was a hurried rustle of pages. Then there was a moment's silence.
–Well?
No answer.
"Well, tell me!"
"There's no record here...
–I knew it! Show me Leddrel's notebook.
Now he himself, almost tearing off the pages, was leafing through a
thick notebook in a dark blue binding. Suddenly he stopped. Everyone in
the office saw the colonel's eyes pop out of their sockets.
"What is this?" he whispered. "What is it, I ask you!!
He ran up to Serg and poked the notebook right in his face. The old man
was completely lost and shook on his thin, long legs, like a scarecrow on
spring pendants.
"S-poems..." he squeaked at last.
Who-then he could not stand it and giggled loudly. The colonel was so
furious that he did not notice it. With one leap he crossed the office and
threw the notebook in Growler's face.
"Look, what your looseness, criminal looseness, has led to!" This guy
has been composing poetry for twenty days! And for the last three days he
has been drawing devils. You see! The doctor of sciences has been
drawing devils in his scientific journal for eight hours in a row, and no one
knows anything about it! Oh Lord! What kind of institution is this! Go
away, all of you! I'm disgusted to see you...
Those gathered, loudly moving their chairs, hurriedly began to leave
the office.
"Growler, stay!" The colonel shouted.
When they were alone, the colonel wiped his sweaty brow and sat down
on the sofa. He sniffed long and hard before he began to speak in a calm
voice.
"Something needs to be done, Growler. And do it urgently. If the story
becomes known in the ministry, we will be in trouble. A systematic search
for Cayston and Leddrel must begin. It is necessary to restore to the
smallest detail everything that they did. Have to...
"I'm already doing that, sir. Kyston was engaged in rabbits. Leddrel, as he
was supposed to do, conducted his experiments at St. Virginia Hospital...
"What was he doing there, in this hospital?"
"He watched the dying.
"How do you mean, did you observe?"
"Well, I was sitting with my instruments next to me and examining
them. Dr. Zertz testified that Dr. Leddrel's work had changed dramatically

304
about ten days ago. Before that, he sat and indifferently investigated every
case of death. And then, for no reason at all, he began to interfere in the
treatment of patients... Zertz testified that Dr. Leddrell had saved four
doomed patients from death.
The colonel made a contemptuous face.
"Humanism," he said through clenched teeth. "Because of their idiotic
humanism, scientific cretins betray national interests.. If only he knew that
he had found Laddrela! Or Kyston. I am sure that the boy got the result
quite by accident. Now, Growler, report what has been done to bring the
two of you back here.
"They're being searched for everywhere. Their portraits were printed in
the newspapers and it was announced that they were dangerous criminals
who had stolen four pounds of platinum from the treasury of the institute.
Along the railway, from Farnston to Longden, men from the Home Office
are rummaging. The criminals will still have enough sense to talk about
what we are doing and what they have managed to get.
"That would be scary.
The colonel walked nervously around the office several times.
"Here's the thing, Growler. Do not spare money. Hire anyone and as
much as you want. Send it anywhere. Do not skimp on bonuses, awards,
gifts, bribes, anything. But these two must be here, and as soon as
possible. Do you understand what happened?! After all, this is worse than
if the latest model of hydrogen bomb was stolen from us!
"I understand that, sir. Allow me to do it?
–You go.
When the footsteps outside the door stopped, the colonel looked at his
watch. It was already eight o'clock in the evening. He left the office,
walked through a long deserted corridor, and climbed a side staircase to
the fourth floor. Here he found a corner room on which hung a small glass
plaque with the inscription: "Douglas Kyston." The door was sealed with a
mastic seal. The colonel fumbled in his pockets, took out the keys, and
opened the door.
Everything in the laboratory It was the same as in the morning. The
pulse generator was on a table in front of a large cage with rabbits. When
the colonel appeared, the animals shook up and ran noisily around the
cage, loudly banging their paws on the wooden floor. In front of the cage
was a small antenna in the shape of a television loop, only smaller. The
colonel walked around the laboratory several times, looked into all
corners, then went to the wide window and looked out into the deserted
park. He was about to move away from the window when he noticed that a
couple had approached a bench near a huge old linden tree. There was a
thick shadow under the linden tree.

305
 –Curiously! The colonel whispered and smiled badly.
Groaning, he dragged the generator to the window and pointed the
plane of the antenna at the girl and the guy. Then, tangled in the wires, he
connected the terminals to the power panel and approached the generator.
A red light came on on the panel. Next to it, a toggle switch gleamed,
under which was written: "Turn on."
"Curious," the colonel whispered again and clicked the toggle switch.
The generator lamps warmed up for a few seconds. Then a green
warning light flashed brightly. The colonel peered greedily into the thick
darkness under the tree. But he never saw what happened there. At the
moment when the arrow showing the amplitude of the pulses swung to the
right, he fell lifeless on the table. Under the weight of the body, the table
overturned, and the device, emitting formidable electromagnetic pulses,
fell next to the one who wanted to use it against people for the first time.

III
A tiny fishing boat went around a high rocky promontory. The moon
was almost touching the horizon, the sky was beginning to turn gray.
Morning was coming. As it got lighter, the boat pressed closer and closer
to the rocky shore, hiding in its shadow.
"Before sunrise, we'll get to Costatros. From there it is a stone's throw
to the Free Coast," said the fisherman, still holding his pipe out of his
mouth. "Maybe you really stole the platinum?" Is that a lot – four pounds?
Never seen platinum. I saw gold, but not platinum.
Leddrell laughed. He and Kyston were lying on the deck near the side,
covered with damp canvas smelling of fish.
"It's up to you to believe us or not. Only we did not steal any platinum.
"Needless to say, you don't look like thieves. But now there are times
when the last thief or embezzler has the appearance of a very decent
person. He walks like this, and you want to take off your hat in front of
him. And he, it turns out, is a thief. Just like that.
Leddrell turned away a corner of the canvas and looked at the
fisherman. In the pre-dawn haze, one could see only his bearded profile,
the steering wheel, and the smoldering light in the pipe.
"To be honest, we did steal something, of course," Leddrell admitted.
"Yes?" The old man drawled.
–Yes. But for this theft, we need to say thank you.
"Something is not clear.
"Well, what would you say if someone stole the terrible poison that the
robbers wanted to use against honest people?"
– I would say thank you.
–To whom?

306
 "To the one who stole it."
"Well, then thank us.
The old man was silent for a minute.
"What is this terrible poison?" he asked.
"How can I explain it to you... Such a thing has never happened in the
world. Have you ever seen people die? For example, how did your
relatives die?
"Wow, as much as you like!" Ten years ago, my wife died. After that,
the elder brother, Antoine. But you can't list them all...
"Did you see them die?"
The old man was silent for a long time.
- Did you see how your relatives and friends died?
"Is it worth remembering," he said thoughtfully.
"Still, try to remember.
"Well, I remembered," the old man muttered reluctantly and turned the
boat closer to the shore.
"Have you noticed that when a person dies, there is such a last moment
when he seems to shudder, as if an electric current will pass through him,
and... The end. Did you notice this?
–That's right. But it's not very pleasant to remember it...
– So, scientists have established that this is really so. At the last
moment, an electric current passes through the nerves of a dying person.
It's like a signal: "Stop fighting. The End".
The old man was silent, only the light in his pipe began to flare up more
often.
"Do you understand what I'm telling you?" Leddrel asked.
"Yes, I understand. It's not very pleasant to remember all this... And it is
not clear where this electric current comes from.
"How can I explain it to you... It originates deep in the human brain.
The brain is a tricky thing. He not only thinks, but also monitors how
things are going in the human body. And, if things go very badly and there
is no hope of coping with the ailment, the command is given: "Turn off the
engine, drop anchor!"
The fisherman laughed softly:
"Cunning! And how do people come up with all this? I never imagined
that This can be...
"Now listen further." Imagine that someone has figured out what
command the brain is giving to all parts of the body that it's time to make
ends meet. Having learned this terrible secret, you can give exactly the
same command to a healthy person. What do you think will happen?
The old man turned abruptly and looked at the people lying at the side:
"Have you solved this mystery?"

307
 –Yes.
–Who?
–We are.
"For what?"
– At first, just for the sake of science. And then it turned out that this
secret was very necessary for the military. You can figure out why.
The old man turned away, increased the gas, and the boat went faster.
The horizon became quite light, and the vessel pressed close to the rocky
shore.
"God forbid if they catch you!" The old man muttered. – And how are
they going to pass on this terrible command to people?
"On the radio...
"Oh, my God! Damn it, it's a radio..." After a pause, the old man
suddenly remembered: "There's no need to fool me! After all, if they
broadcast on the radio: "Fernandez, go to the grave!" I will still not listen
to them!
Leddrell laughed. Douglas stirred beside him, waking up.
"What are you talking about?" He asked in a sleepy voice. –Cool...
"Fernandez does not believe that it is possible to give a command on
the radio for him to die.
"You can, Fernandez, you can. And even very simple. But only you
will not hear this command with your ears, and you will not feel it, and
you will not understand. It's like Morse code. Dots, dots, dots, a few
hundred dots in one or two seconds.
–It is frightful! And as soon as they thought of all this...
Leddrell turned to Douglas and said,
"You know, while you were sleeping, I came to the conclusion that the
D-impulses could be easily suppressed.
–Yes?
"Imagine that you superimpose a powerful white noise on the "Lights
out" signal, such that its value will be greater than the amplitude of the "D"
signal, then death will not occur.
–That's right! And just like a tin can! I wish there was a free shore as
soon as possible!
Douglas stretched sweetly. It became completely light. Directly
overhead, pink clouds floated in the turquoise sky. The first seagulls
appeared.
– In science, it is always like this: one and the same discovery can serve
both good and evil. Which path to choose is a matter of conscience for the
scientist. We'll get to the Free Coast...
Suddenly Kyston threw back the tarpaulin with a sudden movement
and sprang to his feet. He stood in the middle of the deck with his legs

308
wide apart. Fernandez and Leddrel, who stood up, stared at him with
surprised eyes.
–Go! Otherwise, we will be noticed!
"I can't—" whispered Kyston, his face contorted with horror.
"What's wrong with you, Doug?" Speak quickly!
"The thing is... The thing is, I left the waveform on the generator... As
soon as you turn it on...
For a few minutes everyone was silent. Kayston rubbed his temples
furiously and muttered curses. Fernandez watched him intently for a few
seconds, and then sharply turned the steering wheel and put the boat on a
reverse course. No one said a word. The engine rattled like crazy, and the
boat bounced high on the crests of the waves.
"Not good, not good," Fernandez wheezed. "Is it possible to give the
fate of innocent people to these bloodthirsty generals... Not good.

IV
Growler, with a contemptuous grimace on his pale, unshaven face,
walked slowly around the two chairs in the center of the office. Kyston
and Leddrel sat with their heads bowed in resignation. In the corner, two
men in civilian clothes were smoking.
"So now you understand what awaits you, gentlemen?" Growler finally
asked.
"That was foolish of us," began Kyston.
"It's not just stupidity now," Growler interrupted irritably. "It's a
murder, an elaborate murder of Colonel Hayes. And also about the death
of the electrician.
Growler preferred to keep silent about two more deaths.
"Yes, it's really scary," whispered Kyston.
An oppressive silence reigned. Leddrell broke it:
"Is there any way to redeem us?" While we were in... While we were
away, we came up with something that might be of great interest to the
army.
"That's right!" You've even thought about the army!
Growler laughed theatrically. One of the civilians sitting in the corner
stood up heavily and approached the scientists:
"What have you come up with?"
Leddrell perked up:
"If we are given the opportunity to return to the laboratory even for a
few hours, we can make a mock-up of a weapon that the world has never
known before.
–What?
- Portable death ray generator.

309
 –Nonsense. Old.
– No, this is a completely new approach to the problem. Previously,
they tried to use streams of electromagnetic energy of enormous power for
death rays. Such a magnitude of energy was required that an effective
weapon was out of the question. Now it is not necessary.
"Why?"
"You need just enough energy to cause a strictly defined sequence of
nerve impulses in a person of only a few microvolts. The secret is in the
nature of the sequence of impulses, in their structure. It's ridiculously
simple!
"Exactly the impulses that killed Colonel Hayes?"
– Unfortunately, yes...
Growler looked at his watch and then turned to the civilians:
"What do you think?"
- I think that it is worth giving them this chance. We will always have
time to take them away.
"I think so too. How much time do you need to make a mockup?
Growler asked the scientists.
Kayston and Leddrel exchanged glances.
"Perhaps two or three hours will be enough.
–Ok. I'll be in the lab with them guys, and I'll call them when I need
you."
Growler watched curiously as the two scientists worked feverishly. The
laboratory was filled with the smell of rosin. Kayston was intently
assembling the mounting of the pulse on semiconductors, now and then
looking at the circuit, while Leddrell used pliers to bend a parabolic cup
out of an aluminum disk.
"The thing is," he explained to Growler, "that the transmitting antenna
must be enclosed in a reflector to exclude the return wave. This was the
cause of the colonel's death.
"And what will this thing be powered by?" Growler asked.
"From an ordinary pocket flashlight. Imagine what kind of weapon it
is! Silent death. Instant. No traces. One hundred percent hit. You just send
a command on the air, in the direction of the enemy: "Death!" and they die
like flies, without moaning or screaming. Humane, isn't it? This is what it
means, Growler, to understand the subtle neurophysiology of the dying
process... Kyston, how are you?
–MontI'm already ready. Now I will test it on an oscilloscope.
"Well, I'm finishing the noose now." Growler, another ten or fifteen
minutes, and everything will be ready. I hope you will put in a word for us
in front of your superiors. Say that the devil confused us, that we ourselves
were frightened by our discovery.

310
 Growler spat and took a drag on his cigarette:
"It'll depend on how you report your work. If the bosses like her, maybe
they will have mercy. In the end, Colonel Hayes is not such a big loss for
the army...
"I feel sorry for the old man," sighed Leddrel.
"I climbed myself," Growler began, but immediately faltered. He was
very pleased that things had turned out this way. If he brought Cayston
and Leddrel to the ministry with the device ready, he could be appointed
to replace Hayes...
"Look at the crumbs," Leddrell said, showing the finished instrument to
Growler. "Kyston, do you have batteries?"
Kyston silently handed him a cylindrical one-and-a-half-volt battery.
"That's it," Leddrell said.
"Give it to me," Growler held out his hand and got up from his chair.
– Do you still drive in your khaki Chevrolet? Leddrell asked.
Growler looked at the scientist uncomprehendingly:
"What?
"We're going to need a car now."
Growler grabbed his right pocket, but when he saw that the aluminum
bowl with a tiny red loop in the center was aimed directly at his chest, he
was stunned.
"Don't be nervous, Growler," Leddrell said calmly. Nothing threatens
your life if you agree to become a chauffeur for just two hours. Keep in
mind that this thing acts at the speed of light, not like your Colt. Turn
around and walk. Slowly, without haste, as if on a walk. Try to smile.
Kyston will walk next to you. I'll be behind.
They walked silently through a long, dark corridor, down a side
staircase, and out through the back door. Growler hiccuped loudly. He
could not open the car door for a long time, and then Kyston helped him.
They then raced at breakneck speed along a wide asphalt road in the
direction of Kostatros.
Before reaching the village, the car turned to the seashore.
"Kyston, take the pistol from Growler. We seem to have arrived at our
destination.
"And now, Growler, you can go back at the same speed and report to
your superiors that you were foolish enough to miss us, and that tomorrow
the whole world will know about the death rays."
The growler returned slowly. At the same time, a fishing boat was
crossing a small strait that separated Kostatros from the Free Coast.
"You're an alarmist, Kyston, a young alarmist," Leddrell said, putting
his arm around his friend's shoulders.
"If the colonel hadn't smashed the impuls gun, they would have found

311
out the secret.
"They'll find out sooner or later." The main thing is that everyone
knows that such weapons exist. And the defense against it is trivial:
clothes made of thin metallized fabric.
A red light flashed brightly in the old man's pipe.
"So everything is all right?" He asked cheerfully.
–All is well.
–Thank God! And what are you holding in your hands?
–This is? Leddrel laughed. "A box full of stuff and a piece of
aluminum. Doug, it was funny to see how hard you put together the
montage!
– I was afraid that the fool Growler would figure out that we were
fooling him.

312
 Interview with a Traffic Controller
- One minute.
"I'm listening to you.
"You've run a red light.
- Sorry, colorblind. I can't distinguish colors.
"But do you actually see the light?"
-Of course.
"In that case, you couldn't help but notice that the overhead light was
on, which means red.
- This is logical. But...
-A what?
"The fact is that, how can I explain it to you, I often confuse the upper
light with the lower one...
"You're spinning something.
The traffic controller took out a receipt book.
- Have you ever looked at the frosted glass of a camera?
The traffic controller smiled casually:
"What do you think?"
- The image is upside down there.
- Any schoolboy knows this.
- The human eye is also a lens.
The traffic controller was alert:
"So what?
"The image in the eye is also upside down...
"Yes, but...
"Isn't it true that the eye is a lens?"
-Really... Then it is not clear...
"That's the point... In most people, that is, almost everyone, the inverted
image in the eye is once again flipped in the brain.
-That's amazing. But the truth is, the image should be upside down...
- So, I have it. Inverted.
The traffic controller froze with his mouth open.
"So you see everything...
-Yes. Please don't touch my face with your shoe.
The traffic controller took a step to the side.
"So for you, I...

313
 - Yes, you stand upside down.
"Good God, what a misfortune!
"Not at all, I'm used to it.
The traffic controller thought for a moment, then smiled slyly.
"All this, mate, you made up to avoid paying a fine!"
"But the eye is a lens, isn't it?"
The traffic controller pondered.
"That's it. Come on, let the authorities sort it out.
They went. The traffic controller stopped suddenly.
"Isn't it difficult to walk with your eyesight?"
- How to say, I'm tired of seeing my legs above. And the road above.
This hurts my neck.
The Chief listened to the whispered report of the Traffic Controller.
-Nonsense. This cannot happen. Tell me, where is my head?
"Down there."
- Nothing of the kind, you yourself point your finger up!
"For you it is the top, and for me it is the bottom.
"Hmm. So you feel like you're walking upside down?
-No. It seems to you that you are walking upside down. Everything is
fine with me, like in a physics textbook.
-Listen to me! If you are to be believed, then you are an exception to the
rule.
- Nothing of the kind, you are an exception to the rule. Lord, your shoes
are next to my face again. Please...
"All right, I'll go away... I shine my shoes every day. Another question.
How do you drink and eat?
- As usual, like everyone else. From a glass and from a spoon.
The chief rejoiced.
- If everything were as you say, then any liquid would pour past your
mouth!
"Well, you know! Then, excuse me, you do not know the law of
gravitation.
-That is?
- The liquid will never spill out due to its heaviness.
"Where do you think she is?" AttractIs it possible to do so?
"Up there."
"You're pointing down again!"
- I have already explained to you...
"Oh, yes.
The chief was a quick-witted, educated man. He pulled a newspaper out
of his pocket.
"Well, read what is written here?"

314
 - "Atnednopserrok ogeshan ilisorpop ym"...
- You read from the lower right corner, from right to left up???
"How could it be otherwise?"
"Do you understand all this?"
-Of course. My brain immediately rotates the text as it should.
- Does it not turn over objects, but does it turn the text? Strangely.
- Nothing strange. Maybe this is a kind of compensation for my
physical normality.
- Do you think it's normal to see everything upside down?
- I repeat, this is exactly normal. But the way the others see...
"So you think we're crazy?" But we are the majority!
- Well, this is not an argument yet...
The traffic controller asked a question that tormented him.
"Tell me, have you tried to adapt to all...
-What do you mean?
"Well, to make your bottom the top, and so on?"
"Oh, yes, of course, of course. In his youth.
- And what did you do for this?
- He was engaged in acrobatics. He tried to walk on his hands. Like a
yogi, he stood on his head for hours.
"So how?"
- They just stepped on my hands several times. Excuse me, your shoes
again...
The Chief and the Traffic Controller fell silent.
Then the Traffic Controller said,
"I'll see you off for a while." Be careful, we have a chandelier hanging
up here, that is, at your bottom. Too low. Do not touch it with your feet.
Actually, it's a very strange case. Ahem. What do you see when you walk
with me? Ah, you have already said. Shoes. You know, by the way, I'm
writing a dissertation. You could help me. A rare case in legal practice.
Would you allow me to come to see you sometime?" Just to talk in more
detail...
"Why, please." Write down the address.
"And what is the best way to find you?"
- I live in that seven-story building, on the top floor. It is best to enter
from the roof, through the second window from the right corner...
The traffic controller disappeared into the darkness.

315
 When Questions are Asked
We called these annual meetings "kapustniki" in memory of the distant
ghostly times when we were students. The university is already standing
on the Lenin Hills, and the five-story ark of the Faculty of Physics has
long been inhabited by new generations of future Lomonosovs and
Einsteins, physicists and lyricists have long been arguing in a
well-equipped hall with soundproof walls, and we cannot forget the
vaulted cellars under the old Moscow State University club on Herzen
Street. And every year we gather here, look at each other and keep a
record of who is there and who is no longer there. Here we talk about life
and science. Just like then, a long time ago...
So it was this time, but for some reason the conversation did not go
well. No one expressed a single idea, no one objected to what was said,
and we suddenly felt that the last interesting meeting took place last year.
"We have entered that wonderful age when ideas and views have
finally acquired a complete form and a complete content," announced
Fedya Yegoriev, Doctor of Sciences, Corresponding Member of the
Academy, with bitter irony.
- A funny story! - said Vovka Migay, director of one "cunning"
institute. "And what do you call finished content?"
"It's when you can't add anything to what you have," Fedya explained
gloomily. - Then a natural decline will begin, but there will be no gain.
The intellectual life of a person has a pronounced maximum. Somewhere
around forty-five...
"You don't have to explain, we know without your lectures. In fact,
guys, I just can't believe that I'm no longer able to perceive anything new,
not a single new theory, not a single new science. It's just terrible!
Leonid Samozvantsev, a chubby little physicist with a unique way of
speaking quickly, swallowing endings and whole words, did not look like
a forty-five-year-old man at all. At every opportunity, he was reminded of
this.
- You, Lyalya, are terribly lucky. You were a sickly child with lingering
infantilism. Not only can you invent a new theory of space-time, but you
can even learn the old one.
Everyone laughed, remembering that Lyalya, that is, Lenya, passed
"relativity" four times.

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 Impostor quickly took a sip from his glass:
"Don't worry, there will be no new theories.
"Why is that?" Migai asked.
- Wrong time and wrong upbringing.
- Something is not clear.
"I didn't express myself quite correctly," Lyalya began to explain. - Of
course, there will be new theories, but, so to speak, in terms of clarifying
old theories. Like calculating another decimal place of pi or adding
another term of an infinite progression to the sum. And to create
something completely new - no, no...
The pretender emphasized the word "absolutely"...
Hearing that we were starting a conversation, guys from different
corners of the low but wide room began to approach us.
"Then define what you call an 'entirely new theory.'"
- Well, for example, the electromagnetic theory of light in relation to
the ether theory.
-Ha ha! Georgy Sychev thundered, as if waking up from his slumber.
He picked up an aluminum crutch - a sad souvenir of war - and, poking
Lyalya in the side with it, addressed everyone at once: "This physicist
wants to tell us that Maxwell is not the next member of an infinite
progression after Jung. Ha-ha, my friend! Come on newexample,
otherwise I'll fall asleep.
-Okay. Let's take Faraday. He discovered electromagnetic induction...
-So what?
- And the fact that this discovery was revolutionary, it immediately
combined electricity and magnetism, electrical engineering appeared on
it.
-So what? Sychev continued to insist. Like most legless people, he was
prone to obesity. Now he was just fat, with a loose, very aged face.
"And the fact that Faraday had no idea about your Jung and his elastic
ether. And not about any Maxwell. It was Maxwell who pushed Faraday
into his equations.
Sychev threw back his head and laughed unnaturally.
- Stop laughing, Zhorka! Migai shouted at him. There is something in
Lyalya's words. Talk further, Lyalya, do not pay attention to him.
"I'm sure if Faraday were smart, well, at least like us...
The guys around gawked merrily.
"Don't laugh, if he were so smart, he wouldn't have made a single
discovery...
Everyone instantly calmed down and stared at the Pretender. He
blinked in confusion, holding the glass to his lips.
- There is something in the method of blind trials. We have a whole

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group of smart guys and girls working at the institute. They never go into
magazines to find a hint of a solution to a problem. They just try. They do
it this way and that, at random. Like Faraday.
"You see! Do they succeed in anything?
- Imagine, yes. And, it must be said, it is they who make the most
original solutions...
Fedya, our corresponding member, could not stand it:
"Now you will begin to prove that it is best to do scientific work
without knowing anything. Physicists always have a tendency to play
paradoxes. But now is not the same age...
- You're tired of your age! Let Lyalya speak. So Faraday, you say,
worked blindly?
-Of course. He was just an inquisitive guy. And what happens if you hit
the magnet with a hammer? And what happens if it is heated red? Will a
cat's eyes glow if you hold it hungry? And so on. The most ridiculous
"what will happen if..." And so, asking himself a bunch of questions, he
answered them with the help of an experiment. Therefore, he discovered a
darkness of all sorts of phenomena and effects, which were further formed
into new theories. But it seems to us, the smart ones, that there are no
longer any "what will happen if..." We have theory in the foreground.
"Well, yes," the member grunted vaguely and stepped aside.
Several more people followed him.
"We will have to support those who know nothing," Vovka Migai said
with a grin. "What if Faraday appears among them?"
"There is a very simple way to find Faraday," Nikolai Zavoisky, our
outstanding theoretician, also a doctor and also a member of the
correspondent, intervened in the conversation. We always disliked him for
his too aristocratic manners.
"Come on, tell me your way to find Faralei..
- It is necessary to announce an all-Union competition for the best
"What will happen if..." Participants of the competition ask themselves
questions and answer themselves. Of course, with the help of an
experiment. So, the "Faraday" question will be the one to which modern
theory will not be able to give an answer.
Everyone liked the idea, and soon the hitherto taciturn physicists
perked up and began to play Faraday. "And what will happen if?.." - was
heard from different parts of the hall. Everyone gathered together, and the
game took on a stormy and cheerful character. Everyone asked the wildest
questions and answered them themselves.
- And what happens if the sperm whale puts on glasses?
"And what happens if you boil a meteor in cow's milk?"
- And what happens if a pulse of current of a million amperes passes

318
through a person in a millionth of a second?
"And what will happen if...
Questions poured in continuously. Everyone answered them at once.
Calculations, equations, references to sources began, in general, the entire
arsenal of physical knowledge was involved, and soon it turned out that it
was very difficult to ask a "Faraday" question, but it was possible. And,
damn it, such a question almost always turned out to be the one that
modern physics was struggling to solve. Lyalya Samozvantsev, who had
started this mess, sighed in disappointment:
"And I thought that we would petition the Presidium of the Academy to
create a Research Institute of Faraday Studies!"
- Guys, do you remember Alyoshka Monin? After all, we called him
Faraday on the course!
We calmed down. All eyes turned to Shura Korneva, the main
organizer of the current "kapustnik". Red-haired, freckled, she never tried
to seem beautiful.
- Brother, why is Alik not among us?
- Guys, he can't do it today.
-Why?
"He's on night duty at the clinic... In addition, he said...
-A what?
"He said he was embarrassed to attend our parties. There, he says,
academicians gather, at least candidates, and I... In general, you see...
In general, we understood. We believed that Monin was very unlucky
and he was to blame for this. It was enough to look at how he did
laboratory work in physics to be convinced that nothing good would come
of him. Instead of taking the frequency response of the oscillator, as
expected, he sat down at the oscilloscope and admired the wild figures that
the electron beam wrote out for hours. "Alik, shield the wires, otherwise
nothing will come of it..." - "Even a fool knows that if you shield the
wires, then everything will work out. But what will happen if they are not
screened?" - "Eccentric, ordinary tips. Mains current, X-ray unit in the
neighboring laboratory"... Alik smiled mysteriously and shielded the
wires. The figures on the screen changed, but remained the same wild.
"You've screened badly. Close the lid of the appliance." He closed it, but
the situation did not improve at all. "Ground the body". He grounded, and
the picture became even worse. No one else did as well as Alik. Instead of
finding the characteristics of the generator, he wrote a thick oilcloth
notebook. His report on the work done read like a fantastic story about the
strange behavior of the generator when it is shielded, when it is not
shielded, when the amplifier tube is blown by the air from the fan and
when a wet rag lies on it. In the end, everything was completely confused,

319
and he was given another "fail".
In our dormitory on Stromynka, it was always a problem: how to wash
as quickly as possible. Students liked to sleep and at seven in the morning
rushed to the washbasins all at once. A terrible crowd began there.
Once Monin became the organizer of a collective lateness for a lecture.
There was a long queue to the washbasin, and he was bending over the
sink and conjuring something.
"Faraday, did you fall asleep?"
-No. Look...
CrayfishThe water was clogged, and the water was almost muddy to
the brim. Alka threw a pinch of tooth powder into the water, and the lumps
quickly scattered to the sides.
-Think! Surface tension... Get...
Alik did not even think of leaving.
"Now look...
He threw a pinch of powder into the water again, but this time the
particles rushed towards each other and gathered in a heap. We were
stunned.
"Come on, do some more..."
He repeated the experiment. It turns out that if you drop the powder
from one height, it scatters, if from another, it collects in a heap.
Physicists from the first to the fifth years plugged holes in the shells and
began to pour tooth powder on the water. The future correspondent
member Fedya Yegoryev experimented with tobacco shaken out of a
cigarette case. The elegant theorist Zavoisky brought three varieties of
powder. They brought crushed sugar, salt, sulfur from matches, powders
for headaches and who knows what else. A tense exploratory atmosphere
settled in the toilet. The powders behaved in the most monstrous way. On
the surface of the water, they gathered in clumps, scattered along the edges
of the shell, drowned, then resurfaced, circled in place, formed nebulae
and planetary systems, ran in a straight line and even jumped. And all this
depended on the altitude from which they were dropped, on how they
were dropped, on the level of water in the sink, on whether there was soap
in the water or not, and whether other powders had been thrown into the
water before. Everything that physicists knew about surface tension since
the second year collapsed like a house of cards, and Alyoshka Monin was
to blame for this.
"It's a pity he's not here. A curious guy," sighed Fedya Yegoriev. - A
real Faraday. Only failed.
- Probably, I asked myself the wrong questions...
- Comrades, what will happen if... I won't be home on time?
It was one o'clock in the morning. We burst out laughing. This was said

320
by Abram Chaiter, an amateur atomic scientist, as we called him for his
passion for publishing popular strikes on atomic physics. His specialty
was completely different. Everyone knew that Abram had a very jealous
wife.
We began to disperse.
It was drizzling outside. The movement subsided. Saying goodbye, the
guys hurried to the taxi ranks. Four people lingered at the entrance to the
club: Fedya Yegoriev, Vovka Migay, Lyalya Samozvantsev and me.
"A tram used to run here in our time," said Fedya. "Once I found Alik in
this very place with his head up. Do you know what he was watching for
probably two hours?
We didn't know.
- The color of the spark between the tram arc and the wire. He told me
that he had been standing here for a whole week and that there was a
connection between the color of the spark and the weather. Quite recently
I read about it as a discovery...
"Shouldn't we visit him now?" - I suggested. - It's somehow
inconvenient... We are getting ready, and he is on the outskirts...
-Idea! Let's go," Fedya replied.
We have always loved Fedya very much for his determination. And
now, many years later, it remains the same. Tall and skinny, he walked
quickly along Marx Avenue towards Gorky Street. We stopped at the
National Hotel. The correspondent said:
"I'll go buy a bottle of wine in a restaurant.
Fedya knew how to get to the buffet through the kitchen. He
disappeared into a dark alley, and a few minutes later we heard someone,
probably a janitor or a cook, shouting after him:
"Poor drunkards! SmallAbout you of the day! Climbs through the
forbidden room!
But the task was completed. Soon the taxi rushed us to the other end of
the city, where Alik Monin worked.
The hospital was located in a large park. We parted with the taxi at the
gate and walked along the wet asphalt path between tall shrubs and trees.
The spring rain was drizzling, and young leaves, like fireflies, fluttered in
the rays of electric lanterns. Migai loudly and enthusiastically told how he
managed to observe the tracks of K-mesons and the process of production
of resonant particles in a bubble chamber. Samozortsev boasted of his
quantum generator, for which everything you need can be bought in any
pharmacy, and Fedya called them "siskins" because their tricks could not
be compared with his universal machine, which beat him at chess
yesterday. We stopped for a moment. Two orderlies were crossing the
path with a stretcher covered with a sheet.

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 "Our generators and resonant particles don't care about it," Migai
sighed. "There's probably a morgue there..."
We looked at a low building with columns. On the gray pediment, a
bas-relief clearly protruded, depicting the struggle of Roman soldiers with
the Gauls.
"It's humiliating to get into this place after all," Lyalya remarked.
We reached the building of the neurosurgical department in silence.
Alik Monin met us confused and embarrassed. He was wearing an
unbuttoned dressing gown, and in his hands he was twirling a pencil that
prevented him from shaking our hands.
"Listen, you're quite a doctor... I mean a healer! Migai barked.
The clarification was not at all appropriate. At the junction of two
sciences - medicine and physics - the title "doctor" sounds very
ambiguous. Alik was completely embarrassed. We followed him down
the darkened corridor. He only whispered:
"Now here, boys. This way. Up. Rightwards...
"You are not supposed to speak loudly," Fedya said edifyingly,
addressing the bass Migai.
In a small study, lit by a table lamp, we sat around the desk. Fedya took
two bottles of cinandali from his pockets and solemnly placed them in
front of the embarrassed Monin.
"Wow, you striped devils!" he exclaimed. "With the 'cabbage'?"
-That's right. We chatted about Faraday, remembered you. Why are you
hiding?
"No, no, what are you... I'm now...
Alik disappeared into the corridor, and we began to look at the office of
the doctor on duty. Nothing much. Cabinets along the walls, crammed
with papers, probably medical histories, some kind of device on the side, a
table with flasks by the sink. And a desk.
Fedya took a book from the table and whispered:
"Electrosleep." Physics creeps in here as well.
"I wouldn't like to study physics here," muttered the Pretender
indistinctly. - Physics - and the morgue next door. Somehow it doesn't fit...
- Maybe physics will someday contribute to the closure of this
unprofitable organization.
Alik entered silently, carrying a whole armful of chemical beakers of
various sizes.
"A case where the size of the vessel does not matter," said the
correspondent. - All with divisions.
Spilled.
"For twenty-five years...
"For twenty-five years...

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 Then they drank to each other's health. Now this toast was almost
necessary.
"Tell me what you're doing here?"
Alik shrugged his shoulders.
- All sorts of things. I take care of the sick...
"Have you really learned how to heal?"
"Oh, no!" Of course not. I'm on diagnostics ...
-This is?..
- This means that I help neurosurgeons.
- Do you have brain surgery?
- It happens. But most often operations are associated with injuries to
the nerve pathways.
-Interesting?
- It can be interesting...
- Can you do research?
- Whatever the patient, it is a study.
- I love stories about interesting patients! Tell me something, Alik.
Some extravagant case.
Migai drank more and moved his chair closer to the desk. Alik adjusted
his glasses in a thin metal frame with a nervous movement of his hand.
- I am most interested in cases of memory loss due to various diseases...
- How is this "memory loss"?
- Some have a complete loss, others have a partial one.
"Recently I read McCulloch's work "A Robot Without Memory," said
Fedya.
- I also read this work. Nonsense. What McCulloch got on the basis of
mathematical logic is completely inapplicable to people who have lost
their memory. Their behavior is much more complicated...
"I've always wondered where it fits, this memory," said Fedya.
Alik perked up:
"Exactly, where?" It can be said with great certainty that there is no
special memory center in the brain.
"Maybe in some molecules...
"I don't think so," Alik said. - Memory is too robust to be recorded at
the molecular level. As a result of continuous metabolism, molecules are
constantly being renewed...
We thought about it. When you talk to Monin, things that seem simple
suddenly begin to look monstrously complex and confusing.
"What kind of car is this?" Migai asked, lifting the cover over the small
table.
- This is an old model of an electroencephalograph.
- Oh, well, yes, brain waves?

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 -Yes. Eight-channel machine. Now there is a better one.
Alik opened the drawer of the table and pulled out a pile of papers.
- Here are electroencephalograms of people who have lost their
memory...
We looked at the graphs of curves that had an almost strictly sinusoidal
shape.
- And here are the biocurrents of the brain of normal people.
-Great! This means that with the help of this hurdy-gurdy, you can
immediately determine whether a person has a memory or not?...
-Yes. Really...
-A what?
- Frankly speaking, I do not consider the term "brain biocurrents" to be
legitimate.
-Why?
- After all, we do not remove electric potentials from the brain. It is
screened by the skull, then by a layer of tissue rich in blood vessels, skin...
- But the frequencies are small...
-Still. I made the calculation. If we take into account the conductivity of
shielding, then we must assume that monstrous electric potentials are
circulating in the brain. This was not confirmed in animals...
We drank more.
"Then what is it?"
- These are the biocurrents of tissues to which we apply electrodes.
-Ahem!.. But it has been proven that these curves have a connection
with the work of the brain. For example, this memory...
"So what?.. Does the brain work on its own?
"Do you mean that memory...
Alik smiled and stood up.
"Do you want me to remove the biocurrents from your heads?"
Fyodor Yegoriev scratched his head and looked around us:
"Shall we take a chance, guys?
We took a risk, but for some reason we felt very uncomfortable. As if
you were at an appointment with a doctor from whom nothing could be
hidden.
Migai was the first to sit in the chair. Alik put eight electrodes on his
head and turned on the electroencephalograph. Slowly the paper tape
crawled. The feathers remained motionless.
"No brain work," commented Samozvantsev.
- The device has not yet warmed up.
Suddenly we shuddered. The silence was cut abruptly by the loud
creaking of sharp metal on paper. We stared at the tape. Eight feathers
were scratched on it like madmen on a huge scale, leaving behind a bizarre

324
line.
"Kogito, ergo sum," Migai said with a sigh of relief. "Now check the
brains of the member of the corps. This is very important for the academic
council of our institute. He is the chairman there.
We were terribly surprised when we found out that the biocurrents of
the correspondent were exactly the same as those of Migai, Samozvantsev
and me. If there was a difference, we did not notice.
* I think, therefore I am (Latin),
We stared inquiringly at Alik. He smiled mysteriously.
- Guys, electroencephalograms are the same because you, so to speak,
are at the same level of intoxication. It's always like that with drunks...
Like schizophrenics or epileptics before an attack...
We felt embarrassed and drank more. Monin left the tape and, after
digging through the papers, showed us a few more
electroencephalograms.
- Here is a record of the biocurrents of the brain of a sleeping person.
And here is a typical wakefulness curve. Theta and gamma are
superimposed on the alpha rhythm...
"Curious," said Fedya thoughtfully. "So where do you think a person's
memory is?"
Alik began to nervously push the papers into the table. Then he sat
down and looked at each of us in turn.
"Don't get dark, Faraday. We feel like you know something. Where is
the memory, tell me...
Migai got up and jokingly took Alik by the sides of his dressing gown.
It was unbuttoned, and an old, shabby jacket could be seen under it,
"Well, if you insist on it..."
"It's a good thing, you insist!" We just demand. We must know where
we put our precious erudition!
Migai has never been a tactful person. His thinking was idiotically
logical and disgustingly straightforward. When he said this, it seemed to
me that Monin's eyes flashed with an unkind spark. He pressed his lips
together, got up from the table, and walked over to one of the cupboards.
He returned, holding a human skull in his hands, which can be seen in the
biology room of any school. Without saying a word, he put it on the table
next to the electroencephalograph and pumped the electrodes on it. We
were petrified with amazement.
When the electrodes were in place, Alik stared at us from the darkness,
then turned the toggle switch.
The eight feathers all shrieked at the same time and danced on the
paper. As if hypnotized, we looked into mocking empty eye sockets. And
the device continued to hastily and excitedly write out a feverish curve of

325
the biocurrents of a waking person.
"That's it," said Monin edifyingly.
We got up and hurriedly began to say goodbye to him, afraid to look at
the table next to the electroencephalograph again.
In the darkness we lost our way, walked for a long time through the tall
wet grass, bypassing low dark buildings, walking along the metal grating,
behind which stretched a dimly lit damp street. Rosehip branches clung to
the cloaks and scratched nastily on the surface. When we finally left the
gate and stopped to rest, our correspondent member Fedya Yegoryev said:
"Tips. Of course, interference from the mains current.
With this comfortable, soothing thought, we went home.

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 The End of the "Red Chrysanthemum"
Literally overnight in Quisport, several dozen rich, fat-bellied and
skinny people gave their souls to God. The pestilence that attacked the
millionaires threatened to turn into a national scandal, and the government
worked hard to save the credibility and inviolability of our best way of life
in the world. Events were shrouded in mysterious silence. And it was only
thanks to our Cooper that we learned something...
The "red chrysanthemum" was the name given to the hostess of Daniel
Cupper. Her name did not leave the columns of scandalous reports
published in large and small newspapers for a long time. Fat, cheeky and
dyed, she was capable of the wildest antics. Her husband, Claude Berner,
drank day and night. And when the rich set up their rest-camp in Quisport,
he retired there.
After a few more months in the big cities, Evelina Berner, aka the "Red
Chrysanthemum", finally decided to join her husband. On the way, she
captured Daniel Coopper as a cook. Seeing our friend off on the road, we
were very jealous of him.
–Lucky! To get into the family of such a golden bag!
"And you'll look at Quisport..
Coopper only grinned. His face, swollen with pleasure, seemed to say:
"What can you do, guys. Maybe someday you will be lucky."
There were the most incredible rumors about Quisport. The fact is that
the rich, having built their camp there, did everything so that no one knew
anything about how they rested. Probably, they were pretty tired of the
press, private detective bureaus, detectives and just curious people, and
they surrounded Quisport with a high wall with barbed wire and an
impenetrable veil of silence and mystery. It was their own camp, and no
one could show their nose there without their permission.
Even when a mysterious drama broke out in Quisport, no one really
knew what happened. Until we had Daniel Coopper again.
… He was as shabby and dirty as if he had been working as a
day-labourer in a barnyard for a month; He was gloomy, and silent. And
he also limped. At every attempt to talk to him, Coopper raised his tired,
sleepless eyes, which seemed to beg, "Let me come to my senses. Not
now."
And we lagged behind him. For a while. God thanked us for our
patience, and one day Cupper's long-awaited confession took place in The

327
Siren's Voice. We immediately realized that Daniel decided to tell
everything. Approaching the bar and drinking two portions at once, he
suddenly turned to us and shouted:
"Come on, I'll treat anyone!"
"Where did you get the money, Cooper?" We were surprised.
He clicked his tongue:
"From Miss Evelina Berner, the Red Chrysanthemum, may she rest in
peace. She did not deceive. What I bequeathed, I received...
"Perhaps now you will tell me?..
–For now? Why not? The money is here," Coopper slapped his pocket.
No one will take it away. You can tell them.
"Don't think, boys," he began, "that there was anything supernatural
there from the beginning. These rich people lived for themselves and lived
as most people live. Well, they drank too much, danced shalnosweep,
sometimes jumped out into the street naked... But this is all nonsense. For
their society, it is a normal life. Wives fought. Husbands beat each other at
cards. Two or three attempted murders on the basis of jealousy - that's all.
Peace and quiet... Compared to the way they live here in the city, they
really had a vacation in Quisport.
The "Red Chrysanthemum" also rested. I got five cats, two dogs, a boa
constrictor, and messed with them like a fool. After playing with animals,
she ran to the city, chatted in a café with her friends, found out all the
gossip and brought home a bunch of different news and purchases.
"Danielle," she said. "Here's a new drink, Gurvir." The advertisement
says that after drinking it, you will see everything you want."
"Yes, ma'am..."
"Come on, try it!"
"What are you talking about, ma'am..."
"But-but! And I'll try after you. What if it's poison."
I tried Gurvir and told her how I felt. Nothing special, just a little dizzy.
Then the hostess drank "Gurvir", then chatted about her visions for a
whole week.
In Quisport, pharmacies were the most prosperous. They sold powders
and potions prohibited by law. "Chrysanthemum" tried them all one at a
time, then two at a time, and so on. But before trying, she did experiments
on me. Several times I almost went to the other world, and once, after
some pills, I really wanted to strangle my master, Mr. Berner. Then Mr.
Berner drank the powder too, and so did Miss Evelika, and for three hours
we were very anxious to strangle each other. We woke up in all sorts of
places. Mr. Berner next to two dead cats, the Chrysanthemum had
strangled a boa constrictor, and I was lying on the wreckage of a gas stove.
"A strong feeling!" admired the "Chrysanthemum".

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 I had no choice but to agree.
By the way, do not think that this happened only in our house. The
same thing happened throughout the city, and in the evenings the
Quisporters exchanged impressions and laughed at their tricks.
And everything would have been fine if a Dutchman named Van
Bikstieg had not appeared in Quisport. It is said that Van Bikstieg and his
assistants were invited by the owner of the Quisport nightclub, Mr.
Eisman.
If you like, it was Mr. Eisman who was the first to understand the true
meaning of the impact of modern art on human souls. He often told
visitors to his club that all these modernisms and abstractionisms were
sheer nonsense compared to the completely new direction that was
developed and developed by the electropsychocomposers who have now
become fashionable. Ladies and gentlemen squealed with passion to
experience what it was. And then the aforementioned Van Bikstieg
appeared in Quisport.
Very soon, the Dutchman conquered the souls of all Quisport residents.
The fact is that he could evoke any feelings in the visitors of the club.
"How is that?" One of the listeners asked Kupper.
"They, these feelings were recorded on tape, as if music was recorded
on a tape. And he played the tape through anyone who wanted to...
"Something is not clear...
"I didn't understand anything myself. But soon, at the request of
millionaires, the Dutchman began selling his tape recorders, along with a
set of recordings, to anyone who could pay fifty thousand dollars. Of
course, "Chrysanthemum" was one of the first buyers. And she bought not
one, but three cars at once - for herself, for Mr. Berner, and even for me.
The machine had six ends, with six electrodes, which had to be
strengthened with the help of special suction cups: two on the back of the
head, one on the chest, two under the armpit and one on the lower back.
After that, a tape was turned on with a recording of a sensogram, that is, a
psychosymphony...
"So what happened?"
Coopper smiled dreamily.
"You know, guys, I've never played an instrument in my life. So, when
I turned on this one for the first timeThe ensograph began to play through
my nerves what was written there, I felt as if I had entered another world.
Everything disappeared before my eyes, Mrs. Chrysanthemum, Mr.
Berner, and the room where everything had taken place. The window,
closed by a thick curtain, suddenly parted and turned into the stage on
which I stood, and in front of me in the stalls sat people, men and women,
and everyone clapped their hands. I bowed and went up to the piano. I

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played it for an hour, as if in a frenzy, feeling a storm of all kinds of
feelings. As if I was not me, but a completely different person. And then
everything disappeared, and I turned into myself!
–Great! And how does it happen?
"It's very simple. The company for which Van Bikstieg worked records
the nervous experiences of famous people. Everyone can, if they wish, be
in the shoes of any celebrity. The Dutchman's notes flooded Quisport, and
the inhabitants were obsessed with them. They met each other and asked
excitedly:
"Did you feel Monsieur Compin at the moment when he was divorcing
his wife?"
–Not yet. But I felt Arnold Gibour five times when he crashed into
Niagara in a car. Give it a shot! Incredible feeling!
But this was only the beginning. When all the wonderful citizens were
lost and overwhelmed by the Quisporters, and there was a decline in
interest in Van Bikstieg's products, this businessman put on sale
something incredible: he began to sell records of animal feelings. I will
never forget how the Red Chrysanthemum rushed home completely out of
breath with a new film:
"Daniel, hurry up and turn on the sensograph! I want to be a gorilla!"
You know, it was a terrible sight! Miss Evelina began to run on all
fours, growling, baring her teeth, and climbing the wall. With her teeth she
pulled the tablecloth off the table, jumped on it, grabbed the chandelier
and swayed on it for five minutes, shouting something. All I did was
untangle the wires that stretched from the damned car to my mistress.
Having played through the gorilla twice, Mrs. Evelina persuaded her
husband to do the same. When they both became gorillas, something
began in the house that cannot be remembered without a shudder.
The gorilla was followed by other monkeys - chimpanzees, macaques
and common monkeys. The situation became more complicated when Mr.
Berner became seriously involved in this matter. Very often he lost, say, a
monkey, and his wife lost a macaque, and terrible fights broke out
between them. Several times I had to stop the accursed apparatus to save
poor Mr. Berner, who, in addition to being a smaller monkey, could hardly
stand on his feet from the whiskey he had drunk.
Finally, it was the turn of the predators. This Dutch company simply
contrived to make records of sensory grams. Once, with eyes shining with
joy, "Chrysanthemum" brought as many as three films. One was "The
Lion at Rest", the second "The Cougar Chasing the Pelican" and the third
"The Agony of the Shot Panther". It was felt that Mrs. Evelina was afraid
to be the first to turn the feelings of these animals on herself. I knew this at
once from the piece of paper she thrust into my hands. After some

330
hesitation, I agreed to be a lion on vacation.
I must tell you that there is nothing more boring than being a resting
predator. While the tape was playing, I was dozing, and some ridiculous
visions were spinning in my stupid head... I saw a rabbit, then I began to
nibble on the grass, then it became very hot. The lion woke up because
there was a strong itching under his skin. And instead of being a human
being,I began to scratch my foot. God, I'm still limping...
After the lion, "Chrysanthemum" asked me to feel the cougar. Here the
matter was different. I immediately saw in front of me a swamp
overgrown with reeds and a huge pot-bellied bird with a huge red beak.
And so I rushed after this bird. Devouring this pelican became my life's
work, and I jumped and threw and threw myself, and the winged creature
kept slipping away. But then I became quiet, and the tired bird went
straight at me... It was at this place that the recording ended... The
"chrysanthemum" was delighted. She said that if the wires from the
sensographer were longer, and the room was larger, then I would run and
jump much more effectively. She also lost to the cougar. If I did the same,
then I am really ashamed.
I flatly refused to feel the "agony", although the hostess offered me as
much as fifty dollars. The devil knows how the agony of the panther ended...
"Chrysanthemum" was a cruel and soulless woman. When a drunken
Mr. Berner came in the evening, she persuaded him to play Agony. I
wasn't there, but it wasn't until soon that I heard Mrs. Evelyn dialing the
phone and calling the doctor. But the doctor arrived too late. Mr. Berner
died of paralysis. The "red chrysanthemum" mourned him for two whole
days, and then brought a record of a newborn seal. I almost died of
laughter, looking at how the hostess stared at me with round stupid eyes
and, pushing away with her hands, crawled on the parquet.
"My patience ran out when the Red Chrysanthemum brought in a film
of Medusa swallowing a crab. I experienced Medusa myself. Nothing
much. There is fog in front of my eyes. As if they put him in a jar of milk,
and it sucked terribly under the spoon.
I firmly decided to leave the house of "Redhead". For a few weeks there
had been fashionable records of cobras and pythons in Quisport, then
lizards, then insects, and I decided that, thank God, soon the whole animal
kingdom would end, the damned moneybags would sink to the very
bottom of it and calm down. I was very amused to watch my mistress
repeat the whole evolution of Darwin, so to speak, in reverse...
Of course, the government has heard rumors about what is going on in
Quisport. The inhabitants of the camp gnawed each other, strangled each
other, bit and swallowed each other. They literally went berserk! In the
nightclub, séances were held under the title "Jungle". Several dozen

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jackals, tigers, bears, hyenas, cobras and crocodiles gathered there, in
general, a whole zoo, and it is difficult to imagine what was happening
there during the playback of long-playing records. Each "Jungle" ended in
serious injuries and two or three insanities.
Van Bikstieg was offered to get out of the country. And just before
leaving, he sold several dozen copies of a new psychological composition
with a mysterious title. He claimed that this recording was a unique
example of the new scientific and technological art, and that it contained
sensations that cost at least five thousand dollars apiece.
Needless to say, the Chrysanthemum was the first to buy Van Bikstieg's
last sensogram. Before losing it, she ordered me to leave.
"I have to feel this alone," Mrs. Evelina said.
For an hour I walked the streets of Quisport. The lights were
extinguished in all houses. Camp seemed to be extinct, but I knew it
wasn't. Stupefied by psycho-symphonies, the rich played something on
themselves. Just now? The silence was sometimes broken by furious
shouts, moans and howls. From one house I heard the followingA Russian
howl that I could not stand it anymore and hurried home.
I found the hostess dead on the floor. I called the doctor. I was told that the
doctors had left for urgent calls and that Mrs. Evelina was on the waiting list.
Then I took the tape from the tape recorder and began to disconnect the
electrodes from the hostess. I was surprised, it was the electrode that fell
off the lower back by itself. And only then did I see that both the upper and
lower halves of the body were connected by such a tube...
Coopper stretched out his index finger. He was fat, hairy, crooked, and
yellow with tobacco.
"This was the lintel that connected the top and bottom of the hostess. I
still don't know why it tried to break up. Most of the deaths in Quisport
were for exactly the same reason...
Coopper fell silent. After a long silence, someone asked:
"And yet, what do they assume?"
"They're keeping it a secret," Coopper said. "By the way, I kept the last
tape as a souvenir... He pulled out a small coil with a blue sticker.
"Come on, let's read what is written here."
–Wonder. In Latin.
"I know Latin," said a young man, a medical student, suddenly. He took
the coil and read it. "Bacillus koli. Mitosis".
"Lord, is that so..
–A what? We stared at the student.
– This is Escherichia coli during the period of division... After all,
bacteria multiply by fission...

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 CRABS
1
"Hey, you're there, be careful!" Kukling shouted at the sailors. They
stood waist-deep in water and, having thrown a small wooden box over
the side of the boat, tried to drag it along the edge of the side. It was the
last of the ten boxes that the engineer brought to the island.
"What a heat!" It's some kind of inferno! He moaned, wiping his thick
red neck with a colorful handkerchief. Then he took off his sweat-soaked
shirt and threw it on the sand. "Undress, Bud, there's no civilization here.
I looked dejectedly at the light sailing schooner, slowly rocking on the
waves two kilometers from the shore. She will return for us in twenty
days. Not earlier and not later...
"And why the hell did we need to climb into this sunny hell with your
cars?" I said to Kukling, pulling off my clothes. "With the sun like this,
tomorrow you can wrap tobacco in your skin.
"Oh, it doesn't matter. The sun will be very useful to us. By the way,
look, it's exactly noon, and it's right above our heads.
"It's always like that at the equator," I muttered, keeping my eyes on the
Dove. — This is written about in all geography textbooks.
The sailors approached and silently stood in front of the engineer. He
leisurely took out a wad of money.
"Is that enough?" He asked, handing them a few pieces of paper. One of
them nodded his head.
"In that case, you're free." You can return to the ship. Remind Captain
Gale that we're expecting him in twenty days... Let's get down to business,
Bud. I can't wait to get started.
I looked at him point-blank:
"Frankly, I don't know why we came here. I understand that there, in
the Admiralty, it may have been inconvenient for you to tell me
everything. Now, I think, it is possible.
Kukling grimaced and looked at the sand.
— Of course, you can. And even there I would tell you about
everything, if I had time...
I felt that he was lying, but I didn't say anything. And Kukling stood
and rubbed his crimson-red neck with his fat palm.
I knew he always did that when he was about to lie. Even that suited me
now.

333
 "You see, Bud, it's a funny experiment to test the theory of this—" like
him..." He hesitated and looked inquiringly into my eyes.
"Who?"
"A learned Englishman... Damn, the name flew out of my head.
However, I remembered: Charles Darwin...
I walked close to him and put my hand on his bare shoulder:
"Listen, Kukling, you probably think I'm a brainless idiot and don't
know who Charles Darwin is! Stop lying and tell me why we landed on
this hot patch of sand in the middle of the ocean. And please don't mention
Darwin anymore.
Kukling laughed, his mouth full of false teeth open. Stepping back
about five paces, he said,
"And yet you're a blockhead, Bud. It is Darwin that we will test here.
"And that's why you brought ten boxes of iron here?" I asked,
approaching him again. Hatred for this fat man, glistening with sweat,
boiled in me.
"Yes," he said, and stopped smiling. "As for your duties, the first thing
you need to do is unseal box number one and remove the tent, water,
canned food, and the tools needed to open the rest of the boxes.
Kukling spoke to me as he had spoken to me at the training ground
when I was introduced to him. Then he was in military uniform. Me too.
"Okay," I strained through clenched teeth and approachedl to box
number one. The big tent was set up right here on the shore in two hours.
We brought a shovel, a crowbar, a hammer, several screwdrivers, a chisel
and other locksmith's tools into it. Here we also placed about a hundred
cans of various canned food and containers with fresh water.
Despite his position as a boss, Kukling worked like an ox. He really
couldn't wait to start the business. While working, we did not notice how
the "Dove" weighed anchor and disappeared behind the horizon. After
dinner, we began to eat box number two. It turned out to be an ordinary
two-wheeled cart, like those used on the platforms of railway stations for
transporting luggage.
I walked over to the third box, but Kukling stopped me:
"Let's look at the map first. We will have to deliver the rest of the cargo
to different places.
I looked at him in surprise.
"This is necessary for the experiment," he explained. The island was
round, like an overturned saucer, with a small bay in the north, just where
we landed. It was bordered by a sandy strip about fifty meters wide.
Behind the belt of coastal sand began a low plateau, overgrown with some
kind of stunted shrubs dried up from the heat.
The diameter of the island did not exceed three kilometers. On the map

334
there were several marks in red pencil: some along the sandy shore, others
in the depths.
"What we're going to open now will have to be taken to these places,"
said Kukling.
"Are these some measuring instruments?"
"No," said the engineer, and giggled. He had a nasty habit of giggling if
someone didn't know what he knew. The third box was monstrously
heavy. I thought that a massive factory machine was boarded up in it.
When the first planks flew off, I almost cried out in amazement. Metal
tiles and bars of various sizes and shapes fell out of it: the box was densely
packed with metal blanks.
"You'd think we'd have to play with blocks!" I exclaimed, throwing
heavy rectangular, round, and spherical metal ingots.
"I don't think so," said Kukling, and began to take up the next drawer.
Box number four and all the following, up to the ninth, turned out to be
filled with the same thing - metal blanks.
These blanks were of three types: gray, red and silver. I had no
difficulty in determining that they were made of iron, copper, and zinc.
When I began to take the last, tenth box, Kukling said:
"We will open this one when we deliver the blanks around the island.
For the next three days, Kukling and I carried metal around the island
on a cart. We poured out the blanks in small heaps. Some remained
directly on the surface, others I buried at the direction of the engineer. In
some heaps there were metal bars of all sorts, in others - only of one sort.
When all this was done, we returned to our tent and came to the tenth box.
"Open it, but be careful," Kukling ordered. This box was much lighter
than others and smaller. It contained tightly pressed wood sawdust, and in
the middle was a package wrapped in felt and wax paper. What appeared
before our eyes turned out to be an outlandish-looking device.
At first glance, it resembled a large metal children's toy made in the
form of an ordinary crab. However, it wasn't just any crab. In addition to
the six large articulated legs, there would beLi two more pairs of thin
tentacle legs, hidden at their ends in a case that resembled the half-open
mouth of an ugly animal pushed forward. On the crab's back, a small
parabolic mirror made of polished metal, with a dark red crystal in the
center, gleamed in the recess. Unlike the crab, this one had two pairs of
eyes - in front and behind.
I looked at this thing in bewilderment.
"Do you like it?" Kukling asked me after a long silence.
I shrugged my shoulders:
"It looks like we really came here to play with blocks and children's
toys.

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 "It's a dangerous toy," Kukling said smugly. "You'll see." Lift it up and
place it on the sand.
The crab turned out to be light, weighing no more than three kilograms.
On the sand it stood quite steadily.
"Well, what's next?" I asked the engineer ironically.
"But let's wait, let him warm up a little."
We sat down on the sand and began to look at the metal freak. After a
minute or two I noticed; that the mirror on his back was slowly turning
towards the sun.
"Wow, he seems to be coming to life!" I exclaimed, and got to my feet.
As I was rising, my shadow accidentally fell on the mechanism, and the
crab suddenly quickly sprang its paws and jumped out again into the sun.
Out of surprise, I made a huge jump to the side.
"Here's a toy for you!" Kukling laughed. "Are you scared?"
I wiped my sweaty forehead.
"Tell me, for God's sake, Kukling, what are we going to do here?" Why
did we come here?
Kukling also stood up and, coming up to me, said in a serious voice:
"To test Darwin's theory.
"Yes, but it's a biological theory, a theory of natural selection,
evolution, and so on," I muttered.
By the way, look, our hero went to drink water!
I was amazed. The toy crawled to the shore and, lowering its proboscis,
apparently drew water into itself. When she finished drinking, she crawled
out into the sun again and froze motionless.
I looked at this small car and felt a strange disgust for it, mixed with
fear. For a moment, it seemed to me that the clumsy toy crab was
somewhat reminiscent of Kukling himself.
"Did you invent it?" I asked the engineer after a pause.
"Uh-huh," he hummed and stretched out on the sand. I also lay down
and silently stared at the strange device. Now he seemed completely
lifeless. I crawled closer to him and began to examine him. The back of
the crab was the surface of a half-cylinder, with flat bottoms in front and
behind. In them there were two holes that resembled eyes. This impression
was reinforced by the fact that crystals glittered behind the holes in the
depths of the hull. Under the crab's body there was a flat belly platform. A
little above the level of the platform, three pairs of large and two pairs of
small articulated claws came out from the inside. The inside of the crab
could not be seen. Looking at this toy, I tried to understand why the
Admiralty attached so much importance to it that they equipped a special
ship for the trip to the island.
Kukling and I continued to lie on the sand, each busy with his own

336
thoughts, until the sun sank so low on the horizon that the shadow of the
shrubs in the distance touched the metal crab. As soon as this happened, he
moved lightly and crawled out into the sun again. But the shadow caught
up with him there too. And then our crab crawled along the shoreand,
sinking lower and lower to the water, still illuminated by the sun. It
seemed that he had to stay illuminated by the sun's rays at all costs.
We got up and followed the slow-moving car. In this way we gradually
went around the island, until at last we found ourselves on its western side.
Here, almost at the very shore, a pile of metal bars was piled up. When
the crab was at a distance of about ten paces from her, he suddenly, as if
forgetting about the sun, rushed towards her and froze near one of the
copper bars. Its claws moved rapidly.

Kukling touched my hand and said,

"Now let's go to the tent." It will be interesting tomorrow morning.
In the tent we had a silent dinner and wrapped ourselves in light flannel
blankets. It seemed to me that Kukling was pleased that I did not ask him
any questions. Before I went to sleep, I heard him tossing and turning from
side to side and sometimes giggling. It means that he knew something that
no one knew. For some reason, I began to hate him.

2
Early the next morning I went swimming. The water was warm, and I
swam in the sea for a long time, admiring how in the east, over the smooth
surface of the water barely distorted by the wide waves, the purple dawn
flared up. When I returned to our shelter and entered the tent, the military
engineer was no longer there.
"I'm going to admire my mechanical freak," I thought, opening a jar of
pineapples.
I had not had time to swallow even three slices, when suddenly I heard
the engineer's voice, at first distant, and then more and more distinct:
"Lieutenant, hurry up here!" Rather! Started! Hurry up here!
I came out of the tent and saw Kukling standing among the bushes on
the hill, waving to me.
"Let's go!" He said to me, puffing like a locomotive. "Let's go quickly."
"Where to, engineer?"
"Where we left our handsome man yesterday.
The sun was already high when we saw a mountain of metal bars. They
shone brightly, and at first I could not see anything. Only when there were
no more than two steps left to the pile of metal, I first noticed two thin
streams of bluish smoke rising up, and then... And then I stopped as if
paralyzed. I rubbed my eyes, but the vision did not disappear. There were

337
two crabs standing there, just like the one we took out of the box
yesterday.
"Was one of them covered with scrap metal?" I exclaimed.
Kukling squatted down several times and giggled, rubbing his hands.
"Stop pretending to be an idiot! "Where did the second crab come
from?"
"He was born!" Born this night!
I bit my lips and, without saying a word, approached the crabs, over
whose backs thin streams of smoke rose into the air. At first I thought I
was hallucinating: both crabs were working hard!
Yes, they worked, quickly moving their thin front tentacles. The front
tentacles touched the metal bars and, creating an electric arc on their
surface, as in electric welding, boiled pieces of metal. The crabs quickly
pushed the metal into their wide mouths. Something buzzed inside the
mechanical creatures. Sometimes their mouths hissed a sheaf of sparks,
then a second pair of tentacles pulled out the finished parts. These parts
were assembled in a certain order on a flat platform, gradually extending
from under the crab. On the platform of one of the crabs, an almost
finished copy of the third crab had already been assembled, while the
contours of the mechanism had just appeared in the second crab. I was
amazed at what I saw.
"Why, these creatures make their own kind! I exclaimed.
The only purpose of this machine is to make machines like itself,"
Kukling said.
"Is that possible?" I asked, thinking nothing.
"Why not?" After all, any machine, for example, a lathe, makes parts
for the same lathe as it is. And so I came up with the idea: to make an
automatic machine that would make itself from beginning to end. The
model of this machine is my crab.
I pondered, trying to comprehend what the engineer had said. At this
time, the mouth of the first crab opened, and a wide ribbon of metal
crawled out of it. It covered the entire assembled mechanism on the
platform, thus creating the back of the third automaton. When the back
was installed, the quick front legs were welded to the front and back of the
metal wallswith holes, and the new crab was ready. Like his brothers, a
metal mirror with a red crystal in the center gleamed on his back, in a
recess. The manufacturer crab picked up a platform under its belly, and its
"child" began to put its paws on the sand. I noticed how the mirror on his
back began to slowly turn in search of the sun. After standing for a while,
the crab wandered to the shore and drank water. Then he crawled out into
the sun and began to warm himself.
I thought that I was dreaming all this.

338
 As I looked at the newborn, Kukling said,
"And here is the fourth.
I turned my head and saw that the fourth crab had been born. At this
time, the first two continued to stand by the pile of metal as if nothing had
happened, boiling pieces and pushing them into their insides, repeating
what they had done before.
The fourth crab also wandered to drink sea water.
"Why the hell are they sucking water?" I asked.
As long as there is a sun, its energy, which is converted into electricity
with the help of a mirror on its back and a silicon battery, is enough to do
all the work. At night, the machine is powered by the energy stored during
the day from the battery.
"So these creatures work day and night?" "
Yes, day and night, continuously.
The third crab stirred and crawled towards the pile of metal as well.
Now three automatons were working, while the fourth was charged with
solar energy.
"But there is no material for silicon batteries in these piles of metal," I
remarked, trying to comprehend the technology of this monstrous
self-production of mechanisms.
"And you don't need it. There is as much of it as you like. Kukling
clumsily tossed the sand with his foot. — Sand is silicon oxide. Inside the
crab, under the action of a voltaic arc, it is reduced to pure silicon.
We returned to the tent in the evening at a time when six machines were
already working at the pile of metal and two were basking in the sun.
"Why do we need all this?" I asked Kukling at dinner.
"For war." These crabs are a terrible weapon of sabotage," he said
frankly.
"I don't understand, engineer.
Kukling chewed on the stew and explained slowly,
"Imagine what would happen if such things were undetected in enemy
territory.
"So what?" I asked, stopping eating.
— Do you know what progression is?
— Let's admit it.
"We started yesterday with one crab. Now there are already eight of
them. Tomorrow there will be sixty-four, the day after tomorrow five
hundred and twelve, and so on. In ten days, there will be more than ten
million of them. Thirty thousand tons of metal will be needed for this...
When I heard these figures, I was dumb with amazement.
"Yes, but...
"These crabs can devour all the enemy's metal in a short time, all his

339
tanks, guns, planes. All its machines, mechanisms, equipment. All the
metal is on its territory. In a month, there will not be a single crumb of
metal left on the entire globe. It will all go to the reproduction of these
crabs... Note that in time of war, metal is the most important strategic
material.
"So that's why the Admiralty is interested in your toy.. I whispered.
But this is only the first model. I'm going to simplify it a lot and speed
up the process of recreating automatons. Speed up, say, two or three times.
Make the structure more stable and Hard. Make them more mobile. The
sensitivity of the indicators to metal deposits should be made higher.
Then, during the war, my machine guns will be worse than the plague. I
want the enemy to lose his metal potential in two or three days.
"Yes, but when these machine guns devour all the metal in the enemy's
territory, they will crawl into their own territory!" "That's
the second question." The automatons can be coded and, knowing this
code, stop it as soon as they appear on our territory. By the way, this way
you can drag all the metal reserves of our enemies to our side.
… That night I had nightmares. Clouds of metal crabs crawled towards
me, rustling tentacles, with thin columns of blue smoke over their metal
bodies.

3
Engineer Kukling's automatons inhabited the entire island four days
later.
According to his calculations, there were now more than four thousand
of them. Their hulls, gleaming in the sun, were visible everywhere. When
one pile ran out of metal, they began to scour the island and found new
ones.
Before sunset on the fifth day, I witnessed a terrible scene: two crabs
fought over a piece of zinc.
It was on the south side of the island, where we buried some zinc bars in
the sand. Crabs working in different places periodically ran here to make
another zinc part. And so it happened that about two dozen crabs ran to the pit
with zinc at once, and a real dump began here. The mechanisms interfered
with each other. One crab in particular was different, which was more agile
than the others and, as it seemed to me, more impudent and stronger.
Pushing his fellows aside, he crawled along their backs, trying to get a
piece of metal from the bottom of the pit. And so, when he was already at
the goal, another crab grabbed the same piece with his claws. Both
mechanisms dragged the bar in different directions. The one who seemed
to me to be more agile finally snatched the bar from his opponent.
However, his opponent did not agree to give up the prey, and, running

340
from behind, sat on the machine gun and stuck his thin tentacles into his
mouth. The tentacles of the first and second machine guns intertwined,
and they began to tear each other apart with terrible force!
None of the surrounding mechanisms paid attention to this. And these
two had a life-and-death struggle. I saw that the crab sitting on top had
suddenly toppled over on its back, belly up, and the iron platform had slid
down, exposing its mechanical entrails. At that moment, his opponent
began to quickly slash the body of his enemy with an electric spark. When
the victim's body fell apart, the winner began to tear out levers, gears,
wires and quickly push them into his mouth. As the parts obtained in this
way got inside the predator, its platform began to move forward rapidly, a
feverish installation of a new mechanism was underway on it.
A few more minutes, and a new crab fell from the platform onto the
sand. When I told Kukling about everything I had seen, he only chuckled.
"That's exactly what we need," he said.
"Why?"
"I told you I wanted to improve my assault rifles.
"Well, what then?" Take the drawings and think about how to do it.
What does this internecine strife have to do with it? So they will begin to
devour each other!
"Exactly!" And the most perfect will survive.
I thought for a moment and then objected:
"What do you mean, the most perfect?" After all, they are all the same.
As far as I understand, they reproduce themselves.
— Do you think it is possible to make an absolutely exact copy at all?
You must know that even in the production of bearing balls, you cannot
make two identical balls. And there the situation is much simpler. Here,
the automatic manufacturer has a tracking device that compares the
created copy with its own design. Imagine what will happen if each
subsequent copy is made not according to the original, but according to
the previous copy. In the end, you may get a mechanism that is not at all
similar to the original.
"But if it doesn't resemble the original, then it won't fulfill its main
function, which is to reproduce itself," I objected.
Very well. From his corpse, more thanCountry copies are made by
another, living automaton. And successful copies will be precisely those
in which the design features that make them more vital will accumulate
quite accidentally. This should lead to stronger, faster, and simpler copies.
That's why I'm not going to sit down to drawings. I can only wait until the
crabs have devoured all the metal on this island and started an internecine
war, devouring each other and recreating again. This is how the machines
we need will appear.

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 That night I sat on the sand in front of the tent for a long time, looked at
the sea and smoked. Did Kukling really start a story that smells of serious
trouble for humanity? Are we really breeding a terrible plague on this
island lost in the ocean, capable of devouring all the metal on the globe?
While I was sitting and thinking like that, several metal creatures ran
past me. As they walked, they continued to creak mechanisms and work
tirelessly. One of the crabs bumped right into me, and I kicked it in
disgust. He turned helplessly belly up. Almost instantly, two other crabs
swooped down on him, and blinding electric sparks flashed in the
darkness. The unfortunate man was cut to pieces with a spark! I've had
enough. I quickly entered the tent and took a crowbar out of the box.
Kukling was already snoring.
Quietly approaching a cluster of crabs, I hit one of them with all my
might.
For some reason, it seemed to me that this would scare the others. But
nothing of the kind happened. Others flew at the crab I had broken, and
sparks sparkled again.
I threw a few more punches, but it only increased the number of electric
sparks. Several more creatures rushed here from the depths of the island.
In the darkness I could see only the outlines of machinery, and in this
dump it suddenly seemed to me that one of them was particularly large.
That's what I set my sights on. However, when my crowbar touched his
back, I screamed and jumped far to the side: an electric current was
discharged into me through the crowbar! The body of this reptile
somehow ended up under the electric potential. "A defense that has arisen
as a result of evolution," flashed through my mind.
Trembling all over, I approached the buzzing crowd of machines to
rescue my weapon. But it wasn't like that. In the darkness, in the uneven
light of many electric arcs, I saw my scrap being cut into pieces. Most of
all, the very large machine gun that I wanted to smash tried.
I returned to the tent and lay down on my bunk.
For a while, I managed to fall into a heavy sleep. Obviously, this did not
last long. The awakening was sudden: I felt something cold and heavy
crawl through my body. I jumped to my feet. The crab – I didn't even
realize it at once – disappeared into the depths of the tent. A few seconds
later, I saw a bright electric spark.
The cursed crab came to us in search of metal. His electrode was
cutting through a tin of fresh water!
I quickly pushed Kukling and confusedly explained to him what was
going on.
"All the banks are in the sea!" Provisions and water in the sea! he
commanded. We began to carry the tin cans to the sea and lay them on the

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sandy bottom, where the water reached our waists. We also took all our
tools there.
Wet and exhausted after this work, we sat on the shore without sleep
until the morning. Kukling sniffed heavily. Now I hated him and longed
for a heavier punishment for him.

4
I don't remember how much time has passed since we arrived on the
island, but only one day did Kukling solemnly declare:
"The most interesting things will begin now. All the metal is eaten.
Indeed, we went around all the places where metal blanks used to lie.
There is nothing left there. Along the shore and among the bushes there
were empty pits.
Metal cubes, bars and rods turned into mechanisms, rushing around the
island in huge numbers. Their movements became swift and impetuous;
The batteries were charged to the limit, and no energy was spent on work.
They senselessly prowled along the shore, crawled among the bushes on
the plateau, bumped into each other, and often into us.
Watching them, I was convinced that Kukling was right. Crabs were
indeed different. They differed from each other in their size, in mobility,
in the size of the claws, in the size of the mouth-workshop. Apparently,
there were even deeper differences in their internal structure.
"Well," said Kukling, "it's time for them to start fighting.
"Are you serious?" I asked.
To do this, it is enough to give them a taste of cobalt. The mechanism is
designed in such a way that the ingress of even small amounts of this
metal suppresses, so to speak, their mutual respect for each other.
The next morning, Kukling and I went to our "sea warehouse." From
the bottom of the sea we extracted another portion of canned food, water
and four heavy gray bars of cobalt, saved by the engineer specifically for
the decisive stage of the experiment.
When Kukling stepped out onto the sand, his hands held high with
cobalt bars, he was immediately surrounded by several crabs. They did not
cross the boundaries of the shadow of his body, but it was felt that the
appearance of the new metal worried them very much. I stood a few steps
away from the engineer and watched in amazement as some of the
mechanisms clumsily tried to jump.
"You see what a variety of movements! How different they all are from
each other. And in the internecine war that we force them to fight, the
strongest and fittest will survive. They will give even more perfect offspring.
With that, Kukling tossed the cobalt bars one by one towards the
bushes.

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 What followed is difficult to describe.
Several mechanisms flew into the bars at once, and they, pushing each
other, began to cut them with an electric spark. Others crowded in vain
behind, also trying to snatch a piece of metal for themselves. Some
crawled along the backs of their comrades, trying to make their way to the
center.
"Look, here is the first fight for you!" The engineer shouted happily and
clapped his hands.
In a few minutes, the place where Kukling threw the metal bars turned
into the arena of a terrible battle, to which more and more machine guns
ran in.
As parts of the cut machinery and cobalt fell into the jaws of more and
more machines, they turned into wild and fearless predators and
immediately pounced on their relatives.
In the first stage of this war, the attacking side was those who tasted
cobalt. It was they who cut into pieces those automatons that ran here from
all over the island in the hope of getting the metal they needed. However,
as more and more crabs ate cobalt, the war became fiercer. By this time,
newborn automatons made by in this dump.
Evolution was accelerating.
It was an amazing generation of automatons! They were smaller and
had a colossal speed of movement. I was surprised that they no longer
needed the traditional procedure of charging batteries like their
forefathers.
They were quite satisfied with the solar energy captured by the much
larger than usual mirrors on their backs. Their aggressiveness was
amazing. They attacked several crabs at once and slaughtered two or three
at the same time with a spark.
Kukling stood in the water, his face expressing boundless
self-satisfaction. He rubbed his hands and grunted:
"Good, good! I imagine what will happen next!
As for me, I watched this fight of mechanisms with deep disgust and
fear, mentally trying to guess what the next mechanical predators would
be. Who will be born as a result of this struggle?
By noon, the entire beach near our tent had turned into a huge
battlefield. Machine guns from all over the island ran here. The war went
on in silence, without shouts and screams, without rumble and noise. The
crackle of numerous electric sparks and the clatter of metal bodies of
machines accompanied this strange massacre with rustling and grinding.
Although most of the offspring that were now emerging were short and
very mobile, nevertheless, new types of automatons began to appear. They
were much larger than all the others. Their movements were slow, but

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there was strength in them, and they successfully coped with the dwarf
automatons attacking them.
As the sun began to set, there was a sudden change in the movements of
the small machines: they all crowded on the west side and began to move
more slowly.
"Damn it, the whole bunch is doomed," said Kukling in a hoarse voice.
"After all, they have no batteries, and as soon as the sun goes down, they
are finished.
Indeed, as soon as the shadows from the bushes stretched out enough to
cover a huge crowd of small automatons, they instantly froze. Now it was
not an army of small aggressive predators, but a huge warehouse of dead
metal cans.
Huge crabs, almost half the height of a man, slowly crawled up to them
and began to devour them one by one. On the platforms of the giant
parents, the contours of even more grandiose offspring appeared.
Kukling's face furrowed. Such an evolution was clearly not to his
liking. Slow machine crabs of large size are too bad a weapon for sabotage
behind enemy lines!
While the giant crabs dealt with the small generation, a temporary calm
reigned on the beach.
I got out of the water, the engineer was silently walking behind me. We
went to the east side of the island to rest for a while. I was very tired and
fell asleep almost instantly as soon as I stretched out on the warm and soft
sand.

5
I woke up in the middle of the night from a wild scream. When I
jumped to my feet, I saw nothing but a grayish strip of sandy beach and the
sea merging with the black, star-studded sky. The cry was repeated again
from the bushes, but more quietly. Only now did I notice that Kukling was
not with me. I ran in the direction from which I thought he was screaming.
The sea, as always, was very calm, and small waves only occasionally,
with a barely perceptible rustle, rolled over the sand. However, it seemed
to me that at the place where we had laid down our food supplies and
containers of drinking water, the surface of the sea was rough. Something
splashed and squelched there. I thought it was Kukling messing around.
"Engineer, what are you doing here?" I shouted, approaching our
underwater warehouse.
"I'm here!" I suddenly heard a voice from somewhere to the right.
"My God, where are you?"
"Here," I heard the engineer's voice again. "I'm up to my neck in water,
come to me."

345
 I went into the water and tripped over something solid. It turned out to
be a huge crab that stood deep in the water on high claws.
"Why did you go so deep?" What are you doing there? I asked.
"They chased me and drove me here!" The fat man squeaked piteously.
"Chased?" Who?
— Crabs.
"It can't be!" After all, they are not chasing me.
I collided with the machine gun again in the water, bypassed it, and
finally found myself next to the engineer. He was really standing in the
water up to his neck.
"Tell me, what's the matter?"
"I don't understand myself," he said in a trembling voice. "When I was
sleeping, suddenly one of the machine guns attacked me... I thought it was
accidental... I stepped aside, but he began to approach me again and
touched my face with his claw... Then I got up and stepped aside... He's
behind me... I ran... The crab is behind me. He was joined by another...
Then another... A whole crowd... So they drove me here.
"Strange. "If they had evolved a misanthropic instinct, they wouldn't
spare me either.
"I don't know," Kukling wheezed. "But I'm afraid to go ashore...
"Nonsense," I said, and took his hand. "Let's go along the coast to the
east. I will protect you.
"How?"
"We're going to go to the warehouse now, and I'll take some heavy
object." For example, a hammer...
"Not metal," the engineer groaned. "You'd better take a board from a
box or something wooden in general.
We walked slowly along the shore. When we approached the
warehouse, I left the engineer alone, and approached the shore.
Loud splashes of water and the familiar buzzing of mechanisms were
heard. Metal creatures gutted tin cans. They made it to our underwater
storage.
"Kukling, we're lost!" "They've eaten all our cans."
"Yes?" He said plaintively. "What should we do now?"
"So think about what to do now. It's all your stupid idea. You have
brought out the type of sabotage weapon that you like. Now sniff out this
porridge.
I bypassed the crowd of machine guns and came out onto land. Here, in
the dark, crawling among the crabs, I groped for pieces of meat, canned
pineapples, apples and some other food on the sand and carried it to the
sandy plateau. Judging by how much was lying on the shore, there was aIt
is true that while we slept, these creatures did a good job. I didn't find a

346
single intact jar. While I was gathering the rest of our provisions, Kukling
was standing about twenty paces from the shore up to his neck in the
water.
I was so busy collecting the remains of food and so upset about what
had happened that I forgot about its existence. Soon, however, he
reminded of himself with a shrill cry:
"Oh my God, Bud, help me, they're getting to me!"
I threw myself into the water and, stumbling over metal monsters,
headed towards Kukling. And here, about five steps away, I came across
another crab.
The crab did not pay any attention to me.
"Damn it, why don't they like you so much?" After all, you are, you can
say, their father! "I
don't know," the engineer wheezed, gurgling. "Do something, Bud, to
drive him away. If a crab bigger than that is born, I'm lost..." By the way,
tell me, what is the most vulnerable place in these crabs? How can you
spoil the mechanism?
"Previously, it was necessary to break a parabolic mirror... Or pull out
the battery from the inside... And now I don't know... A special study is
needed here...
"Damn you with your research!" I strained through clenched teeth and
grabbed the crab's thin front paw with my hand and bent it. The tentacles
bent lightly, like copper wire. The metal creature clearly did not like this
operation, and it began to slowly emerge from the water. And the engineer
and I went further along the shore.
When the sun rose, all the automatons crawled out of the water onto the
sand and warmed themselves for a while. During this time, I managed to
break the parabolic mirrors on the backs of at least fifty monsters with a
piece of stone. They all stopped moving.
But, unfortunately, this did not improve the situation: they immediately
fell victim to other creatures, and new automatons began to be made from
them with amazing speed. I was not able to break the silicon batteries on
the backs of all the cars. Several times I came across electrified
automatons, and this undermined my resolve to fight them.
All this time, Kukling was at sea. Soon the war between the monsters
flared up again, and they seemed to have completely forgotten about the
engineer.
We left the scene of the massacre and moved to the opposite side of the
island. The engineer was so chilled from many hours of sea bathing that,
clanging his teeth, he lay on his back and asked me to cover him with hot
sand on top.
After that, I returned to our original resting place to get my clothes and

347
what was left of our provisions. Only now did I discover that the tent had
been destroyed: the iron stakes driven into the sand had disappeared, and
the metal rings that had fastened it to the ropes had been eaten away from
the edges of the tarpaulin.
Under the tarpaulin, I found Kukling's clothes and my own. Here, too,
you could see traces of the work of crabs looking for metal. Metal hooks,
buttons and buckles disappeared. In their place, traces of burnt fabric
remained.
Meanwhile, the battle between the automatons moved from the shore to
the interior of the island. When I climbed the plateau, I saw that almost in
the center of the island, among the bushes, several monsters towered on
tall claws, almost as tall as a man. They slowly diverged in pairs and then
rushed towards each other at great speed. It was a terrible sight!
When they collided, resounding metal blows were heard. In slow
motionThese giants felt tremendous strength, great weight, and dull fury
at the same time.
In front of my eyes, several mechanisms were knocked to the ground,
which were immediately torn to pieces.
Pieces of metal seemed to be pieces of a living body...
However, I was fed up with these pictures of fights between crazy cars,
and so, loaded with everything I managed to collect on the site of our old
parking lot, I slowly walked towards Kukling.
The sun burned mercilessly, and before I reached the place where I had
buried the engineer in the sand, I climbed into the water several times. I
had time to think about everything that had happened.
One thing was clear: the Admiralty's calculations for evolution had
clearly failed. Instead of improved miniature devices, clumsy mechanical
giants with enormous strength and slow movements were born.
From a military point of view, they were worth nothing.
I was already approaching the sand mound under which Kukling,
exhausted after a night of swimming, was sleeping, when a huge crab
appeared from behind the bushes from the side of the plateau.
He was taller than me, and his paws were tall and massive. He moved
with uneven jumps, bending his body in a strange way. The front, working
tentacles were incredibly long and dragged along the sand. Especially
hypertrophied was his mouth-workshop. It made up almost half of his
body.
The "ichthyosaur," as I called it to myself, slid awkwardly to the shore
and began to slowly turn its hull in all directions, as if surveying the
terrain. I automatically waved a canvas tent in his direction. However, he
did not pay any attention to me, but somehow strangely, sideways,
describing a wide arc, began to approach the mound of sand under which

348
Kukling slept. If I had guessed that the monster was heading towards the
Engineer, I would have immediately run to his aid. But the trajectory of
the movement of the mechanism was so uncertain that at first it seemed to
me that it was moving towards the water. And only when he touched the
water with his paws, turned sharply and quickly moved towards the
engineer, I dropped my luggage and ran forward.
The Ichthyosaurus stopped over Kukling and crouched for a while. I
saw the ends of his long tentacles stir in the sand, right next to the
engineer's face.
The next moment, where there had just been a sand mound, a cloud of
sand suddenly rose up. It was Kukling who sprang to his feet as if stung,
and rushed away from the monster in panic.
But it was too late.
Thin tentacles wrapped tightly around the engineer's fat neck and
pulled him up to the jaws of the mechanism. Kukling hung helplessly in
the air, dangling his arms and legs absurdly.
Though I hated the engineer with all my heart, I could not allow him to
die in the fight as some mindless metal reptile.
Without hesitation, I grabbed the crab's tall claws and pulled them with
all my might. But it was like knocking down a steel pipe that had been
driven deep into the ground. The Ichthyosaurus did not even move.
Pulling myself up, I climbed onto his back. For a moment, my face was
level with Kukling's distorted face. "Teeth! — flashed through my mind.
"Does Kukling have steel teeth.. So that's what the horror is!"
I slammed my fist with all my might on the parabolic mirror glittering
in the sun.
The crab spun in one place. Kukling's blue face with bulging eyes was
on the level of the mouth-workshop. And then a terrible thing happened.
Electric A spark jumped onto the engineer's forehead, to his temples.
Then, the crab's tentacles suddenly unclenched, and the Iron Plague's
unconscious, heavy body crashed onto the sand.
When I buried Kukling, several huge crabs were running around the
island, chasing each other. They did not pay any attention to me or to the
corpse of the military engineer. I wrapped Kukling in a canvas tent and
buried him in a shallow sand pit in the middle of the island. I buried him
without any regrets. Sand cracked in my parched mouth, and I cursed the
dead man in my mind for all his disgusting scheme. From the point of
view of Christian morality, I committed a terrible blasphemy. I don't know
how long I lay on the shore, looking at the horizon for hours in the
direction from which the Golubka was supposed to appear. Time passed
painfully slowly, and the merciless sun seemed to freeze overhead.
Sometimes I crawled to the water and dipped my burned face in it.

349
 In order to forget the feeling of hunger and excruciating thirst, I tried to
think about something abstract. I thought about the fact that nowadays
many smart people spend the strength of their minds to do meanness to
other people. Take, for example, the invention of Kukling. I was sure that
it could be used for noble purposes. For example, for metal mining. It
would be possible to direct the evolution of these creatures in such a way
that they would perform this task with the greatest effect. I came to the
conclusion that with the appropriate improvement of the mechanism, it
would not have degenerated into a gigantic clumsy hulk.
One day a large round shadow approached me. I lifted my head with
difficulty and looked at what the sun had blocked from me. It turned out
that I was lying between the claws of a monstrous crab; He came to the
shore and seemed to be looking at the horizon and waiting for something.
After that, I began to hallucinate. In my heated brain, the giant crab
turned into a high-raised tank of fresh water, the top of which I could not
reach.
I woke up on board the schooner. When Captain Gale asked me if it was
necessary to load the ship with a huge strange mechanism lying on the
shore, I said that there was no need for the time being.

350
 Facing the Wall

1
The radius of the cell is twenty meters, the radius of the chamber is one
hundred and seventy meters... Three hundred and fifty meters, one
thousand four hundred meters...
What monsters!
And how much time and painstaking work had to be spent to build such
dinosaur accelerators. I looked at the diagrams and photographs of the old
nuclear particle accelerators, and I felt a sense of pity and sympathy for
those who had come to the knowledge of the structure of matter in such a
thorny way.
In science, however, it is always like this: we smile condescendingly at
the sight of the first clumsy radio receiver, not thinking that without this
firstborn, the miniature crumb in the watch case on molecular parts that is
now singing on my hand would not have been possible.
Scientists of that time were truly proud of their brainchildren! Tons of
metal and impressive geometric dimensions of the devices were cited as
proof of the scientific maturity of the developers and designers.
"Funny, isn't it?" - said Valentin Kamenin, bending over the circuit of
the synchrophasotron for 100 billion electron volts.
-Not at all. Without these things, the idea of Dr. Gromov would never
have been born. It was on these machines that particles with negative
energy were discovered, which Gromov used.
- Particles with negative energy have been known from theory for a
long time. It would only be necessary to think carefully...
Valentine always believed that "it would only be necessary to think
carefully," and the entire modern civilization could have been created in
the Stone Age.
"Do you know what I've been doing for the last year?"
-Than? He asked without interest.
"I've looked at theoretical physics journals for the last quarter of a
century. It turned out that 99 percent of the articles published in them were
pure science fiction, the very science that physicists dislike and criticize so
much.
Valentin looked up at me in surprise.
- Yes, yes. Real science fiction, but only disguised by mathematical

351
formulas and equations. Each article is a model of a physical phenomenon
invented by a theorist. He processes it mathematically and obtains various
consequences. Another theorist comes up with a different model and gets
other consequences. And so on. Each of them considers himself a
representative of exact science, because he fantasizes with the help of
mathematical apparatus. But of all the theorists who consider the same
phenomenon of nature, only one will be right, and the rest are just
dreamers!
"Curious," Valentin smiled. "Why are you telling me this?"
- To the fact that a theorist can prove anything on paper. But this is not
enough. It is necessary for his predictions to come true. It was necessary
not only to predict, but also to find particles with negative energy.
We went down into the well, where our guys were finishing the
installation of an accelerator for two thousand billion electron volts.
Compared to the "dinosaurs", it was a tiny device. He stood in the middle
of a round concrete hall. A pointed tube of graphite was directed into a
thick wall, behind which a layer of soil extended.
"Which target are we going to take?" - I asked Professor Gromov.
-Classic. Paraffin.
-Why?
- We will see how electrons will be scattered on electrons. I wonder if
the electron has an internal structure...
I figured out in my mind what kind of energy was needed for this, and I
felt uncomfortable.
"Oh, guys! Our machine will start working, and in a few million years,
somewhere in the constellation of Hercules, astronomers of an unknown
planet will register the appearance of a dwarf supernova!
Having said this, our vacuum operator Felix Krymov jumped down
from the camera to the floor and, wiping his oily hands with gauze,
approached Gromov.
"And what, Alexey Yefimovich, can this be?"
Alexey Yefimovich shook his head thoughtfully.
"But how do you get such confidence?" No one has ever tried to
penetrate a volume of space with linear dimensions less than a quantum of
length!
- We will increase the energy of the particles gradually. By the way,
how does the infinitely variable energy control system work?
- Works perfectly. But I have no idea how you know where to stop. To
be honest, we work by trial and error. And who knows what mistakes can
lead to.
Gromov silently left the well, taking the elevator to the laboratory. It
was felt that the old man felt uncomfortable from this conversation. Once

352
he dropped a careless phrase:
"Nuclear scientists are a people who take risks.
This "romance of risk" did not arouse any enthusiasm among the young
laboratory employees. Moreover, one of us, Volodya Sharkov, the next
day submitted a letter of resignation "in connection with the transfer to
another job."
"I don't want to mess around in your devilish kitchen. Explode if you
want.
We did not give him any ceremonial farewell, because he was an
elementary coward. For many years, physicists have pierced the edge of
knowledge into the very heart of matter, and to stop halfway would mean a
shameful surrender... But after this incident, we all became somehow careful,
fit, concentrated, like climbers making their way along a narrow ice ledge
over an abyss. That is why Valentin Kamenin persistently solved his
equations, trying to find a "sustainable solution". Felix, as he said, "erased all
the extra atoms from the wall of the vacuum chamber", Galina Samoylova
and Fyodor Zlotov checked the reliability of the control and blocking system
every day again and again. They called their persistent, scrupulous work
"morning exercises"... And I carefully looked through the work done on the
old accelerators, trying to find at least a hint of danger.
Did it exist? It seemed to me that yes... With the increase in the energy
of the particles, the number of antiparticles born on the target increased
catastrophically. Their annihilation was accompanied by an explosive
release of energy. It was as if electrons or protons, accelerated to terrible
energy, were hammering into an invisible wall and chipping off pieces of
terrible explosives from it. Maybe this invisible wall is the anti-world?

2
As the installation of the accelerator neared completion, we almost
stopped talking to each other. Everyone went deep into their thoughts,
trying to guess the results of the test. And then Felix with his jokes:
- Guys, don't be so gloomy! Everything will happen in a fraction of a
microsecond. A feeling of fear arises in a person in at least one tenth of a
second. The feeling of pain is in half a second. So, if something happens,
you won't have time to feel anything. Galya, if you are pinched on the
nose, and you feel it only in ten years, will you be very angry?
"You're joking!" It is better to turn on the smooth adjustment again!
"Aha, tremble, Atlanteans! HerculesThoughts! All of you are in my
hands. If I make a mistake by accident, the car will immediately give out
two thousand billion. There will be fireworks!
At exactly five in the evening, Felix went to the swimming pool, and
we all stayed behind to check the operation of all the systems of the

353
installation once again.
On the day of the test, we gathered in the control room around
Professor Gromov. He personally checked the measuring instruments,
turned the electronic relays on and off several times, looked at the
installation of the interlock and then, sighing, said:
"You can start.
From the way he said this, it became clear to everyone that it could not
be otherwise. We need to start. It is necessary to go through this
experiment. If we don't put it, others will definitely put it. Each of us
suddenly felt the inexorable logic of scientific research.
We took our seats along the main control panel.
- Do you remember the instructions of the commission of the Academy
of Sciences? Alexey Yefimovich asked.
-Yes...
- I repeat again. If the flux of antiparticles exceeds ten to the fifth power
per second per square centimeter, the experiment stops. This is especially
true of you, Victor," he said to me. - You keep an eye on the scintillation
counters and the bubble chamber.
I nodded my head.
-Started!

3
The acceleration of electrons began with one hundred million electron
volts. The power transformers were outside the control room and therefore
we did not hear the usual hum in such cases. As the energy increased, the
relays clicked gently, each click indicating that another decade of energy
values had been passed. At five hundred Maeve, the needle of the meson
counter shuddered, then the indicators of the number of hyperons born
moved. At an energy of a billion electron volts, a neon light on the
antiparticle counter began to flash...
"It's started," I whispered. Gromov froze at the energy meter.
"Why are you delaying, Felix! he exclaimed irritably. "After all, now
we are going through a well-explored area of energies. There is nothing
interesting here. Let's give five Mevs at once.
"Come what may!" Felix said and jumped over several dozen decades
of energy.
-Wait! Gromov commanded. - Victor, what do you have?
"One hundred and forty antiparticles per second.
-Ok. Let's move on. Now it's smooth. Let's go very smoothly... This
was already an uncharted area. Five hundred and ten, five hundred and
twenty... five hundred and twenty-five...
- Victor, report your testimony continuously.

354
 "Two hundred and five per second... Two hundred and ten... Wow,
antihyperons have appeared!
-How many?
-So long... So far, only forty, forty-seven!
-Stop!
The instruments froze at fixed numbers.
- What energy? Valentin asked hoarsely.
"Six hundred and forty billion electron volts... They seem to be alive...
Gromov walked around all the instruments, then stopped again at the
energy meter and commanded.
"Let's move on, Felix. Only I ask you not to make jokes.
The last value of the magnitude of the antiparticle flux was eight hundred
and ninety. After that, the blocking relay clicked loudly and the needles of the
instruments slowly crawled to zero. The accelerator turned off.
-What's the matter?
Gromov rubbed his hands nervously.
"What's the matter, Alexey Yefimovich?"
He bent over the metalthe grid covering the interlock relay and strained
through his teeth:
"N-I have no idea... Strangely... Let's start from the beginning... Felix
converted the vernier to one hundred billion and turned on the power. But
the devices were inactive. The interlock relay remained off.
"It looks like the accelerator is out of order...
A few minutes later, having pulled on protective overalls, we were all
at the bottom of the well. Electric lamps burned brightly on the walls,
illuminating the black body of the accelerator. Its sharp nose, surrounded
on all sides by counters and cameras, rested against a concrete wall.
Everything was as it had been an hour ago. Without waiting for orders,
Felix unscrewed the side nuts and removed the hull.
"It's all right here. Vacuum ten to minus thirteen... We walked around
the formidable machine several times, trying to notice the most
insignificant violation of its structure.
"Maybe..." began Gromov, when suddenly the voice of Galya
Samoylova was heard, bending over the nozzle of the injector:
"That's what's the matter, look!

4
What I saw made me shudder. At the end of the polished graphite cone
hung a huge, shiny black drop. She froze on a thin thread, not having time
to break off and fall to the floor. I had never seen fused graphite before.
"Amazing," whispered Alexey Yefimovich. - This is something new.
We were silent for a long time, looking at the shiny mass hanging from

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the end of the nozzle. Finally, I could not stand it anymore and asked:
"What are we going to do?"
Gromov looked at me in bewilderment.
-Like what. Let's repeat the experiment. Urgently replace the nozzle
and injector.
On this day, three more nozzles were disabled in the same way. They
began to melt at an energy of nine hundred billion.
"I wish I could reach a thousand billion," Felix whispered dreamily. It
is curious what the alloy of concrete, steel, nickel, quartz, ceramics and
graphite looks like.
Alexey Yefimovich looked at him with stern eyes.
"I forbade you to make jokes, Felix. Bring the TV camera here.
We resumed the experiments only two days later. Once, in the
beginning, we did not provide for the installation of a television camera in
the well, because no one expected any visible effects. And now we had to
spend two days and set up the camera so that we could observe what was
happening near the nozzle when the energy of the particles reached a
critical value.
During the next experiment, Felix jumped over the entire range of low
and medium energies and started with one hundred billion at once. As the
needle of the energy meter approached nine hundred, an amazing picture
began to appear on the TV screen. At first, a tiny spark appeared at the end
of the nozzle, as if in an electric discharge, then the spark flared up
brighter and brighter until it burned like a voltaic arc. It glowed so brightly
that, as is always the case with the transmission of bright light sources on
television, a black halo formed around it on the screen, obscuring all the
details of the picture. To eliminate it, Professor 'Gromov ordered to put a
dense neutral density filter in front of the camera lens.

5
This happened when we began the tenth experiment. In the control room,
in the corner near the interlock relay, there was a pile of molten graphite
nozzles.
I will never forget what we saw on the TV screen when the tenth era
beganExperiment.
"Pay attention," whispered Gromov, "the black halo around the arc has
not disappeared!"
- On the contrary, it has become clearer and even... Look, look!
Kamenin grabbed the TV screen, and then raised his hand and ran a
trembling finger along the dark gray strip that crossed the black spot around
the flickering flame in diameter. At first, no one understood anything. And
then Felix shouted:

356
 "Hole !! And there's something in the hole...
"No, it's not a hole!" It's a mirror! It reflects the nozzle and...
At that moment, the lock was activated again and everything was gone.
We looked at each other in bewilderment. Is it really so? Is this really the
very "window" that science fiction writers wrote about? Pale and agitated,
Gromov was the first to come to his senses.
- You need to make the injector and nozzle from a more refractory
material. Everything that happens on the TV screen must be filmed.
Two more days passed in feverish preparation for the next experiment.
Now the nozzle from which the particles were ejected was made of a special
alloy of tungsten and radium. A multi-frame cinema installation with a
sensitive contrast film appeared in front of the TV screen. The receiving
television camera was installed so that its lens was aimed at the accelerator
nozzle and the space around it.
It was decided to conduct the next experiment early in the morning, and
the night before, under the pretext that I wanted to check the scheme of the
device again, I was left alone in the laboratory. When everyone left, I went
down into the well.
A dead silence that hides the secret of nature. A fantastic cannon aimed
at empty space. Isn't it here that the drama is played out - between the space
that we are used to imagining as emptiness, and the particles of matter that
penetrate it at fantastic speed? Isn't this imaginary emptiness the wall
behind which another, another world is hidden, similar to ours, but
inaccessible to us? Are we not now stepping on a fragile ledge over the
abyss, trying to open the door to this mysterious forbidden world?
Antiparticles... Where do they come from? What is the secret of their birth?
Where do they come from in our world? Is it from there?
Facing the concrete wall, behind which tens of kilometers of land
stretched, I tried to imagine what was happening. If the theories are to be
believed, maybe now, at this very moment, there is a man standing here just
like me, and thinking the same thing! Or maybe this person and I are one?..
This thought made me scared. I was about to leave the well at once,
when suddenly a thought struck me. After thinking about it, I decided that
this idea was the only correct one. I took a piece of paper and wrote a few
words...
-Started. Let's start with six hundred billion at once," Professor Gromov
ordered quietly and solemnly.
In the control room, all the lights were extinguished, and only the
flickering TV screen and the warning lights on the instruments dispelled the
thick haze. The camera hummed softly, passing thousands of frames per
second past the lens.
"A spark has appeared," I whispered.

357
 There is nothing interesting here. yes, that's the halo. The amount of
energy approached nine hundred billion. A huge arc shone at the end of the
nozzle, but the metal endured. The halo had expanded so much that you
could look into it. And what we saw threw us into confusion. There, in the
black void, was reflected the sopof our accelerator... The sharp end of the
nozzle of our device and the sharp end of its likeness touched in the dark,
and a flame burned at the point of contact...
"Increase your energy," Gromov ordered in a barely audible whisper.
I did not see, but rather felt that Felix had turned the vernier by only a
fraction of a degree. And this was enough for the black halo around the flame
to spread so far that not only the tube appeared in it, but the entire accelerator,
an exact copy of what we had in the well... I cried out in surprise.
"Be brave, be brave," Gromov whispered hurriedly, "otherwise this
nozzle will melt too." Don't be afraid!

6
Felix turned the handle of the vernier sharply.
For a moment, a black halo expanded around the flame across the entire
wall, and in it, as in a giant mirror, we saw our well, bright electric lamps on
the walls, the entire accelerator, cables, and a steep staircase leading up to
the elevator landing. We saw the whole world reflected in a breach punched
into the void by particles rushing at the speed of light...
"Here it is, a window to the anti-world," Valentin whispered admiringly,
"and on its border the substance of our world annihilates with the active...
He did not have time to finish the sentence. The screen flashed brightly
and the locking relay went off with a deafening shot.
For some time we stood motionless, stunned by what we saw...
"They seem to be alive," Felix muttered, but he was no longer cheerful as
usual. Let's try again...
"No, first let's look at the film," Gromov objected. By projecting the film
on a big screen, we could see in detail everything that happened in the well
during the experiment.
We could now see that the radius of the black halo around the center of
annihilation was not constant. In time with the flickering of the flames, the
window to nothing widened and then narrowed. At higher energies, its edges
trembled and wavered. Then we saw that with a subsequent increase in energy,
the halo, like a giant iris diaphragm, expanded sharply in all directions,
exposing the walls of the laboratory. This lasted for an instant. Suddenly, a
flame flared up brightly and splashes of molten metal filled the room...
- One second, bring the film back seventy thousand frames.
It was Gromov's anxious voice. I waited with bated breath for what
would happen... Felix rewound the film, the reflected image of our

358
laboratory appeared on the screen again.
- Stop the movie. Just like that. Note. On the opposite wall you can see
something white..." - Gromov stood up and walked very close to the cinema
screen. "It's paper... A sheet of paper with some kind of inscription...
Something like a poster. I don't remember us hanging any posters. Felix,
make a larger magnification. More, more...
My heart was pounding like a jackhammer. Finally, a white stripe
stretches along the entire screen. Now it was easy to see that there was an
incomprehensible inscription on the paper.
Gromov put a sheet of paper to the screen and copied what he had
written with a pencil. Felix turned on the light, and we gathered around the
professor to read the phrase reflected in the mirror in the light...
"Do not exceed the energy of a thousand billion electron volts.
Otherwise, a new star will flare up."
Gromov stood motionless for a few seconds, and then ran.
We rushed after him. At the hatch in the well, heI was getting stuck.
"Back, everything is on fire there!"

7
It was an ordinary earth fire that was extinguished with ordinary water.
When the smoke cleared, I, in overalls, with a lantern in my hands, went
down and, squelching on the water, examined the burnt hall. The smell of
burnt rubber and burnt lubricating oil was unbearable. The walls were
sooty. Broken wires hung from the ceiling. And under the ladder itself, a
wrinkled lump of burnt paper floated on the surface of the water.
I carefully took it in my hands and began to rub it with all my might,
turning it into black dust... For a moment, I keenly felt that another person
was doing the same thing very close by. I abruptly raised the lantern above
my head and carefully examined the well. Nothing, empty, only sooty
walls... Could this other person be me?
Valentin Kamenin was waiting for me upstairs. His lips curled into a
bitter smile.
- You can congratulate us, I mean you, me, Felix, Professor Gromov, our
entire laboratory.
-With what?
- With the last experiment in nuclear physics.
- Why with the latter?
- The devices recorded that the flux of antiparticles exceeded the value
specified in the Instructions of the Academy of Sciences by a whole order
of magnitude. Further experiments in this direction are prohibited.
- And what about the window to the anti-world?
- We need to look for a workaround. The straight path is dangerous...

359
 Moonlight Sonata
I
The voice of the dispatcher echoed over the cosmodrome:
- Passengers departing towards the Moon on flight two zero seven take a
place in the roller. The car leaves for the launch of the spacecraft in five minutes.
The announcement was repeated three times. Olga looked into my
eyes:
"Come on, Vlado! Be a little more fun!
Her face beamed with joy. It simply emitted light, just like when I first
saw her next to the Ludwig.
The comrades turned their backs on us and formed a tight circle. They
decided that it was time for us to say goodbye for real... I squeezed Olga's
hand tightly and began to look over her shoulder at the green horizon,
where the silvery bulk of the ship towered. His sharp nose was turned
directly to the Sun, and it was hard to believe that it was at noon that he
was going to the Moon...
"Tell me that we will be friends, Vlado," Olga whispered.
"You've been taking a long time!" And in addition you whisper. Gerka,
don't shake my hand so hard!
It was our friend, Seryozha Samoilov, who shouted from the circle. He
thought he knew everything about me and Olga.
"Will we remain friends?" she asked. I nodded my head.
- Well done, Vlado. Good bye.
"Well, kissed?" Seryozha shouted impatiently.
- Yes, - I answered. - Olya, say hello to Georgy.
"Certainly," the girl answered. Smiling, she walked down the steps to
the platform where the blue roller stood.
Roller rolled to the launch pad, and we continued to stand still, looking
at the silvery hulk.
"All right," I said, "I'll go..."
No one tried to stop me. Everything was clear to everyone, at least they
thought so. Already on the upper terrace of the park I felt the air shudder,
the roar of the mighty engines rolling in wide, elastic waves in all
directions. I stopped and looked at the green horizon. The low lime trees
threw their crowns away from the center of the launch pad, and the silvery
cigar swayed in clouds of black smoke and began to rise upwards. A

360
moment later, a high-pitched screech sliced through the hot air, and the
spacecraft disappeared into the dazzling blue sky.
... I love this road among the green hills. Once it seemed to me that
there was no end to it, just as there is no end to human happiness. Young
lime trees grew on its roadside, and then hills began, gentle, rounded, as if
giant balls had once been buried here, and over the centuries they sank
deeper and deeper into the ground. I love this road, I have wandered along
it many times - when, as today, whistling birds flew over it, and when the
autumn rain drummed on the hood of my raincoat, and when boys came
out from behind the hills and diligently knocked their skis on the asphalt to
knock down the snow...
A bus rushed past me and someone, probably Galya Voin, sticking his
head out of the window, shouted:
- Vlado, don't get lost!
... The first time, when Olya and I went to the cosmodrome, she asked
incredulously:
"Do you know where this road leads?"
She had no idea that I had walked it hundreds of times. And many,
many times now we were destined to walk along it together. And one
night we turned off the asphalt to the side and went out to the Big Lake, in
which the moon was reflected.
I will never forget that night.

II
"When your heart is sad, go to the peopleyam". I do not remember who
said this, but it is necessary that the heart is really sad in order to
understand the truth of these words. The first person I came across in the
laboratory was Hermann Sonnelgardt.
"They want to break up the Ludwig. You must intervene immediately,
he said hurriedly, fiddling with the side of my jacket.
-What for? - Ask
them, these eccentrics from the VC.
"Don't let them break the Ludwig, Vlado Andreevich," the girls begged
piteously. "If they need to install a new car, they can allocate a room on
the thirteenth floor for this. There, in one classroom, for a year now, there
has been an archive that was rewritten into cylinders a long time ago.
I knew that I would not be able to save the Ludwig, but I still went to
the head of the computer center. He greeted me with a sly smile.
"Sit down, Vlado, and let's pretend that we are discussing the fate of the
Ludwig." How did Olga fly away?
"Okay," I replied and tried to smile. "Still, can't we leave him where he
is?"

361
 - What are you talking about, Vlado Andreevich! He spread his hands
in surprise. "It's so old. Only half a million operations per second. Yes,
they will laugh at us when they find out that we have such a museum
exhibit.
"The machine has a good memory and rich notes," I tried to object.
"But it's almost a hundred years old, and it was once made almost by
hand to train calculators and programmers. Touch it and it will fall apart.
Its scheme has been supplemented for decades, and now it has turned into
a clumsy ugly monster, to which all sorts of blocks, deshearators, and so
on are attached here and there. What am I telling you, you know it
yourself.
I sighed.
"So we're going to break it?"
-Of course.
I left the office. Herman saw me off. He, praising the old car, still hoped
that it could be saved.
"By the way, don't you know why the car is called Ludwig?" Herman
stopped, thought for a moment, and then answered:
"You know, Vlado, I never thought about it. One thing I know is that it
has been called so for at least seventy years. In the library, I came across
an old work made on the Ludwig in 1975. Even then, the car had a name.
I did not notice how the computing center was empty, how the windows
darkened and the daylight panels lit up. I opened the window and looked
at where the dwellings hiding behind the poplars ended and the hilly field
began. The moon was rising very low above the horizon, and it was a little
scary that Olga had flown away, it seemed, somewhere completely
different.
The green hills outside the city were covered with mist, graying in the
moonlight. It was very quiet.
"Well, Ludwig, we are left alone," I muttered, approaching the old car.
A red neon light burned on the scratched remote control, which meant that
the car's memory was on and that it continued to absorb everything people
said and did around it. "It's very hard for me, Ludwig. If you only knew
how much I love Olga. Silent? Yes, you are a very imperfect machine. For
a hundred years, you have not been taught to speak. Maybe because you
are dumb, I feel good with you now. Sometimes you want so much that no
one interrupts.
The gray struts of the car were covered with dust, the insulation on the
cables turned black, the adapters were rusted. I felt even sadder. Here, at
this adder, our eyes metFor the first time. Olga then said to me:
- And I thought that you did not have a car, but a fantasy. What's it? It
looks like drying boxes. What are those?

362
 - This is her memory.
"Well, you know! If your car's memory looks like this...
"Memory is not judged by its appearance," I objected.
I love everything beautiful. Can you help me?
Olga worked at the Institute of Biometrics. That brought her to me.
"With such a memory, it will probably take ten years to calculate," she
grumbled as I typed her problem program on the keyboard. "And
Professor Pavlov demands an answer the day after tomorrow."
"That's the answer," I said, handing her a plate with numbers.
Olga looked at me suspiciously, then burst out laughing.
-Are you joking!
-Not at all. Check it out for yourself. By the way, here is the schedule.
On it, the entire ecology of your algae kingdom is in full view. The
"Ludwig" emphasized the point of equilibrium in red ink. He is very
polite, our "Ludwig," even when he is spoken of disrespectfully.
Olga was a little embarrassed and looked guiltily at the memory box.
"Let me come in tonight and dust the car," she said.
From that evening we began to date. She was the embodiment of life
itself, she was so beautiful.
"Vlado, I'm tired of walking," she used to say during a walk. Let's run.
And we ran along the asphalt road to the cosmodrome in a race, until at
last one of us lagged behind, most often me.
She teased me. - Vlado, is it true that with the help of a machine you can
find out what is going on in a person's soul?
- And why is it necessary, to find out what is going on in the soul of a
person?
"Well, for the sake of interest.
- Probably, you can. Just don't.
She took me by the hand and said:
"And I would very much like to know what is going on in your soul.
I was very embarrassed.
"However, I can guess what's wrong with you even without a car!"
"If you know, you'd better not tell me.
Once Olga did not come for several days, and when she came, she was
sad and thoughtful.
- What's wrong with you, Olya? "
Ask Ludwig." He knows everything about you.
She grinned sadly. We joined hands and walked to the cosmodrome
and back.
"How long does it take for a rocket to get to the moon," she asked.
- Depending on the track. Twenty-five to thirty hours.
-How long.

363
 The next day she came in cheerful and joyful.
- Vlado, let's go dancing! I want to dance tonight. All night! Until the
morning!
But we didn't dance until the morning. The hall of the youth café had
just begun to fill with people, when suddenly Olga grabbed my hand and
screamed.
"Look out the window!" What a miracle on the street. Let's go to our
favorite road.
It really was a miracle. Eternal silence descended on the green hills.
The air was filled with the smell of hot field herbs and damp earth, and the
moonlight sky had sunk low. It was only a few steps to climb the hill, and
it seemed that you could touch the edge of the shining cloud with your
hand.
"Let's go to the field," she whispered.
Everything was like in a dream, and I don't remember howwe found
ourselves on the shore of the Big Lake. On the west side, where the water
stadium was, music could be heard, but here the shore was completely
wild, and only a narrow concrete bridge among the tall reeds reminded
that someone had made sure that it was possible to walk through the lake
jungle. For several minutes we walked among the thickets. Then we found
ourselves at the very edge of the bridge, almost in the middle of the lake.
"Look, Vlado, there she is!" Olga shouted, pointing to the reflection of
the Moon in the slightly agitated water, "how do I want to go there..
- I want to tell you, Olya...
"Don't, Vlado. Tomorrow I'm leaving. I love one person very much.
His name is George... You know him. And he's there," she pointed to the
moon.
We walked back in silence and I was afraid to look into her eyes. I
wanted the clouds to cover the moon. When this happened for a moment, I
breathed a sigh of relief.
Saying goodbye, Olga held my hand in hers.
"Forgive me, Vlado. I should have told you about it earlier. Forgive me.
You're such a good, loyal friend, and I'm so stupid...
... I didn't say a word about it to anyone. Only to you, Ludwig, and that
only because soon you will be gone...
A week after Olga's departure, Seryozhka, out of breath, ran to my
laboratory.
- Vlado, prepare poems!
- Which ones, to whom?
- The best, for the man in the sky.
"I don't understand anything.
-Oddball. Tomorrow is the centenary of the opening of the Earth-Moon

364
route. Gala evenings, folk holidays, festivities, and so on. And in addition,
radio communication with the Moon.
I shuddered.
"Don't you want to talk to Olga?"
I shrugged my shoulders, not knowing what to say.
"You're kind of strange, Vlado, honestly. However, as you know. Just
for a conversation, you need to come between seven and nine in the
evening to the Space Communications Office, seventh floor, room seven
hundred. I've reserved five minutes for you.
For several minutes I walked around the room, thinking about what to
do. What to do, what to do?
"What should I do, Ludwig?" I asked the old car. Of course, I must tell
Olga what was not said. But how? In what words?
"I love Olga, Ludwig!" How do I tell her about it?..
... I went to the control panel and turned the knob of the extreme search.
Then I turned on the self-programming system and all the memory of the
machine. "Ludwig" hummed, as if informing me that he was ready to
carry out any task.
A row of black keys with half-worn inscriptions: "Diff. equalized."
"Integr." "Economy. Tasks", "Industry". I found the least worn word and
pressed the key...
"The old man works slowly, very slowly," I thought, looking at the
motionless drum. When the next day I handed a small coil of wire to the
operator girl, she was surprised.
"Won't you talk?"
-No.
"Who should I give it to?"
- Olga Alyokhina, Biophysical Base.
The girl inserted the coil into the turntable and bent over the
microphone.
- We call the biophysical base, Olga Alyokhina.
There was a rustling sound in all the speakers in the waiting room, and
then a voice called"
Her name is no longer Alyokhina, but Kareno. Now she is in the crater
of Copernicus, in the apartment of her husband George Careno. Are you
going to talk?
I shook my head furiously. The cameraman said,
"I'm going to play the tape for her." Turn on the apartment. Hello, Olga
Careno, hello...
"Yes, I'm listening!"
And I heard music. Everyone who was here heard her. It was an old
piano piece. The melody was extremely clear, sincere, and the chords

365
created an amazing shimmering background, which, if you closed your
eyes, turned into moonlight. It was a soft and sad play, almost a human
song without words. The warmth of Olga's hand, the rustle of reeds, the
boat rocking in the water... The chords were hidden behind the ligature of
the main theme, and then imperiously moved forward, asserting strength
and might. It was like that for a long time, for an eternity. And then the
music stopped.
"How wonderful!" Olga exclaimed. The operator girl shook herself up
and said quickly:
"Your time is up. Let's move on to the next correspondent.
But I didn't hear anything. I walked quickly along the corridor, and next
to me walked an elderly, completely gray-haired man.
- Well invented, young man, witty! he said suddenly. I stopped and
looked at him questioningly.
- And what kind of music is this?
-You don't know?
I was embarrassed. How do I know! After all, this letter to Ole was
invented by "Ludwig"!
"Young man," said my fellow traveler, "this is the first movement of
the Sonata in C sharp minor, written at the beginning of the nineteenth
century by the brilliant composer Ludwig van Beethoven. Sometimes this
piece is called the Moonlight Sonata.
And then I ran. I ran across the city to the computer center. I ran into
passers-by, made my way through crowds of festive people, escaped from
the hands of guys and girls dancing in the streets and squares, jumped into
buses on the move and, completely exhausted, took the elevator to the
tenth floor. I threw open the door of my laboratory wide - and stopped
dead in my tracks. On the place where the Ludwig used to stand, there was
a structure made of shiny metal and plastic mass.

366
 Machine "Es, Model No 1"
The conversation turned to the unlimited possibilities of modern
technology. They started with refrigerators and cars, and then gradually
moved on to televisions, jets and guided missiles. Each of those present
spoke as if he were a great expert, although everything that was said was
extracted from the illustrated supplements to the Sunday papers. Of
course, there was talk about cybernetics. For some reason, this new
science was spoken of in a half-whisper, timidly and mysteriously, as fifty
years ago about hypnosis and a hundred years ago about ghosts. However,
the awareness that cybernetics exists and cybernetic machines also
gradually gave courage to the interlocutors.
"We do them, we do," the tall blond man in a shabby blue blouse
whispered enthusiastically. He stretched out his arms and spread his thick
fingers. "You see, all the fingers are covered with red spots. It's from tin.
From morning to evening I am engaged in soldering these damned cars.
There are so many wires, lamps and all sorts of things! If you look inside,
you will see a huge radio store. And imagine, it all works. Technique! It
can shoot down planes. Predicts who you're going to marry.
"It's old, brother, it's old," wheezed the gloomy, bald vagabond, who
senselessly ran his hands over the dirty oilcloth. "Not only do these things
predict who you're going to marry, but they also elect governors. In 1952,
an electronic beast named "Univac" elected the governor of Missouri. It's
even cleaner than choosing a wife, after all, the bosses.
"Is it true, they say the police have a car that predicts where and when
the guys are going to make a raid?" They say the guys are going to work,
and they're already waiting for them there, my dears," the suspicious guy
in black glasses squeaked with a giggle and shivered timidly.
–Really. There are such people. Both the court and the investigation
armed themselves with such machines.
Picture! This machine asks some stupid questions. And you answer
only "yes" or "no". The devil knows where you need "yes" and where you
need "no". Especially since she asks: "Would you like to visit the moon?"
or "Did dogs bite you as a child?" He is entitled to ten years of hard labor."
Just like that. All this is to our ruin," continued the bald vagabond. "Soon
these machines will replace all of us. They will live instead of us. They
will drink beer. Go to the movies. They will do everything themselves...
– Smart machines. Brilliant. They will restore prosperity and order on

367
Earth. Chaos will disappear. Business will flourish," the intelligent
alcoholic recited with inspiration, standing out in the crowd of vagabonds
with his somehow preserved tailcoat.
–What did you say? Will chaos disappear and business will flourish?
Ha, mister! Don't you think that you have babies in front of you? And you
understand as much about electronics as I understand about frog breeds.
This will never happen, do not hope.
This was said with genuine vehemence by a fat big man with a crimson
face and overgrown with red stubble, and he rubbed his sweaty neck
expressively with the edge of his hand.
"He was fined for an unregistered radio transmitter," the
black-spectacled guy giggled.
"Or they pushed him into a stone bag for a couple of months for selling
burned-out radio tubes!"
"You're wrong, gentlemen. If you want to know, I'm all too familiar
with those damned electronic machines, if they don't go well.
"Wow, it looks like they've got him involved in some kind of 'wet'
business," the bald man perked up drunkard.
"Worse," said the owner of the crimson face gloomily and sat down
with the general company. "My name is Rob Dye. Maybe you've heard? I
was once shown in a movie.
"No, you haven't," said the intellectual.
"It doesn't matter. Now I don't believe in electronic machines at all.
There is no more truth in what is said about them than in a Sunday sermon.
Rob Dye sipped his whiskey with deep despondency.
"Well, tell me how they did you..." the guy in black glasses was
interested.
"There is a certain industrial company in our blessed state that
advertises electronic machines for individual consumption. Household
electronic machines, so to speak, to facilitate your lifestyle. One sunny
Sunday, you unfold the newspaper and read, "Dear Sir. If you need the
company of a good conversationalist, if you are lonely and you need a life
friend, if you need good advice on how to fix your shaky affairs, write to
us. The Crookes brothers and a staff of outstanding engineers offer you
their services. Formulate your requirements and we will make a thinking
electronic machine to your order, capable of filling any gap in your
personal life. Cheap, reliable, with a guarantee. We are waiting for your
orders. Sincerely, brothers Crookes and Co."
I still had money when I saw this ad. Quite enough to lead a decent
existence for a young unmarried guy. And so I began to think. I reasoned
as follows. An electronic machine chooses a bride for you. The machine
elects the governor. The car catches crooks. The machine composes action

368
movies. Everyone is only saying: this was done by an electronic machine,
it became possible only thanks to an electronic machine, only an
electronic machine will do it. In short, an electronic machine is something
like Aladdin's lamp.
So, under the impression of all these tales, I decided to turn to the
Crookes brothers. My requirements were very simple: I wanted to have an
electronic machine that could give me advice on financial transactions. I
want to get rich.
Dot.
And what do you think! About a month later, a truck pulls up to my
house on Ninety-fifth Street with a huge box in which something like a
piano is boarded up. Two people come to me. "Does Rob Dye live here?"
– "Here." – "Did you order a car for financial transactions?" – "I did." –
"Please, where do you order it to be installed?"
I led the guys to my apartment, where they put the "piano". "How much
does it cost?" – I asked. "Ten thousand dollars." "You're crazy!" – I
roared. This is its cost. But we will not take money from you now. You
will pay only after you are sure that the car satisfies you." "O'kay! Then to
hell with it, let it stand. Now teach me how to handle it." "It's very simple.
In addition to analytical circuits, four radios and one TV set are mounted
in the machine. These devices will listen to radio broadcasts around the
clock. You should put at least three fresh newspapers into the oblong
groove under the keyboard every day.
"The machine will issue financial advice based on a thorough analysis
of information about the economic and political situation in the country."
"Good. What about financial transactions?" – I asked. "Within a week, the
machine will collect its thoughts, analyzing all the information. After that,
you can get down to business. Pay attention to this keyboard with
numbers. There are only five registers hereov. The top corresponds to
hundreds of thousands of dollars, the next to tens of thousands, and so on.
Let's say you want to put five thousand into circulation. You type this
number on the keyboard and press the pedal with your foot. A tape will
crawl out of the side groove with printed advice on what and how to do
with the specified amount of money in order to get the maximum profit."
As you can see, nothing simpler can be invented. The guys installed the
machine "ES, model No 1", plugged the plug into the network and
disappeared.
– And what is "ES"? Someone asked.
"It means 'electronic adviser.'
To be honest, I was looking forward to a week passing. Every day I put
three newspapers into the piano, listened in amazement to the rustling of
paper inside and the newspapers crawling out from behind.

369
 Newspapers were thrown inside out. The electronic beast read them
from cover to cover. Everything inside her was buzzing and hissing, like
in a beehive. Finally, the long-awaited day came when my adviser
received enough information. I went to the keyboard and thought for a
long time what I would like to type. Of course, I am not such a fool as to
put a large amount of money into circulation at once. So I timidly pressed
the button that said, "$1." After that, I pressed the pedal with my foot. And
what do you think. Before I knew it, a telegraph tape crept out of a side
groove with the following inscription: "At seven o'clock at the corner of
Ninety-fifth Street and Eighth Avenue at the Cosmos Bar, treat me to a
Jack Linder beer." I did so. I didn't know who Jack Linder was, but when I
walked into the bar, there was nothing but babbling about him: "Jack
Linder is lucky; Jack Linder is a soul guy. Jack Linder is a good man." In a
minute I already knew what all this sycophancy was about. Jack Linder
received an inheritance from an Australian relative. He was standing at the
bar, a smug smile playing on his face. I went up to him and said, "Sir,
allow me to treat you to a mug of beer."
Without waiting for an answer, I offered him exactly one pint for one
dollar.
Jack Linder's reaction was amazing. He put his arm around me, kissed
me on both cheeks, and, thrusting a five-dollar ticket into my pocket, said
seriously: "At last, among this pack of henchmen, I have met a decent
man. Take it, my brother, take it, don't be shy. This is for your kind soul."
With tears of tenderness, I left Cosmos, rejoicing at how clever this
beast "ES, Model No 1" is.
After the first operation, my confidence in the car increased
significantly. The next time I bet five dollars. The machine advised me to
buy five umbrellas and go to the address it had given me to a pawnbroker.
The umbrellas were snatched from my hands by the pawnbroker's wife
and paid twenty dollars. In the apartment, water pipes burst under the
ceiling, and the municipality refused to repair them due to non-payment of
rent by residents. I converted a hundred and fifty dollars into four hundred
as follows. The car told me to go to Grand Central Station and lie down on
the tracks in front of the express train leaving for Chicago. I must say that
I hesitated for a long time before deciding to take this step. Nevertheless, I
went and lay down. It's not a very pleasant feeling when an electric
locomotive is buzzing overhead. Two bells rang, the train gave a signal,
and I was lying. A policeman ran up. I continue to lie motionless, and my
heart is about to jump out from under my jacket. They dragged me, and I
resisted. They began to kick me, and I clung to the rails with my hands.
"Throw it out of the wayAn idiot! The driver shouted. "Because of him,
the train is already five minutes late!"

370
 Several people jumped on me at once and carried me to the station
police station. The skinny Pharaoh fined me exactly one hundred and fifty
dollars.
"Here," I think, "is ES, model, No 1!"
I left the department like a beaten dog - and suddenly a crowd of people
surrounded me. "It's him," they shouted, "it's him! Rock it!" – "Why, I ask,
– what have I done?" – "If it weren't for you, we would all have turned into
chops."
– "What's the matter?" – "The train to Chicago was delayed. Right
behind the station, the track is dismantled. If we had gone five minutes
earlier, then... Hurrah for our savior!"
Then I realized and said: "Ladies and gentlemen. Hooray is good. But I
was fined one hundred and fifty dollars for my heroism..." After these
words, everyone who was around began to shove money into my pockets.
At home, I counted them.
Four hundred dollars, like one cent! I gently stroked the warm sides of
the car "ES, model No 1" and wiped the dust off it with a rag. The next
time I bet five hundred dollars and pressed the pedal. The advice was:
"Immediately dress up in everything new, go to the Brooklyn Bridge and
jump into the Hudson between the fifth and sixth piers." After the incident
at the Central Station, I was no longer afraid of anything. I found a
ready-made dress store on Fifth Avenue, bought myself all the most chic
things, dressed up, and went to jump into the Hudson. As I leaned over the
railing of the bridge and looked out into the blackness of the filthy water
of our illustrious river, a shiver ran down my spine. It was scarier than
lying under a train. However, I now had boundless faith in my machine,
and so, shutting my eyes tightly, I threw myself down. And then the
unbelievable happened. Through closed eyelids, I suddenly felt a bright
light wash over me, and a few seconds later I hit something soft and
elastic, then jumped, hit again, and finally hung in the air. I opened my
eyes and found myself lying on a fine net stretched between the pillars of
the bridge. Bright spotlights were shining on me from under the bridge,
and I could see the silhouettes of people near them. Then someone shouted
into the megaphone: "Well done. Brilliantly. Crawl out here."
They dragged me upstairs and began to congratulate me. A guy
appeared and handed me a wad of money. "Here," he said, "get it. In a
week, come to the cinema "Homunculus" to watch a film with your
participation as a suicide. There are fifteen hundred dollars here. After the
film is released, you will get the remaining five hundred." I went to all the
sessions at the Homunculus for a week and looked at myself as a suicide.
Five hundred dollars were not given to me. They said that I had seen
enough of myself for exactly this amount. Shortly afterwards

371
representatives from the Crookes brothers' firm came to see me, and I
gladly paid for my electronic machine. From that moment on, she became,
as they say, "my body and soul". The next operation I performed on the
advice of the electronic machine was to marry an old lady on Park
Avenue. The marriage cost me a thousand dollars. Five days later, the lady
died, leaving me a check for five thousand.
I turned this amount into an old dilapidated ranch in Nevada, for which
a week later I received compensation from the government of fifteen
thousand: a nuclear test site was built on the site of my ranch. For fifteen
thousand I bought Pacific crabs from a Canadian, which I immediately
resold to the Ritz restaurant for thirty thousand. By some miracle, my
crabs turned out to be the only ones of all the assorsIn the country, they
have a permissible dose of radioactive contamination. After all these
successful operations, I decided to become a millionaire.
And one day, having previously prayed to God, I typed a five-digit
number on the keyboard of my adviser, all that I had at that moment. Then
I pressed the pedal. I will never forget that evening.
For some reason, the tape did not appear for a long time. Then the tip
appeared, which immediately disappeared. Inside the car, there was a buzz
and grinding. And then – I was about to lose patience – there was a tape
with advice that I will remember to the grave: "Burn all the money you
have in the fireplace."
I scratched my head for a long time whether to follow or not to follow
this advice. But I had too much faith in the machine, and so, after much
deliberation, I tied all my dollars with twine, lit the fireplace, and threw
the money into the fire. Sitting next to me and watching my hard-earned
money turn to ashes, I waited with pleasant excitement that another
miracle was about to happen, which my clever electronic beast had
prepared for me, based on an analysis of the political and economic
situation. The money burned quietly, I even moved the ashes with a rod,
but there was no miracle. "It will be, it will definitely be," I thought,
walking around the room and nervously rubbing my hands.
An hour passed, two passed, and the miracle still did not happen. In
bewilderment, I stood near my "piano" and said: "Well?" "Hurry up, give
me back the money!" – I shouted. In fact, she did not know how to talk.
Then, completely losing my head, I again typed the amount on the keys
that I no longer had. When I pressed the pedal, an absolutely outrageous
thing happened. A telegraph tape with solid zeros crawled.
Solid zeros and not a single intelligible word. Furious, I began to bang
on the car with my fist, then kick it, but it did not stop. Only zeros were
crawling out of it. This made me so furious that I grabbed the cast-iron
grate that covers the fireplace and began to pound it with all my might on

372
the electronic adviser. Splinters of the hull flew, the tape stopped, and the
machine froze. And in desperation, I continued to break the electronic
hurdy-gurdy until there was a pile of splinters, broken glass and a
shapeless ball of wire on the floor. As I slumped on the sofa with my head
in my hands, I howled like a wounded panther, cursing everything from
the radio tubes to the electronic advisers made of them. During this attack
of fever, I glanced at the rubbish left by my car and noticed a piece of tape
with some letters on it. I almost went crazy when I read what was written
there that the electronic creature did not want to tell me. It said: "Sell me,
add this money to what you have, and buy from the Crookes and Co.
brothers an improved machine "ES, Model No 2"."
"Why do you say that the machine didn't want to tell you about it?" Rob
was asked by a bald drunkard, who, listening to the amazing story, had
completely sobered up. "Maybe it's just gone bad...
"Of course, damn it, she didn't want to. She had purposely advised me
to burn the money so that I would not sell it. Only she did not take into
account my temperament: it was not written about in any newspaper.
"Strange," remarked the intellectual in a tailcoat. - It turns out that she
did not want to part with you? You took care of her so much.
"That's the point. She got used to me very much. Most the time when I
was especially lucky, I courted her like a bride. I covered her with a silk
blanket. Every day he wiped the dust from it. I even bought some palm
trees and arranged them around the "ES, Model No 1". Instead of three
newspapers, she read all ten of them. And here is the result. When,
according to the political and economic situation, I had to sell it and buy a
new, improved car "ES, model No 2", this bastard deceived me because of
his soulless egoism.
"This is the century in which we live," the guy in the blue blouse said
thoughtfully. "You can't even trust electronic machines... Sighing deeply,
everyone began to disperse. The last to leave was Rob Dye.

373
 The World in which I Disappeared
I was bought dead and taken to Udropp from the morgue. There is nothing
surprising in this, just as there is nothing strange in the way I got to the
morgue. He just slit his wrists in the bathroom of the Novy Svet Hotel. If it
weren't for the debts for the room, I wouldn't have been found so soon, or
rather, they would have been found too late.
But there were debts, and partly because of them, I made an
unsuccessful attempt to go to a better world. I really wanted to meet my
short-sighted parents there and tell them what I think about them and in
general about all those who give birth to children for our civilized state.
As I now know, Udropp bought me for 18 dollars 09 cents, and 3 dollars
09 cents were taken from him for the blanket in which he packed me.
So the round price for me is 15 dollars.
Imagine the speed with which Udropp drove me from the morgue to his
cottage in Green Valley! If not for this speed, his money would be crying.
Instead of me, he would get a stale blanket plus the cost of my funeral!
I was revived according to all the rules: three liters of blood were
poured, adrenaline was injected, glucose with fish oil was pumped
somewhere, surrounded by heating pads and entangled with electric wires.
Then Udropp turned off the electric current, and I began to breathe
unaided, and my heart began to beat as if nothing had happened. I opened
my eyes and saw Udropp and a girl next to him. "How are you feeling?"
Udropp asked, a guy in a white coat, with the face of a man engaged in the
slaughter of cattle for his own pleasure.
-Thank you sir. All right, sir. Who are you, sir?" "I'm not Sir, but
Udropp, Harry Udropp, M.D. and Sociology, Honorary Fellow of the
Institute of Radio Electronics," Harry growled. "Do you want to eat?"
I nodded my head.
- Bring him a bowl of soup.
The girl jumped up from her chair and disappeared. Harry Udropp
unceremoniously lifted up my shirt and used a syringe to pour some
chemical into me.
"You're alive now," he said.
-Yes sir.
- Harry Udropp.
"Yes, Sir Harry Udropp.

374
 "I hope you don't have very developed intellectual abilities?" "I hope
not.
- Where did you study?
- Almost nowhere. He graduated from something like a university. But
this is so, by the way.
In my mind, I decided that the last thing Harry needed was people with
a college degree.
-Ahem. What did you learn there? I decided that it was in my best
interest not to learn anything there.
- Play golf, dance, fish, woo girls. -That's nice. Just don't dare to apply
your knowledge to Suzanne.
"And who is it?" "The girl who went to get your dinner." "Is it night?"
- No, it's the day before yesterday. And why the hell are you asking
questions!
I decided that it was unseemly for a former dead man to ask many
questions of Harry Udropp, a doctor and so on, an honorary member of the
Institute of Radio Electronics.
Suzanne said,
"You're going to be testing the Eldorado model." By the way, what's
your name?
-Harry.
"The Boss doesn't like it when there's another Harry besides him. Are
you mistaken? It happens after death.
- And what is Eldorado? "This
is a world of happiness and prosperity, prosperity and social balance, a
world without communists and Unemployed.
"You're great at it!" Like the announcer from National Video. - You
have an important role to play in Eldorado.
"That's right. What is it?
- You will be the working class, - By whom, by whom?
- Not by whom, but by what. Proletariat.
I thought for a moment and asked,
"Are you sure I'm resurrected?"
-Quite.
- And what role do you play in Eldorado?
- I will be a society of entrepreneurs. Suzanne went out, and Harry
Udropp entered.
"From now on, we will not feed you. You'll have to starve!
-Miraculously! Do you research the process of dying of hunger? I
asked.
- And yet, how will I eat?
- You will need to get a job.

375
 "Haven't you thrown away the blanket in which you can take me back?"
- In my highly organized society, finding a job will not be a problem.
"I'll have to walk and look for a long time. I can't stand it. "You don't
have to go anywhere.
"Of course?"
- You will only need to press the buttons. When you are hired, there
will be a salary, and there will be a salary, there will be food. "Lead me
quickly to that button!"
- You have not yet prepared the psychological factor. You won't be able
to press the button with the enthusiasm you deserve.
- I will press it with any enthusiasm!
- For the purity of the experiment, you need to fast for a couple more
hours. "I'm going to complain!"
"You won't complain because you're not there. "How so?"
"You're dead."
"Eldorado" is three huge cars in different corners of the vast hall. They
are connected to each other by wires and cables. One car is separated by a
glass partition. Harry Udropp sat down in the center of the room and said,
"Schizophrenics, professors, and senators are trying to improve our
society through commissions and subcommittees, reports from voluntary
committees and foundations, economic conferences, and the Ministry of
Social Affairs. It's all nonsense. Four hundred and two triodes, one
thousand five hundred and seventy-six resistances and two thousand four
hundred and ninety-one containers are enough, and the whole problem is
solved. This is the scheme of the organization of our society today.
Harry Udropp unfolded a blue with a radio circuit in front of me and
Susanna.
- On the right is the "production" block, on the left is the "consumption"
block. There is positive and negative feedback between them. By
replacing radio tubes and other parts of the "society", it is possible to
ensure that the system will not fall into either the mode of
super-regeneration or the mode of damped oscillations. When I achieve
this, the problem will be solved once and for all!
Harry Udropp was waving his arms and turning his head as he seemed
to be in habit. "But I have provided for something more," he continued. "I
have introduced a human element into the circuit, which is irrational and
too expensive to replace with an equivalent electronic robot with limited
memory. This function will be performed by you. Harry pointed at me.
"And you," he said, addressing Susanna. Then he finally put his hands
behind his back and walked around the console four times.
"Here," he slammed his fist on the lid of the console, "is the brain of our
'society', its 'government'. At the top, a neon lamp performs the functions

376
of the president, that is, stabilizes the voltage. That's all. We looked at the
president with tendernesswhich glowed with a pink light.
"And now let's get to work!" You march into "production", you - into
"consumption".
"At the university, professors told us that with the help of radio
electronics, you can build models of anything: turtles, machine tools,
interplanetary ships, and even a model of a person. Harry Udropp built an
electronic model of our state. And not only did he build it, but he decided
to improve it, to propose a "harmonious" structure of our society. I wonder
what he will get out of it?"
I approached the car from the right, Suzanne disappeared behind a glass
partition in the "consumption" block.
- What should I do? I asked.
To work.
-That's great! I'm hungry as a hyena!
- First of all, in the field of production, you need to get a job. -How?
- Click the white button on the right.
"And what will she do?" I nodded in the direction of Suzanne. - What
entrepreneurs do.
I froze in front of a huge metal cabinet. On the front wall, the scales of
instruments glittered, multi-colored buttons, switches and levers protruded in
different places. Here, with the help of electrical energy, "models" of material
values were created, and these values circulated along the wires between the
"sphere of production" and the "sphere of consumption".
I pressed the white button.
- What is your specialty? The machine barked. "Wow, just like in life!
The machine is even interested in my specialty!" - Artist...
- Not required.
I looked at Udropp in bewilderment.
"Should I press the white button too?" Susannah asked. -Of course.
"And what will happen?"
- Get the "surplus value" stored in the scheme. Susanna's relay clicked.
I pressed the white button again. - What is your specialty?
-Dentist.
- Not required.
At this time, Suzanne pressed her button, and the machine handed her a
package. -Specialty? - the car asked me stupidly.
-Mechanic.
- Come back in a month.
Electronic "production" worked perfectly. How many times before I
got to Udropp I went looking for a job and heard the same questions and
the same answers.

377
 "That's not going to work, boss," I said to Udropp. Turn away, I'll put
on a new dress!" Susannah shouted. "Boss, I can't wait a month!"
- Try again. I have reduced the negative offset on the grid of the
generator lamp of "labor demand".
Suzanne pressed the button, but the machine did not give her anything.
-What's the matter? she protested.
"When it," Harry nodded at me, "creates 'surplus value,' your machine
will turn on again. Now the phase of "capital accumulation" has begun.
Get a job as soon as possible!
I pressed the white button.
-Specialty?
-Loader.
-Take!
A lever came out of the car right into my stomach.
-Work! Harry shouted from behind the console.
-How?
- Turn the lever up and down. I pressed the white button. - And how
long should I do this?
- Until you receive your salary.
"How is that?"
- Tokens will fall into the box under your nose. On them you can eat,
drink and have fun.
I turned the lever,My hand didn't ache. I stopped for a second. -What
are you doing? Harry shouted.
- I want to rest. "You'll be fired!"
I grabbed the lever and began to feverishly catch up. In my mind, I
imagined an electronic unit that could "fire" me.
Probably, by moving the lever, I created electric charges, which, with
the help of a relay, kept it in working order. As soon as I stopped working,
the mechanism that retracted the lever inside the cabinet worked.
-Aha! My machine gun is working! Susannah said. - Boss, when is the
salary? Udropp was messing with the president. Without looking at me, he
grumbled,
"I'm watching the instruments. Profit should be maximized. - When
will I receive my tokens? "
When the anode voltage you create on the capacitor will unlock the
thyratron."
- I'm hungry...
- You don't work well. Each stroke is only one and a half volts. Pump
faster.
Suzanne turned on her automaton again. She got the second dress. I
don't want any more dresses," she said.

378
 "Why?"
"And what you promised. Nylon fur coat.
"Now I'm going to add another negative offset to the grid and remove
some of the voltage from its capacitor to your circuit breaker." So I knew!
In Udropp's scheme, the role of capital is played by electricity.
It is this sphere that is pumped from my "sphere of production" to the
"sphere of consumption," into the pockets of the "society of
entrepreneurs." Pocket models were capacitors and accumulators.
"Well, that's too much!" What the hell is everything just for her! The
machine gun clicked. In the box in front of my sweaty nose, tokens rattled.
- Take your "salary".
I took out five copper tokens.
"What am I supposed to do with them?"
- Go to the "sphere of consumption" and use the machine. I ran behind
the partition.
-Proletariat! Susannah exclaimed cheerfully. "You're in that machine
gun over there, next to you."
I got a bowl of soup, a cold patty and a mug of beer. And that, thank
God!
My first day at work was over. Susanna went to bed with a pile of rags.
Something will happen tomorrow!
When I went into the "production sphere" in the morning, my leverage
was gone. Suzanne sat in the chair next to the "president" and drank beer.
-What's the matter? "You've
been fired," she said, and nodded at the clock on the wall. They showed
five minutes past nine.
- Why was I fired?
-Late. Try to get a job again. "Where did you get your beer?"
"It's for your tokens." They are mine now. I've never seen such
impudence!
-Specialty? The machine asked.
"Loader," I
replied without thinking. "Bad recommendation," the car said and fell
silent. The machine, it turns out, has a memory! She took note of the fact
of my dismissal for being late for work. Again, everything is like in life.
Maybe there is some reasonable sense in these electronic models of
economic and social structures? And yet I could not agree that such an
extremely complex phenomenon as the life of many millions of living
people in society could be accurately depicted with the help of radio tubes,
transistors, resistances and relays...
I began to think about what to do. My eyes fell on the electronic brain.
If it concentrates inWith the management of an electronic model, why

379
not try to "improve" it in your own way? "Aren't you a fool?" I asked
Suzanne.
"Why?"
"I want to try to improve 'society.' -You are welcome.
I went to the control panel and randomly turned the first knob I came
across.
Then again and again. There were about a hundred of them here. The
cars roared wildly. Before that, the barely glowing "president" began to
glow like a stearin candle. In the hope that my lever would still come out,
I pulled the "president" out of the nest and hid it in my pocket. At that
moment, Udropp entered.
"Aha, a riot!" That's nice! An attempt on the government!
Miraculously! And where is the voltage stabilizer? The abolition of
supreme power? Well done! Bring back the "president".
I returned the neon lamp.
- We will provide for this human element as well. I will screen the
government with a grid and bring a high voltage to it. Two thousand volts
is enough. We will hide the "President" in a cap and bring five thousand
volts to him. Just like that. In this way, the state will be guaranteed against
internal unrest.
I stood destroyed. Harry Udropp brought a high voltage to the
electronic brain.
"Give me some work," I pleaded. "Try it now, before I have all the
potentiometers in their original position."
I pressed the labor demand button. The loudspeaker suddenly sang in
the voice of Jones Parkers: "How happily you died in the arms of my
blues..." Not one, but three levers got out of the car at once, and they
themselves, without help, began to swing up and down. Tokens poured
into the box as if from a cornucopia! "Boss, that's luck!" It seems that
"Eldorado" has succeeded! I exclaimed, scooping the copper rounds out of
the box.
"Damn it," Harry wheezed. - There is nothing in the sphere of
consumption.
Emptily.
I rushed behind the partition to the machine gun and thrust my badge in.
No reaction. He thrust the second one. Silence.
"Oh, yes. Production just went crazy. Harry Udropp's electronics,
apparently, worked only in a strictly defined mode. Production and
consumption patterns were balancing at a point of unstable equilibrium.
As soon as the car was taken out of this mode, it turned into a ridiculous
tangle of radio circuits that did anything.
Harry set up the potentiometers properly, and all but one of the levers

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were hidden in the machine. Jones Parkers switched to contralto, then
coloratura soprano, and fell silent on the note "A" of the seventh octave. I
grabbed the remaining lever and began to swing it diligently to restore my
good reputation. "Give me the tokens," Harry said.
-What for?
"You got them for nothing. This is not the way it should be.
"And why does she get everything for nothing?" I pointed to Suzanne,
who had fallen asleep in an armchair.
- Don't ask stupid questions and give away tokens. I've hidden two
tokens after all!
Suzanne slept all day, and by the evening I had earned seven more
coppers.
Udropp secured the "government" during this time and de-energized
my capacitor several times. In general, he tinkered with his car very
diligently. Later, Suzanne told me that Harry grabbed a good jackpot for
the Eldorado project. Now I was smarter and spent only two tokens on
food. It was almost a starvation ration, but I realized that I had to think
about a rainy day!
In the morningI found Susanna with tear-stained eyes. Why is the
society of entrepreneurs roaring? I went to work early. The tokens jingling
in my pocket had a beneficial effect on my mood.
"It's piggy!" Susannah said.
-A what?
"He took everything from me. And a dress, and underwear, and a fur
coat. -Who?
- Udropp.
-Why?
- To start all over again. He put them back in the machine gun. I
dropped the lever and walked over to Suzanne. I felt sorry for her. "I don't
like this game very much," I said.

"I don't know what it is. But it's only piggy to take away what you were
given.
Udropp entered.
"What kind of idyll is this?" March to the places! I seem to have
increased the potential on the thyratron too much. You do nothing, and
you have not been fired.
"Wait a second, boss!"
I rushed to the lever, but it was too late. He disappeared. Udropp
chuckled contentedly.
"To hell with you, I have tokens for today. Suzanne frowned and no
longer used her automatic. I reluctantly pressed the white button, going

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through different specialties. No one is needed. Is it possible that our
society is saturated with doctors, teachers, technicians, and cooks? I
pressed the white button again.
-Specialty?
-Journalist.
-Take.
I was stunned. A table with a typewriter got out of the car. And Harry! I
even thought of it!
"The press is a lucrative business in our society," Udropp said. "You'll
get more the more Susannah reads your essays." So, get started.
Udropp went out.
I sat down at the typewriter and thought. Then I began:
"Emergency message! An unprecedented sensation! As a result of
radioactive mutations, new species of animals have appeared! Talking
donkeys! Mathematician dogs!
Homeopathic monkeys! Singing pigs! Cocks playing poker!" said
Suzanne, pulling a piece of paper from her machine. "If this continues, I
won't read it, and you'll starve to death."
"Don't you like it?" I asked.

"Okay, I'll try something else.

"An unprecedented sensation! 18 billionaires and 42 millionaires gave
up their billions and millions in favor of workers..."
"Listen, Sam, or whatever you are!" I'm not going to read your
nonsense anymore.
- One more attempt.
- I won't.
"Please, Suzanne.
- I don't want to.
"Well, Susi!"
"Don't you dare call me that, do you hear! I typed, "Susie, you're a
wonderful girl. I love you." She said nothing.
"I love you. Are you reading this?"
"Yes," she said quietly. -Keep going.
"I loved you from the moment I was resurrected. All the time we've
been working on this idiotic project, I'm thinking about how the two of us
can escape. You and I. Do you want to?"
"Yes," she said quietly, pulling a piece of paper out of the machine.
"And this is what I came up with. After all, I have a specialty. We're going
to get away from Udropp and try to find a real job, not this electronic. It
will be easier for the two of us. Honestly, after I saw you, I came to the
conclusion that cutting your veins is stupid."

382
 - I think so too, - shEptala Susi. Udropp entered. He looked at his
instruments and snapped his fingers.
-Aha! Things seem to be going well! The voltage has stabilized! There
are no phase shifts!
We are close to harmony between production and consumption. Of
course, boss," I said, "our society must live well someday.
"Keep up the good work, and I'll put it all on the map," he said, leaving
the room.
"Tonight, let's meet here. We'll jump out the window." Ok...
By the end of the day, I had written about a dozen idiotic messages and
earned a lot of coppers. Suzanne regularly tore off sheets of paper,
demonstrating to the electronic idol her interest in my products. The
harmony was complete, and Harry Udropp was feverishly filming the
Eldorado scheme to sell it for a million dollars. It was worth it because it
took into account the human element!
With all my earnings, I picked up sandwiches and hid them in my
pockets. At night, making our way to the window, Susanna and I stopped
at the "society of entrepreneurs".
"You never used your machine gun yesterday. "If I did, you'd earn
less." "Do you want us to take the dresses and fur coat?"
"To hell with them.
"I can leave a note for Udropp that I did it.
- No need. It will be easier to walk this way.
We climbed out of the window, jumped over the fence and found
ourselves on a wide asphalt road leading to the big city. Above him, the
orange sky burned fiercely. For a moment, Suzanne snuggled up to me.
-Don't be afraid. Now it's just the two of us.
I hugged her, and we walked forward. Only once did I stop at the
electric lamp and, looking into the girl's trusting eyes, asked:
"Susie, how did you get to Udropp?" She smiled weakly, stretched out
her left hand, and lifted her sleeve and showed me her wrist. An oblong
crimson scar protruded sharply on the white skin.
"So are you?.. She nodded.
And here we are, two people who are not in this terrible world...

383
 Attack from the Other World
Sergeant Mitin, his face reddened from the strain, was digging into the
mine detector. He rearranged the lamps and checked the resistances and
capacitances with a tester. His fingers touched the places where wires in
multi-colored insulation were soldered to radio parts. His assistant, radio
operator Kirilin, took off the portable radio station from his back and also
looked inside the open body of the device. About ten paces away, four
sappers were half-lying on the thick grass and smoking.
"It's all right. Vide. I move my hand over the hinge, and the indicator
arrow is deflected.
"Give me the headphones," the radio operator said.
The sergeant handed him the phone. Kirilin put on his headphones and
began to move his hand over the loop of the mine detector.
-Bursting. Oh, that's great," he said.
"So the diagram is in order," the sergeant concluded, wiping his sweaty
forehead with his hand.
A soldier came up and squatted over the device.
"So what are we going to do?" he asked.
- We need to start all over again. The appliance is working normally.
We just didn't search well.
The soldier nodded and walked away to his comrades. At that moment,
a deafening explosion rang out. Everyone fell to the ground, covering their
heads with their hands.
On the left, along the edge of the pine forest, there were log cabins of
unfinished houses, without roofs. A column of bluish smoke swayed
between the two log cabins. A cloud of dust hung over the crater formed in
the ground. The frightened birds flew away into the depths of the forest.
-Bloody hell! Here's another one," whispered the sergeant.
-Another. This is the fifth," Kirilin confirmed. "I'll report to
headquarters now.
He approached the portable radio and spoke in a quiet, insistent voice:
"Kama. Kama, I am Violet, I am Violet. I urgently need a master...
"It's good that the house didn't explode," said one soldier.
"It could happen at any minute. Mines are stumbled here haphazardly.
-That's amazing! This place was carefully checked. Immediately after
the war.

384
 Sergeant Mitin took a sled out of his bag and laid it out on the grass.
The map was old. With a red pencil, the area was shaded on it and it was
written: "Clean". In the corner, the same pencil put the date: "August,
1945."
"It's so clean," the sapper said ironically and spat. "I should like to
know who worked here in August 1945. . . ."
Mitin looked up at the soldier and said:
"You're talking nonsense. Of course, the guys were here and worked.
The area was combed. But they, just like us, could not detect anything.
"They searched badly," said the sapper.
"Comrade Major," Kirilin reports. Another explosion. We haven't been
able to find anything yet," the radio operator said excitedly into the phone.
- The mine detector circuit works fine. We decided to comb the area again.
During yesterday's and today's searches, several old shell casings and
parts of a broken artillery piece were found. And nothing more...
Then he took a sheet of paper from the tablet and began to write.
The sun rose high. There was not a cloud in the sky. One by one, the
sappers unbuttoned the collars of their tunics. A dense pine forest, a row of
unfinished wooden huts, a ploughed strip of land in front of them - all this
created the impression of peace and tranquility. And yet, the land on
which all this had been suddenly came to life and spoke the harsh
language of explosions twenty years after the end of the wars
"The major said that these could be mines in a wooden or plastic case,"
Kirilin said to the sergeant. - You need to search very carefully...
- It's still not clear. A mine is a mine, no matter what building it is in. In
order for it to explode, you need to either step on it or run over it. And
these ones explode on their own. The devil knows what kind of mines they
are, and why they suddenly decided to remind about themselves right
now. Why were they silent for so many years? Hundreds of people have
already passed here. Immediately after the war, tanks, cars, armored
personnel carriers drove through these places. Look, trucks brought
timber here to build the village," the sergeant stood up and gestured
broadly to the country road. - There is not a single square meter of land
that would not be driven or walked on. And here it is. For no reason at all,
the earth began to speak. Why?
Everyone was silent, looking anxiously around the fields around.
"Why, I ask you?" It's not about the hull. The matter is more
complicated...
- And how did the first one explode? The soldier asked.
"Very strange," replied the sergeant. - A week ago, about ten collective
farmers worked on the construction of the school. It's over there, from the
right end of the village. Suddenly, it began to rain heavily, and people hid

385
under a shed where building materials and tools are stored. As soon as
they managed to run there, an explosion occurred inside, mind you, in the
school building. Why didn't it happen earlier? If this is an ordinary mine,
then it would explode when work was going on there. Otherwise it
exploded for no reason...
"Slow-acting," said one sapper uncertainly.
- Delayed-action mines have a metal explosive mechanism. I can't
believe that the sappers who worked here before didn't find them. This
cannot be.
The sergeant vigorously pointed his finger at the topographic map,
which read: "Clear"...
"Let's look for more," he said at last, and began to pull the straps of the
mine detector body on his back. "We must hurry. The construction of the
village was already delayed for a week. Collective farmers are worried...
The group, led by the sergeant, began to slowly descend down, to the
edge of the forest, to the place where the explosion had just occurred. The
radio operator turned the station and followed them.
On this day, before sunset, another mine exploded, in a completely
different place, right in an open field. Not a single metal fragment could be
found at the site of the explosion.
Colonel Romanov entered the headquarters of the sapper battalion, tall,
slender, completely gray-haired, in pince-nez. Everyone got up from the
tables. The colonel approached each of them and shook hands. He stopped
next to Major Kirichenko and asked:
"How are things in Sergeant Mitin's area?"
"Bad, Nikolai Vasilyevich. The guys combed the area five times.
Nothing could be found. And the explosions continue.
- Is there any system in the location of the places where the explosions
occur?
"It's hard to say," said the major and unfolded the map. Blue circles
marked the places where the explosions occurred. Circles were randomly
huddled at the place where the new settlement was being built.
"Strange," said the Colonel, tapping his finger lightly on the table. Very
strange...
- Have you looked at archival materials regarding military operations in
this area? The colonel asked.
- Of course, Nikolai Vasilyevich. - The major opened the table and took
out a folder from it. "Here's a certificate.
"In the period from July 3 to August 5, 1944, five small groups of
German troops were noted on this sector of the front, which were called
"Schroeder units". They were not part of any of the formations known to
us and, apparently, were completely independent. To date, it has not been

386
possible to establish what task these troops were performing."
This was followed by a list of points where Schroeder's troops were
stationed.
***
After work, Major Kirichenko came to talk to Krymov, a local
old-timer who lived in these places under the Germans.
Old Krymov carefully put the saucer of tea on the table and stretched
out his hand to the major.
"Good evening," Kirichenko said.
- Good evening, Comrade Major. Sit down to drink tea.
"Thank you, father. I was told that you knew something about the
Germans who were here in the last months of the war. Please tell us
everything you know.
The old man sat down at the table and, sipping tea from a saucer in
small sips, began to tell in a hoarse voice:
"As you probably know, I worked as a forester... I was responsible for
the entire forest area from Karev to Butuzov and from Shilov to us. In
general, great forest resources. The war broke out, and I moved to live in a
forest lodge, not far from the Green Lake. This is exactly where a new
village is being built now. That's where I lived. The place was calm, and it
seemed that there was no war. Somehow this bloody deed passed our
places. Only before the very end of the war, carts passed along the country
road, and then the Nazis came right into the forest. There were not many
of them, about forty people. They arrived in three trucks with canvas
awnings. We landed, built tents and began to live. Slowly, as if they came
on vacation. They set up a large stove in the clearing, like a field kitchen,
and all the time they cooked something on it in a large cauldron. I say
"something" because there was an ordinary kitchen at a distance, and they
cooked their food in it. And this one has something different.
"What then?" The major inquired.
"That's what I don't know. Only what they boiled was then poured into
a wooden trough and kneaded with sand and clay. And from this mixture
they made blocks, like loaves of bread, and stacked them pyramidally in
the sun. These things dried up and became hard as stone...
"How do you know?" The major asked.
"I touched them with my own hands. One night, out of curiosity.
- What did the Nazis do with these blocks?
"That's what I don't know. Just before the retreat, they drove me out of
the gatehouse to the village. When they left, I returned to Green Lake. And
there were no traces left. And the trough disappeared. And stones.
Probably, they took all this with them.

387
 ***
The sappers looked curiously at the young civilian in spectacles, who,
shifting awkwardly from foot to foot, was looking around. Next to him
stood Major Kirichenko.
"So it is," said the civilian. - The place where you have the greatest
concentration of explosions should be abundantly sprinkled with oxidizer,
the one that I brought with me.
He turned and walked quickly toward the truck.
-Who is this? Sergeant Mitin asked.
-Scientist. Professor of Chemistry Kedrov," the major replied and
followed the visitor.
The scientist climbed into the truck with difficulty and took out the boa
large paper bag with some kind of powder.
"Don't worry. The soldiers will do everything. You only say what needs
to be done.
- This powder should be scattered on the ground.
-Where is?
"Well, anywhere... You know better. Where these mines of yours
exploded most often.
The major took out a sled and carefully looked at the arrangement of
the blue circles.
-Ok. Take the package, comrades, and we will scatter the reagent there.
He pointed to a small mound overgrown with grass in the middle of a
plowed field.
- And how to scatter it? The sergeant asked.
-Evenly. You know, as if you were salting a piece of bread," said
Kedrov.
Everyone laughed and went to the hill.
- I still do not understand why these chemical mines did not explode
earlier? the major asked Kedrov.
- On the basis of what was reported, it seems to me that the matter is
simple. Of course, it is relatively simple. The mines in question are a kind
of chemical time bombs.
The major looked at Kedrov inquiringly.
- Probably, the Nazis used chemicals to make these clay blocks, which
in themselves are not explosive. But over time, they gradually change
their composition and turn into explosives of enormous power. Chemistry
knows a large number of substances that change their composition and
properties over time by themselves or in the presence of catalysts. In a
solid state, the reaction of internal restructuring goes very slowly, over
years and even decades. We study such chemical reactions at our institute.
- And why are they exploding on their own right now?

388
 - When the chemical transformation of the original material has taken
place completely enough, the explosion can occur simply as a result of the
oxidative action of oxygen in the air or some organic substances that are
always in the ground.
"Comrade Major, we have salted the plot of land you indicated,"
Sergeant Mitin reported.
The major smiled and looked at Kedrov.
-What now?
- Now you need to fill it with water. Fill and quickly run away. The best
way to do this would be with a fire hose.
The major turned in the direction where the truck was parked and
waved his hand. The truck moved towards them, dragging a trailer with a
pump and a large tank of water behind it. Sergeant Mitin took the barrel of
the fire hose in his hands.
"The reaction can come instantly," Kedrov warned. -It's not safe. The
oxidant is very energetic.
"Water the area from a prone position," the major ordered.
When the pump started working and a powerful jet of water hit from the
trunk, everyone lay down on the ground. Raising his head slightly, the
sergeant shook the stream of water so that the entire area was flooded.
Everyone froze. The noise of the car engine driving the pump and the hiss
of water were heard. Then the pump sneezed and the flow of water
stopped.
-All. The water is gone," said the sergeant.
The car engine also fell silent. Everyone was anxiously waiting to see
what would happen next.
- The oxidizer must dissolve and penetrate deep into the ground. It may
turn out that the mines are buried deep, and there is not enough water to
get to them, and then...
But Kedrov did not have time to finish his sentence. At that moment, a
deafening explosion rang out, followed by a second, then a third. Then
came the corafter which two more explosions followed, one after the
other.
"I think that's enough for today," the major said after a few minutes and
got up from the ground. "I congratulate you and thank you on behalf of the
service," he said, shaking hands with the embarrassed Kedrov.

389
 New Direction

I
I was sitting in the third row of the stalls of a large auditorium and
watching a mechanical hand write with chalk on a black board: "Greetings
to the participants of the conference on automation!" She then waved to
the delegates, who were frozen in amazement. There was a thunder of
applause.
To whom were they addressed? A mechanical hand that pressed the
button on the cart and, still waving to the scientist, solemnly left the hall?
At first, it seemed that it was her. But then everyone realized that it was
pointless to greet the car.
Scientists and engineers applauded themselves. It was an extraordinary
case!
Next to me sat a small skinny man with a bald pear-shaped head.
Without much enthusiasm, he silently slapped his palm against his palm,
with a mocking look he saw off his hand as it moved away on the cart.
"Doesn't that surprise you?" "
Look, there's a cable dragging behind her."
"How could it be otherwise?" After all, it is not the Holy Spirit that
governs it!
The man grimaced,
"It all depends on what you mean by holy spirit. If you call radio waves
that, then they can really be used.
I understood him.
"Probably, in this case, it is not very advisable to build a broadband
transmitter and receiver for transmitting control pulses. There are many of
them.
He shrugged his shoulders and didn't answer. At this time, the chairman
of the conference announced the topic of the first report and the name of
the speaker:
- "Impulses of regulation in living organisms", Professor Leonozov
Pavel Pavlovich.
My neighbor rustled the papers and, stepping on the feet of those sitting
next to him, hurriedly made his way to the blackboard.
"So a biologist," I thought, getting ready to listen to something that did

390
not concern me at all, since I am an expert in electronic programming
devices.
The report was really very special. Solid flowcharts. Flow diagrams of
blood pressure regulation. Block diagram of blood hormonal composition
management. Flowchart of the eye's adaptation to light. And so on.
Gradually, my thoughts turned to what I myself was to present at the
conference a little later. When I turned my attention to Leonozov again, he
was already slowly erasing everything he had drawn from the blackboard,
and, standing with his back to the audience, said indistinctly:
"Thus, the autonomous and central nervous systems of living beings are
fraught with great possibilities...
Rare applause rang out. No questions followedR. Discussions too. It
was felt that the audience did not understand the essence of what was said.
A minute later, the scientist was next to me again. His face was excited
and even angry.
When the engineer who spoke after drew a complex scheme of signal
switching for the program control of the gear-cutting machine of a new
design, Leonozov muttered angrily:
"And what is all this for?" Wouldn't it be easier to take an ordinary rat?
"What?" I asked him in a whisper.
"A rat," the professor said loudly and categorically.
They looked back at us, and we fell silent.
My curiosity was aroused, and during the break I watched the professor
from a distance. He paced nervously along the coreidoram of the institute,
muttered something to himself and occasionally smiled. Suddenly his
gaze fell on the engineer who was talking animatedly with a group of
young people, the same one who had made a report on switching systems.
Leonozov impulsively approached him and, taking him by the elbow,
asked:
"Tell me, how much will your system cost?"
- I think not more than five thousand. Of course, without drives and
actuators.
-Ahem!.. A bit expensive, a bit expensive..." the biologist said,
grinning.
"How much do you think it should cost?"
- In the new money, let's say, five or seven kopecks, or even cheaper.
-It's impossible! The engineer exclaimed, looking at Leonozov in
amazement.
"However, I'll tell you more precisely.
Leonozov calmly took a notebook out of his back pocket and, opening
it, said:
"Yes. I was almost not mistaken. One system - seven kopecks. The

391
couple will go for thirteen. A thousand systems - on average three and a
half kopecks apiece.
With these words, he calmly moved away from the conversation and
walked along the corridor to the exit. Everyone, including me, silently
followed him with sympathetic looks...
I met Leonozov for the second time in the summer in a village near
Moscow. Right in front of our dacha there is a wide green meadow, cut by
a small but fast stream.
Walking here in the evening, I met a man in a loose tunic, in dirty
trousers tucked into high rubber boots.
He walked slowly through the water, bucket in hand, leaning over the
tall, luscious grass. I was surprised to recognize him as my neighbor at an
automation conference.
- Good evening, Pavel Pavlovich!
"Hello," he replied without looking at me. "Oh, you damned one!"
He put the bucket at the bottom of the stream and began to push the
grass apart with both hands.
"Galloped away!" So pretty - and galloped away!
Then he raised his head and looked at me:
"Ah, it's you!
"Well
, how are your electronic programming systems?"
- Launched into mass production.
-Already have? What a pity.
"What are you talking about, Pavel Pavlovich! We should be happy
about this!
"Hardly. Ah, here it is, here it is!
He quickly squatted down and caught a huge green frog in the grass.
I looked into the bucket and saw that it was one-third full of these
swamp creatures that had grown fat on the larvae of midges.
"For experiments?"
-Yes. A wonderful creature - a frog," Leonozov suddenly said
dreamily. - She, like the dog of Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, needs to erect a
monument.
"What is that?"
- Remember that the frog helped both Galvani and Volta to discover
electricity! And without electricity, by the way, all your programming
systems would be impossible! All electronic automation would cry. But I
dare to predict: you can expect something else from a frog!
He plucked a few tufts of grass and put them in a bucket to prevent the
frogs from jumping out. Then, groaning and stumbling, he stepped out
onto the bank.

392
 "Allow me to carry these famous animals to whom mankind owes so
much," I said ironically, taking the bucket from his hands.
For a while we walked silently through the damp meadow, waving
away the mosquitoes. The sun touched the dark stripeand a distant forest.
A helicopter flew over us, scaring off a flock of wading birds. They circled
a little over their nests and hid in the grass again.
"What a beauty, look at it!" How amazing nature is! The professor said,
looking around and sighing deeply.
-Yes. I guess it's good to be an artist or a musician. They feel all this
more acutely and deeply.
- Artists and musicians? he grumbled. - And what do they hear sounds?
Do they see colors? Do they observe the form? No, scientists, my friend,
feel nature more richly, deeper, and wider. For an artist, a mosquito is a
mosquito. He will depict it on the canvas with a black dot, if he depicts it
at all. The composer will write "Flight of the Bumblebee". And it would
not occur to them that this bumblebee is a thousand times smarter than a
helicopter that has just flown over. Here we are now walking on grass, and
in every blade of grass we crush, a whole factory of photosynthesis is
being destroyed, a factory that we can only dream of now. For example,
you dream of creating an "electronic brain", and this brain was created by
nature millions of years ago. Every living creature has it. And only
scientists can comprehend this.
"Well, what's the use of what we feel, the artist is interested in one thing
and we are interested in another, that's all the difference," I objected.
He stopped and looked up at me with his stern dark eyes. - There will be
benefits. I hope that soon your electronic systems will be replaced by
something more interesting and profitable.
I put the bucket with frogs on the ground and was about to violently
express my protest, when suddenly from the direction of the forest, to
which we had almost approached, a sonorous female voice was heard:
"Palych has fallen! Palych has fallen! She ran away! Catch her!
I saw a slender girl in a white coat, running quickly towards us.
- Inna, you? What happened? The professor shouted in alarm,
"Mirza ran away!" Take a look! Here she is!
-Mirza? Ah, disgrace! Who released it?
-I don't know... yes, I got caught!
The girl grabbed the jumping shaggy lump and held it tightly to her.
The little dog barked angrily. Out of breath, Leonozov ran up to the girl
and took the dog from her.
- What happened? He asked abruptly.
"You'll see for yourself," she answered, almost crying. - A high-voltage
transformer burned out. All the engines overheated. The mercury rectifier

393
failed. And the yarn is just terrible! Everything is mixed up...
"Oh, you rascal!" Leonozov exclaimed, lightly slapping the dog on the
shaggy side.
Mirza, frightened by the commotion she had raised, growled, turned
her head and opened her mouth wide, trying to bite the scientist's hand.
"Come quickly, Inna!" Take a bucket.
The girl quickly followed the professor. In the thickening twilight I
noticed that the dog was hung on all sides with some boxes and records.
Soon Leonozov and his companion disappeared into the forest, and I
was left alone in the middle of the meadow.

Il
"Replace with something more interesting..." sounded in my ears when,
lying in bed, I recalled my conversation with Leonozov. I felt deeply hurt.
How could he, a scientist, not properly appreciate a perfect programming
system with a capacity of more than a million binary units! A team of
twelve people worked on it for two years under my leadership. A frog, you
see, needs to be erected a monument, and the electronic system "Replace
with something"! Is it possible?
I was annoyed with myself for not being able to give a proper answer to
Leonozov.
"And who is this crying Inna, who was chasing the dog? I thought,
remembering the scene in the meadow with some irritation. "Probably
some kind of laboratory assistant, a medic or a biologist. They conduct
experiments on animals and make sure for the millionth time that they
have a heart, a stomach, and lungs..."
After dinner, burning with a desire to argue, I walked across the
meadow to the place where I had parted with Leonozov the day before.
"Now, if I meet him, I will tell you what I think," I decided, going
deeper into the pine forest. I was in a fighting mood.
Suddenly, a high fence appeared in front of me, and I walked along the
path along it. Soon a gate appeared, on which hung a glass sign with the
inscription: "Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Laboratory of Biological
Regulation".
"So that's where they come from!" - I thought and took hold of the
handle of the gate. It was locked. No one answered my knock for a long
time, and then a tiny white lapdog jumped out from behind the bushes and
barked loudly.
"Well, Squirrel, Bug or whatever you are, that's enough!" I drummed
on the gate again.
The dog ran closer, growled furiously. I noticed that a small metal box
gleamed on her collar.

394
 "Apparently, all the dogs here run around with an emergency supply of
vitamins!" - I thought mockingly.

"Who do you want?"

- Professor Leonozov.
"On what business?"
"I'm an acquaintance of his. I need to continue yesterday's conversation
with him.
-Enter.
The woman leaned over to the dog and said:
"Stop it, Kumok, it's one of your own.
She stroked the dog, and it fell silent.
"Come in," the woman repeated.
"But the gate is locked!"
"It's open now," she grinned, continuing to stroke the dog.
"But you didn't unlock it!" - I was surprised,
- And I repeat: come in, the door is open.
To prove the woman wrong, I pushed the gate with all my might and
almost fell forward, because it swung open without any difficulty.
"So you have automation here," I muttered embarrassedly.
Go straight along the path to the white pavilion. Pavel Pavlovich is
there, at the power plant.
Indeed, Leonozov was there. He stood surrounded by several
employees at the high-voltage transformer and explained:
"Whether there are control signals or not, the transformer must be
blocked in case of overload.
"But we decided that we would not introduce any other automation,
except...
"Yes, yes, yes," Leonozov interrupted the tall, thin man. - When I say
block, it does not mean that you need to install an electromagnetic or
electrical relay. You can even use wood, for example, this pine. He
pointed to a young tree. - Let the moisture loss control system of a branch
be a regulator of the current.
"The moisture loss control system is connected with Mirza," the girl
objected to him. - In addition, the moisture loss of plants is regulated by
continuous signals, not pulsed signals!
"So what?" PThe current will be regulated by an autonomous system,
and as for the continuity of regulation, it is even..." Suddenly his eyes fell
on me, "Ah, it's you again, young man!
-Good afternoon! - Have you
come to see our trouble?
"I don't know what kind of trouble you've had.

395
 "Comrades," Leonozov said to the employees standing next to him,
"meet this young engineer - a designer of electronic programming
systems.
All heads turned to me. I felt embarrassed, probably because I did not
understand what they were talking about, although all the words were
certainly familiar to me.
- Your machines have one advantage. They don't run, suddenly a girl
turned to me with a smile, the same Inna I had seen last night.
Everyone laughed loudly.
- If necessary, they can be made running, - I objected.
- And then instead of a ton, each car will weigh three, Inna sneered.
"I have a rough idea why you have come to see me," Leonozov
interrupted her. "Unfortunately, young man, I have to leave for Moscow in
ten minutes, and therefore I cannot listen to your objections. By the way,
you were not attentive enough at the automation conference. So, while I
am at the academy, I will give you to be torn to pieces by my employees.
I'll be back in two hours, and then we'll talk."
"And in what sense should we torment him, Pavel Pavlovich?"
- I told you: he is a designer of electronic programming and control
systems.
-Aha! Then let's go," Inna looked at him knowingly.
She came up to me and took my hand.
"And then, Inochka, give it to me!" A tall guy in a T-shirt shouted after
him.
"And, of course, me," said someone else.
- You will have a gloomy life today! Inna laughed.
"Why is that?"
"You will have to see something new, and perhaps you will be so
carried away that you will even want to change your specialty.
- I have never had reason to doubt that I have chosen the right path in
life...
"Please, come here," she interrupted, pushing me toward a wide glass
door that led into a building that resembled a light exhibition hall.

III
"Here, look," said Inna, pointing to an ordinary electron potentiometer.
The pen of the device slowly drew a thin red line on the paper. Next to
the potentiometer there was a clay pot in which a young green birch grew.
Needle electrodes were inserted into the trunk of the birch. One of them
went into the ground.
-What's it?
- We measure the concentration of hydrogen ions in a living plant.

396
 "So what?"
- It always remains constant - seven and two tenths.
"Is that so?" What is surprising here?
- Regardless of the environmental conditions, the birch itself regulates
the concentration of hydrogen ions.
"Even a schoolboy knows that," I said carelessly,
"but even you don't know that this circumstance can be used to
automatically regulate the concentration of a substance, for example, in a
large chemical bath, by keeping that concentration within the right limits.
I did not expect such a turn of the conversation!
-Interesting! Tell how this tree will regulate the concentration of the
substance in the bath.
Inna drew a diagram of a plant cell on a sheet of paper and began to
explain in detail. The chemical formulas of the substances included in the
shell and nucleus, in the protoplasm, flashed, and equations involving
enzymes appeared.
I had little understanding of the chemical processes that take place in
the plant, but I began to vaguely guess that there were a huge number of
feedbacks, positive and negative, that together led to the achievement of
the goal. Any disturbance of equilibrium automatically provokes a
reaction which ultimately reduces this disturbance to zero.
- You understand that all chemical reactions occurring in the body are
associated with corresponding electrical potentials, which are easy to
"bring out". And, conversely, the influence of the external environment
can be shifted to electric potentials and "introduced" into the plant. So we
get something like this wiring harness.
The girl took in her hands a bundle of multi-colored wires starting at the
trunk of the tree. Some of them went into some kind of box, others into a
glass jar. The birch was connected to a chemical device, through which
liquid was driven through two coils.
- In our pilot plant, the concentration of ordinary table salt is regulated.
If we reduce its concentration by adding water, then the plant will
immediately send a signal to the relay, which will turn on the source of salt
concentrate.
There was no need to explain further. I understand everything. In short,
it could be called as follows: the plant as a regulatory mechanism!
I imagined in my mind what a complex electronic system would have
to be set in motion in order to automatically adjust the concentration of the
solution in the chemical bath. And here it is done by an ordinary birch!
- Instead of birch, you can probably take any other plant, for example,
nettles or some peas! I exclaimed.

397
 I imagined the meadow in front of my dacha and the forest around this
laboratory - trees, shrubs, flowers and grasses, I imagined all the forests.
and fields on the globe... Everywhere you looked, there were ready-made
"regulatory systems" that could be so usefully used by man to solve many
technical problems.
"We took a birch tree because it is a perennial tree and regulation can be
carried out without interruption for many years," the girl explained.
"However, although plants are promising in this sense, they perform their
functions well only where it is necessary to regulate the course of slow
processes. Animals are a different matter.
Thinking, I followed the girl to the exit from the laboratory.
- And here's another trick for you. Look at this galvanometer.
I stared at the needle of the device, and my companion passed her hand
several times over the leaves of some plant. The needle swung violently to
the side.
"What's the matter?"
- Plain green sheet as a photocell. How much does photoresistance
cost?
"N-I don't know. Probably fifty kopecks...
"And the nettle leaf?"
I looked imploringly into her laughing eyes.
- Of course, everyone knows that a green leaf lives precisely because
light causes complex chemical reactions in it. And these reakstransposed
into the language of electric potentials. Nettle leaf and photocell!
The comparison was clearly not in favor of electronics. What I saw next
was stunning. At times it seemed to me that I was completely detached
from reality and found myself in a fairy-tale world, where photocells
bloomed in the beds, sensitive thermometers quietly grew in clay pots,
hygrometers hung from trees. I was even shown some luxurious,
red-flowered bush with a long Latin name, which "felt" the carbon dioxide
contained in the air with an accuracy of one thousandth of a percent.
Another plant was so sensitive to iron ions in the soil that, as Inna noted, it
has already been adopted in all modern analytical laboratories.
I had not yet recovered from my first impressions when she led me
through a large orchard to another building and handed me over to a young
man in a T-shirt.
I stood in front of a friendly smiling guy, looking around in
bewilderment. Trees, flowers, grass - everything around took on some
completely new meaning for me.
"I see that our Innochka has done a good job on you," the young man
joked, seeing my confusion.
"If you have something like that, too...

398
 - No, another or, rather, a continuation of the same thing that you have
already seen.
The first thing he showed me was an ordinary bee. She was sitting in a
glass test tube, and two thin, barely visible wires stretched out from her,
connected to an oscilloscope.
Nikolai pulled down the curtains on the windows of the laboratory, and
everything plunged into darkness. Only on the oscilloscope screen there
was a bright green dot.
"Now I'll turn on the source of ultraviolet rays.
The transformer hummed, and suddenly the green bunny on the screen
jumped high.
-Leads? I asked.
Bee eyes are very sensitive to ultraviolet rays. Now they perform the
function of a photocell for the short-wave region of the spectrum.
- How far does it, that is, his, the photocell, sensitivity extend?
- Up to one hundred and ten millimicrons.
I remembered how difficult it is to make a photocell with such spectral
sensitivity. This requires special materials, quartz glass and much more.
"But the eyes of this living device," he continued, pointing to the huge
cockroach, "can be used as a device for detecting long-wave infrared rays,
up to a hundred microns.
-A what?! I exclaimed, staring at the insect. "You know, that's too
much!"
Now a cockroach was connected to the oscilloscope.
"Now I will bring my hand to him. He feels its radiation.
In the dark, Nikolai began to move his hand in front of the test tube, and
the bunny on the device moved, as if repeating his movements.
In the same way, I was shown a bat as a device for detecting ultrasonic
waves and a common locust, which turned out to be more sensitive than
the world's most sensitive seismograph. Its nervous system reacted to
mechanical vibrations, the amplitude of which was equal to the diameter
of a hydrogen atom!
- Nature has created a living world, providing it with an incredibly wide
range of sensory organs. As a matter of fact, if we want to reveal
somethingLive, measure or even see, this can be done by choosing one or
another live indicator, - explained my new guide. - We have not yet fully
realized the importance of the fact that the vital activity of organisms is
accompanied by electrical signals, which, "brought out", can be used. It is
thanks to this that unlimited opportunities open up for a person to learn
and study nature even more deeply. He will acquire the ability to see the
world as a bee, dragonfly, locust, bat, guinea pig, leopard, fish see it...
- To feel it like maple, acacia, lilac... I prompted.

399
 The electrical signals in these living regulatory systems are the channel
through which the inquisitive human mind can penetrate, so to speak, into
the very soul of nature, of all living things,

IV
... Pulling on a white coat, Leonozov said loudly:
"Some amateur gourmet, devouring fried brains in a restaurant, does
not suspect that he is destroying the most perfect electronic machines. Do
you understand that?
I stood confused. Now I think I understood it...
- What does the brain of an animal, even the most primitive, do? He
receives information from the external and internal world, processes it,
and then creates new information in order to control his appropriate
behavior. The common guinea pig does this better than the most advanced
electronic machine. The question arises: what prevents you from using a
ready-made natural apparatus for these purposes? What, I'm asking you?
"It must be difficult to remove the brain and get oi to live outside the
body," I said.
Pavel Pavlovich said separately. "Professor Dowell's head was only
needed for a fantasy novel. There is no need to take the head away from
the animal's body. Let him stay where he is. Moreover, even if it were
possible to isolate the brain from the rest of the body and keep it alive, I
am not sure that it would function normally.
"Of course?"
- You just need to connect to the nervous system of the animal, as
electricians say, in parallel. We have to have inferences for incoming
information and inferences for outgoing information, that's all. Often there
is not even a need to dissect the animal. There are enough nerve receptors
on the surface of its body. Remember the mechanical arm at the
conference? After all, it was controlled by the bioelectric currents of an
operator who was sitting somewhere outside the classroom. This is the
basis of electronic prosthetics. Electrical signals from nerve endings
control mechanical models of human arms or legs. This principle can be
applied in our business as well.
We moved to the automated workshop of the institute. Here I saw large
glass jars in front of the metal-cutting machines. In each of them sat a frog.
They seemed to pay no attention to the thin wires digging into different
parts of their bodies, and they stared curiously at us with their bulging
eyes, completely unaware of what scientific miracle they were being used
for.
- Sensors that measure the geometric dimensions of the workpiece are
connected to the fibers of the animal's autonomic nervous system, which

400
controls its digestive tract. The signals are balanced so that deviations
from the norm in the processing of the part cause response impulses in the
central nervous system of the frog, which set in motion the corrective
bellowsthe animism of the machine. Such a control system costs
absolutely nothing. You just need to know where to output bioelectric
signals from and to which nerve fibers to connect electrical sensors.
Leonozov turned on the machine, and the chisel began to write
complex patterns on the metal blank. The motor, which fed the cutter to
the right and then to the left, adhered exactly to the figure scratched on the
surface of the iron plate.
The professor pressed his finger against the rapidly rotating shaft of the
motor, and the frog croaked loudly.
-You see! The sensors sent her a signal that all was wrong. The frog
reacted vigorously to the violation. She perceives it as if it happened
inside her body.
The chisel swayed smoothly and returned to its original place again.
It was a real technical miracle. Is it technical?
A prominent physicist once said that the next century is the century of
biology. Isn't this where it begins? A frog "built-in" to the machine, a
guinea pig as a thermostat temperature regulator... And the higher
animals! Their highly organized nervous systems can probably perform
the most subtle functions of automatic control. Perhaps biological
regulation will open up completely unprecedented horizons and
opportunities. And, instead of building complex electronic control
devices, we just need to turn to the living organisms given to us by nature.
I looked at the green frog as if fascinated and thought that at that
moment only a small part of its nervous system was being used, some tiny
circuit or block. And it has thousands of them, and each has potential
capabilities that are unattainable for modern electronics.
All living things in the world are equipped with "control systems", but
how little we know about it! Of course, many of them have qualities
unknown to us, fantastic sensitivity, and an amazing speed of reaction to
excitations. And all this can be used in the automation of production
processes, used completely for free, free of charge.
Leonozov stood next to me and closely followed the expression on my
face. He knew that there was no need to explain it now. Everything was
extremely simple, but how long did science have to develop to get to this!
Suddenly, the electric light went out in the workshop. At the same time,
something clicked loudly outside the walls of the room, crackled, and
silence reigned, which was broken by the loud croaking of a frog.
Leonozov grabbed me by the arm and, without saying a word, dragged me
to the exit.

401
 We jumped out into the dark garden and, stumbling over hummocks,
quickly walked somewhere deep into the territory.
- What happened? I asked.
Again, probably, Mirza ran away.
-Dog?
-Yes.
"So what?"
- And the fact that it controls our entire energy system...
-Dog?!
- If a frog can control a machine, then why can't a dog control the power
supply of our laboratories and experimental workshops?
"Probably, it can, but you see...
I spread my hands, as if to show that darkness had settled around.
"So she ran away. Like yesterday.
A white figure appeared from behind the trees, hurriedly moving in the
same direction as us.
-Inna?
"Yes, it's me, Pavel PAvlovich.
"I ordered you to tie Mirza up!" Leonozov shouted angrily.
"We tied her up..."
"So what's the matter?"
"I really don't know," the girl babbled in confusion.
At last we reached a small garden surrounded by a high wooden fence.
- Mirza, Mirza! Leonozov called.
The leaves of the bushes rustled, and soon yesterday's white dog
jumped merrily next to us.
-She's here! Inna exclaimed.
-Strangely. I don't understand anything. Do you have a flashlight?
The girl turned on the electric flashlight, and a bright beam illuminated
the garden.
"What have you done, Mirza?" The professor asked affectionately,
leaning over to her.
The dog wagged its tail and suddenly, breaking off from its place,
rushed to the side.
The professor, Inna and I followed her.
What we saw a few seconds later made us stunned.
Mirza ran up to a small pine tree, stood on her hind legs and, raising her
head, growled angrily. A beam of a flashlight crept along the trunk.
-My god! Inna exclaimed.
We burst into loud laughter. Staring at us with frightened green eyes, a
large disheveled cat sat on a tree, the age-old enemy of the entire canine
race.

402
 - You understand what happened! Leonozov exclaimed through
laughter.
-I see it! The cat "regulated" your electronic machine!
-Exactly! Noticing the "enemy", Mirza became furious. Her emotions
were out of the norm. Electrical signals began to rush through her nervous
system, which are usually absent in a normal state. And here is the result:
the fuses at the power plant have flown again!
Then, in a serious voice, the professor said:
"Cats should not be allowed here. And in general, no one should be
allowed to such a responsible "automaton" as Mirza who can throw her off
balance.
Escorting me to the gate of the laboratory, the professor asked gently:
"Aren't you offended by me for being harsh?"
-No. Not very...
However, I decided in my mind that I should not write off the control
electronic machines. In any case, they have significant advantages,
- I am sure that your research is outstanding, although it does not seem
to me that living systems can completely replace artificial ones...
"It seems to me," said the professor firmly.
- By the way, what are these boxes with which your animals are
decorated?
- Radio transmitters and semiconductor radios. We transmit control
signals by radio. Thanks to this, the normal life of animals, so to speak, is
not disturbed.
... At home, I thought for a long time about everything that I saw in
Leonozov's laboratory, and decided that tomorrow I would go to the
institute library and collect everything that was there on biological
regulation. However, I was sure that there was almost no such literature in
any technical library.

403
 Perpetuum-Mobile
The inventor looked back at the door, behind which a gray-haired
woman silently disappeared. Then he looked at the scientist and let the bag
loose on the parquet. A guilty smile froze on his face. His hands trembled
a little, and he could not untie the knot for a long time.
"I'll make a mess of it here..."
"Nothing," the scientist said and smiled politely.
-Here...
The inventor placed a simple structure on a wide desk. His red face was
covered with sweat.
"That's it," he explained.
"Come, show me how it works." There was a note of mockery in the
scientist's voice.
- It is always working.
Polished ebony board. Two stainless steel posts. Two bronze bearings.
They have a fragile glass disk on a steel axis.
"Where's the engine?" The scientist asked and looked the inventor
straight in the eyes, this time incredulous and even suspicious.
-Here...
A shapeless mineral of bright green color, a stone the size of a fist. And
for him, a recess was made in the ebony board under the glass disk. For a
long time, the inventor could not find such a position of the stone that it
would not roll off. When the mineral was in place, the glass disk
shuddered and began to rotate slowly at first, and then faster and faster. A
thin tissue paper crept across the smooth desk from a light breath of air.
"Oh, yes... So where is the engine, or the engine, or whatever...
The disc was picking up speed. The bearings could be heard ringing
gently.
"It's all about the stone. You don't need any motor...
- Apparently, your stone is a semiconductor photocell? The scientist
asked at random.
-Unlikely... During an expedition to the Pamirs, I picked it up by
accident.
The scientist lifted the black ebony board and looked under it. Then he
tapped it with his finger, wanting to make sure it wasn't empty.
"It's all about the stone. I discovered it by accident," the inventor began.

404
 The scientist's face turned stern, and he returned to his chair.
"Don't try to rub my glasses in." I'm not a little boy.
- Yes, but you see...
"Yes, I do. And I know for sure that this is nonsense. You've made an
elegant toy. I praise you for needlework. But I don't have time to guess
where you hid the engine.
"It's all about the stone," the inventor protested timidly.
The scientist abruptly tilted his head over the mineral. The breeze from
the spinning disk stirred a strand of gray hair.
-Slyboots! he exclaimed joyfully. - So this is a Faraday disk!
-No. The disk is glass, and there is no source of electric current, no
magnets...
The scientist leaned back.
"Listen, this man," he turned to the wall and pointed to a bronze bust in
a niche, "this man signed a decree two centuries ago according to which it
is forbidden to consider any projects of perpetual motion machines,
because they are all meaningless. Do you understand?
-Yes. But this is completely different! It seems to me that the stone is
like the sail of a ship. It absorbs and directs the eternal motion of matter in
the universe...
The scientist grimaced:
"Figurative, but meaningless.
"You don't mind the perpetual motion of matter?..
- This is philosophy, and here is a machine.
-Any the machine selects from the chaos of movement only the
ordered...
- It takes energy. You see, energy!
- There is as much energy around us as you want!
"Okay, then explain the physical principle of action... uh... Engine.
-I don't know. I don't know yet.
The scientist frowned.
"You should study physics and study the first and second laws of
thermodynamics," he said dissatisfied.
-I know. I'm finished..." The inventor began to frantically rummage in
the side pocket of his jacket.
- It is not worth it. I believe you.
Both were silent for a minute, and the silence was broken only by the
faint singing of the engine.
"So you don't believe in... into this car?
"No, I don't believe it," the scientist said firmly and pressed the bell
button.
A gray-haired secretary came into the office and put some papers in

405
front of the scientist...
The inventor had no choice but to leave...
The inventor showed his engine in the factory design bureau, and they
were interested in where he got such tiny bearings and how he managed to
drill a hole in a glass disk. Then he performed in some club, where the hall
was buzzing in anticipation of amateur performances. He cursed himself
for not sticking slips of paper on the disc so that he could see the rotation
from afar.
Visitors to the large southern bazaar stared at the rotation of the fragile
glass disk, and in the evening it was shown in the circus...
On the country road, squeezed on both sides by mighty masses of ripe
rye, the drivers looked at the car. It stood right on the ground, and the glass
disc turned faster and slower, as if obeying the tides of an unknown force.
The drivers smoked roll-ups, were silent, sometimes whispered about
something. Someone asked the inventor to sell the mysterious stone.
The car was standing on the edge of the village well, and now its
tireless movement was watched by the women with empty buckets, and
the little boys were trying to touch the singing wheel with their fingers...
The inventor was last seen in late autumn on the banks of a large gray
river. Low shaggy clouds almost touched the span of the old railway
bridge, over which a freight train had just rumbled. The wind fumbled
restlessly in the reeds, and the disk, thin, trembling and restless, continued
to hum its mysterious song softly.
Who is this inventor? Magician? Charlatan? Trickster? Or has
humanity lost something new and priceless?
However, as always, not for long...

406
 Exploit
1
It all started quite unexpectedly. Olla came in very excited, with a
phototelegram in her hands.
"I'm going back to Moscow at once. Plasmodin departs in forty
minutes. In an hour, I need to meet with Corio.
I was surprised. Our vacation had just begun, and as for Corio, he
himself was supposed to arrive at the seashore any day now.
"What's wrong?" - I asked my sister.
"But listen. "Beloved Olla, I really need to see you. I have only a day at
my disposal. Today at twenty-two o'clock my fate is being decided.
Corio".
"It sounds like old adventure novels," I said.
I have known him for many years as a very intelligent and balanced
person. His work on the microstructure of energy fields has made his
name known among scientists around the world. A year ago, Corio
received the Certificate of Honor of the Peoples of the Earth of the second
degree and the title of Scientist of the first class. This coincided with his
remarkable victory in the hundred-squared board chess championship.
In the meager lines of the phototelegram I caught notes of hidden
anxiety. Olla felt her anxiety much more acutely than I did, and she
hurriedly began to put her things in a bag.
"Corio will not send such a telegram without any reason. If he's all
right, I'll be back tonight," Olla said. If not...
"What are you talking about, dear! I exclaimed, taking my sister's
hands. "What can happen to him?" Illness? Danger? Well, what else is
there? I just can't imagine what can happen to a person in our time. If he
were a cosmonaut or a test rocket scientist... He is a theoretical physicist.
"Corio won't send such a telegram without any reason," Olla repeated
stubbornly. "Good-bye, dear Avro!"
She came up to me and kissed me on the forehead.
-Good bye. Shake hands with Corio from me. And also - call me in the
evening. It would be nice if you had Corio with you at the video phone.
Olla smiled and left the room. From the terrace I waved to her. A few
minutes later, a monorail electric locomotive rushed from the South
Station, right through the mountains. In it, Olla went to the airfield.

407
 After lunch, I did not go to rest in the erarium, but went down to the
embankment to look at the sea. The embankment was deserted, only a few
lovers of the sea surf sat with half-closed eyes and listened to the waves
crashing against the concrete walls. A grayish haze hung over the sea,
through which the sun seemed orange. It was very hot and humid. At the
granite descent to the water, I looked at the giant thermometer and
hygrometer. Twenty-nine Celsius and eighty percent humidity. If it were
not for clothes made of hydrophobic material, people would feel
immersed in a warm bath.
For a long time I stood by two columns of glass, which were at the same
time measuring instruments and decoration of the staircase to the sea. The
architect who created this ensemble managed to combine expediency and
beauty.
"If this continues, I'll leave here," I heard a voice behind me.
"Oh, grumpy old Onks! What don't you like here?
It was my friend, Onks Filitov. He never likes anything. His specialty is
to grumble and look for flaws in everything. It is not for nothing that he is
a member of the critical council of the Central Industrial Administration.
"I don't like this. He pointed to the measuring instruments.
"I think it's not bad. The architect is certainly a small man with
imagination.
- I'm talking about something else. I don't like the readings of the
instruments. I don't know about you, but I don't tolerate the heat well.
Especially when more than half of the air consists of water vapor.
I laughed.
"Well, then you need to go on vacation to the north, for example, to
Greenland.
Onks grimaced. Without saying a word, he handed me the bulletin of
the Weather Institute.
- Here, read about Greenland...
I read:
"The fifth of January. The east coast of Greenland is +10..."
-Miraculously! Magnolias will bloom there soon!
- I don't know if they will bloom. Only in the memory of mankind this
has never happened before.
Continuing to mumble something, Onks wandered along the
embankment, wiping his sweaty neck with his handkerchief.
At five o'clock I handed over my health data to the electronic
dispensary—blood pressure, moisture exchange, temperature,
electrocardiography, and so on—and, instead of watching a sports program
from New York in the television theater, I returned to my room and sat down
at the video phone. Olla had been in Moscow for six hours and was about to

408
tell me all about Corio. Looking at the matte screen of the device, for some
reason I was worried.
So I sat until dinner, without waiting for a call from Moscow.
In the dining room, Anna Shakhtaeva, my attending physician, came up
to me.
- You have a slight increase in blood pressure and heart palpitation.
Take this," she handed me a pill. - When you go to bed, do not forget to
turn on the air conditioning.
I looked at her in surprise.
"It's okay," she said, smiling. - Almost everyone has it. Because of the
weather.
"It's hot," I said embarrassedly, and for some reason I remembered
Onks.
-Yes. And wet...
Olla did not call me until twenty-three o'clock, when I began to doze.
-What happened? I exclaimed, peering into my sister's face. It was
strange and alien. "What's the matter, Olla?" Where is Corio?
Olla smiled pitifully. I saw how her lips trembled.
"Are you crying, dear?" Are you crying? I
have never seen my sister cry. Never. Only in those times when she was
very, very young. It was incredible! I've never seen people crying at all!
Olla shook her head.
"No, you're crying!" Tell me what happened immediately!
"I almost said goodbye to Corio just now," Olla said in a whisper.
-He?..
I wanted to say "he died," but my sister beat me to it.
"No, he is alive and feels fine...
"He doesn't love you?" He doesn't love you anymore?
Olla lowered her head and smiled strangely.
- It's all so incomprehensible... I don't understand anything about what
happened...
My breath caught in my throat. If only Olla were next to me! But she
was fifteen hundred kilometers away from me, and I could only watch
helplessly as she suffered.
"My dear. I beg you, tell me everything in order. I have to help you.
Everyone should help you.
"No one can help me. No one.
Olla tossed a strand of hair from her forehead and, clenching her teeth,
strained:
"Soon Corio will not be Will...
I grabbed the metal frame of the screen.
"You said he was alive and feeling well.

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 -Yes... But...
I saw how my sister could not stand it, tears sprang from her eyes, and,
covering her face with her hands, she disappeared from the sight of the
video phone. I continued to call her, shouted into the phone, threatened to
complain about the cameramen, until finally the stern face of a young girl
appeared on the screen, who said:
"Your correspondent is very bad. She is unable to continue the
conversation. She was taken to the first aid laboratory. An emotional
breakdown," the girl added sadly, and the screen went dark.
On the local phone, I was informed that the first Plasmodin was leaving
for Moscow tomorrow at five in the morning.

2
Climbing the ladder to the plane with a plasma engine, I accidentally
nudged the passenger in front of me with my elbow. He turned around,
and I recognized Onks Filitov.
"Have you decided to leave the south?" I asked indifferently, thinking
of something completely different.
"Not at all," the old man grumbled. - I received a telephone message to
urgently go to the Soviet.
- Is there a need to criticize something or someone urgently? I asked,
almost irritably.
- Something important. You know, they don't call you from vacation
for trifles.
When we took our seats next to each other, Onks leaned over to me and
whispered,
"I think I can guess what's going on.
-Well?
"In this damned weather. Before leaving Moscow, our council talked
about the intensive melting of ice in Antarctica and Greenland.
I looked inquiringly at Filitov.
- This threatens with great disasters. Can you imagine what will happen
if the water level in the ocean rises by four meters?
- For this, all the ice of Greenland and Antarctica must melt.
"And if they really melt?"
"I don't see any reason," I objected, making myself comfortable in my
chair.
At first, the usual jet engines roared, and when the plane rose to an
altitude of about twenty thousand meters, the plasma engines were turned
on, and silence settled in the cabin, broken by the barely perceptible
whistle of a powerful stream of ionized gas.
Every now and then I glanced at the manual chronometer, and it

410
seemed to me that the car was approaching Moscow too slowly. Below, in
the vast expanses, the ground was not white, as usual in winter, but dirty
gray. The snow melted, melted in January. And above the plasmodine
stretched a purple abyss, pierced by orange stripes from behind the
horizon, where the sun rose.
I never had time to say goodbye to Onks at the airfield. I was one of the
first to jump into a monorail electric locomotive, which immediately
rushed to the center of Moscow.
I was surprised to find that my apartment was locked. There was no one
at home.
I was very surprised when the neighbors told me that Olla had gone to
work. So she couldn't be alone. The vacation turned into a torment for her,
and she decided to return to her chemistry of physiologically active
polymers...
I found her in the laboratory, in a white coat, intently examining the
color of some liquid in a test tube. She was not at all surprised at my
appearance. Taking a sip of some liquid from the glass, probably
medicine, she said in a calm, colorless voice:
- A great misfortune has happened, Avro... A misfortune that threatens
all of us, all people on Earth with great disasters...
She got up and walked over to the bookcase.
"Look," she handed me a piece of paper on which four lines were drawn
- red, blue, green and yellow. "Corio left it to me. He said you would
understand. The red line shows the increase in average Earth temperature
by day. Blue - an increase in humidity in the atmosphere. Green - the
intensity of ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. Yellow is the intensity of
infrared radiation. Look how steeply the curves creep up. Every day the
activity of the Sun increases...
I looked at the curves. Ninety intervals corresponding to ninety days
were plotted on the horizontal axis. On the vertical axis, the results of
measurements of temperature, humidity and radiation intensity were
shown. Over the past three months, the curves have risen steeply. I looked
at Olla in surprise.
"You have to figure out what will happen if this continues.
I nodded and then asked,
"What does Corio have to do with it?"
"Don't be in a hurry. Researchers from the Central Sun Service found
that this will continue for a year. During the month of January, the activity
of the Sun will double again. A natural disaster unprecedented in the
history of mankind will begin. The oceans will begin to evaporate, the ice
will melt, the Earth will be shrouded in a dense veil of water vapor,
through which only heat rays will penetrate, creating unbearable

411
temperature conditions on the surface for the entire Earth... Cities, ports
will be flooded, oceans will burst out into the expanses of the plains...
Olla bent over the microscope and fell silent for a moment.
"It's hard to imagine," she whispered, "what kind of sacrifices there will
be... Will people be able to endure all this... No one yet knows what
measures should be taken. The impending disaster took humanity by
surprise.
I licked my parched lips and wanted to ask what Corio had to do with
all this, but now, in the face of the picture Olla had painted for me, the
question seemed to me both unnecessary and insignificant.
- And what is known about the reasons for the increase in solar activity?
- In its movement in the universe, the Sun and our entire planetary
system fell into a thick cloud of hydrogen. The brightness of the Sun is
increasing every day. According to spectral analysis, we will cross the
region of maximum hydrogen density in four months...
I felt hot, I went to the window. For the first time in my life, I looked at
the Sun with hatred. Morning, orange, it seemed ominous.
"I'm sure our scientists will come up with something.
"I'm sure too. Especially in relation to Corio. But I love him so much...
I didn't understand anything.
"Dear Olla!" It is very good that Corio decided to work on the problem
of ensuring the safety of people from the impending disaster. You will be
even more proud of your beloved, your husband, and I will be proud of my
friend.
At that moment, the door of the laboratory opened, and Corio appeared
in it. Ignoring me, he rushed to Olla. I went to the window and looked at
the sun again. How everything got mixed up in just a few hours. A bad
feeling of dislike for my friend stirred in my heart. Whatever it was, he
had something to do with Olla's suffering.
I turned abruptly to and asked rudely:
"Explain what's going on."
Corio got up from the sofa and held out both hands to me.
"Hello, Avro.
-Hello. What's going on here?
I noticed that his face was tired, his eyes sunken in.
"I can't really get anything out of my sister," I said gently. She told me
all about the impending disaster... Well, and you... What do you have to do
with it?
- The fact is that... how shall I tell you... I agreed to work in a theoretical
group that will develop measures and means to prevent a disaster. By
order of the federation, I have already been relieved of my duties as a
mathematician-consultant on industry.

412
 "So what?"
"There is very little time for work, too little, no more than ten days.
Otherwise, it will be too late.
-So.
- You understand yourself, the problem is very complicated. Its
solution requires a tremendous strain of mind. In addition, the decision
must be absolutely correct, because it will be immediately followed by
practical measures related to the activities of a large number of people,
industry and so on. There should be no miscalculations. Otherwise,
death...
-Yes. So what?
"So the minds that will be working on the problem these ten days must
be extraordinary. They must be brilliant scientists.
I looked at Corio in surprise, and I laughed. Of course, he was an
outstanding scientist, but a genius...
"The fact of the matter is that you are right," Corio guessed my thought.
Of course, I'm quite an ordinary scientist, a little above the average
caliber. But the trouble is that in general, as recent studies have shown,
there is no scientist on Earth who would be able to process a huge amount
of scientific information and find a solution in such a short time.
Unfortunately, the complexity of the scientific problems facing humanity
is growing much faster than the intellectual abilities of even the most
gifted people.
- Machines can be used to process scientific information.
-Faithfully. But for cars, you need to make a program.
- And there is no person among the scientists of the Earth who could do
this?
- In such a short period of time - no...
- So what to do?
- We need to create such scientists.
I was stunned. This was not enough! Over the past hundred years,
people have become accustomed to the fantastic successes of science.
They have become accustomed to space travel, they are no longer
surprised by controlled thermonuclear reactions, they are no longer
fascinated by animals raised in artificial environments, they are no longer
surprised by advances in experimental genetics, which have made it
possible to obtain completely new species of living beings. But to create
brilliant scientists...
"Nonsense," I muttered, looking suspiciously at Corio.
"I knew you wouldn't believe me. I want you and Olla to come with me
to a meeting of the Scientific Council of the Institute of Structural
Neurocybernetics. There will be a discussion on this issue today. Keynote

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speaker - Dr. Favranov...
Favranov is a world-famous scientist, a specialist in neurocybernetics
and in the physiology of higher human nervous activity. I remembered
that a few years ago, speaking to the general public with a popular science
report, he said:
- Communist societyIt has freed mankind from all material cares, from
all moral oppression. An important task is on the agenda - to liberate the
genius of man. A person has everything necessary to become a genius...

3
Dr. Favranov's report was not as popular as the one I listened to a few
years ago. In a brief introduction, he reported on his institute's
observations of frequently occurring cases of genius in children, which
fades over the years. He analyzed this phenomenon and reported that its
main cause was the numerous side and unnecessary in the new social
conditions nervous connections that arose in man in the process of
centuries of evolution. Although communism has freed man from the
struggle for existence, from the fear of the unknown, from concern for the
lives of his offspring, the physiological structure of his nervous system
continues to repeat the pattern that he needed when wolf laws reigned on
Earth. The need for an apparatus of adaptation to hostile conditions of life
disappeared under socialism, and in communist society its existence is the
main obstacle to the disclosure of man's gigantic creative potentialities.
- The organization of the human nervous system, which we have
inherited, is too imperfect and burdensome. We cannot wait for it to
change by itself. Many generations of people will feel unaccountable and
unreasonable fear, despair, hatred, grief, sadness. The task of science is to
accelerate the process of spiritual perfection of man.
On the diagrams projected on the screen, Favranov showed which parts
of the central nervous system of modern man are, as he put it,
"appendicitis" that inhibit the manifestation of the genius of mankind in
the field of science and art...
- And you propose to remove these "appendicitis"? Dr. Meinerov, who
presided, asked Favranov.
-Yes of course.
- And after that, will a person acquire the creative abilities necessary
now?
- Those who have the right set of knowledge will use it more
effectively. Those who do not have such knowledge will acquire it quite
easily You, of course, understand," Favranov added, "that we are not
talking about surgery. Unnecessary traditional nerve connections can be
easily and painlessly broken with an ordinary ultrasound needle.

414
 Olla, who was sitting next to me, slowly stood up.
"Allow me a question, doctor.
-You are welcome.
- Tell me, will such an operation entail a complete change in the
personality of a person? I mean, won't a person become completely
different?
Favranov smiled affectionately.
- Of course, a person will become different. He will become better,
richer, smarter. He will become internally free. He will turn into an
unlimited thinker.
Olla sank heavily.
"Do you understand, Dr. Favranov, what it means to change a person's
personality?" Do you feel the ethical depth of the problem? Meiner asked.
-Yes of course. The person who is the first to agree to such an operation
will perform a feat. In order to decide to become completely different,
great courage is needed. Such operations on people have not yet been
carried out. But we are absolutely sure of their safety, although we have no
experimental material that would indicate how deep and far the change in
personality will gohow the altered "I" will relate to itself, to the people
around it. Analysis of the nerve pathways and mathematical calculations
show that his intellectual work will be immeasurably more productive.
"Friends," Meiners said to the audience, "you certainly understand the
extraordinary circumstances that have caused today's discussion. The fact
is that the fate of mankind depends on whether or not we accept Dr.
Favranov's proposal. We need, absolutely necessary, a group of scientists
to find ways to protect our planet from catastrophe. I have just been told
that the average temperature of the earth has risen by another degree
today. We have received a huge number of different proposals on what
needs to be done to stop the process of solar radiation penetrating the
Earth. But all these proposals are such that their implementation will
require a period of time after which any attempts in this direction will be
meaningless. I ask you to comment on the issues raised.
"Let's get out," Olla whispered. "I can't take it anymore.
We left the institute building and sat down on a bench right in front of
the gate to the park. I knew Olla wouldn't leave here until she saw Corio.
The snow was melting under our feet, and a stream was murmuring in
the concrete ditch. Some women walked past the fence, and we heard one
say that "according to the Institute of Forecasts, this was the weather three
hundred years ago..."
"Do you know what I'm afraid of?" Olla asked, unable to stand it.
-Yes. You are afraid that after this he will stop loving you.
"Or I'm him... Suddenly he will become a complete stranger...

415
 The snow under our feet completely melted, and we saw a piece of
damp earth and last year's green grass on it.
"Soon it will be warm here like summer," I muttered.
Behind them flashed patches of blue sky. Sometimes the bright sun
peeked through for a moment.
- As a result of the heating of the earth, a sharp violation of the balance
of the atmosphere will follow. Thunderstorms and storms will begin
fantastic in their destructive power...
"It's terrible... It's scary... You know, I'm ashamed that I... that I don't
want Corio...
"I understand, Olla. Maybe you feel this way for the same reasons that
people can't become geniuses.
"But I can't imagine how I can feel any other way.
- Favranov says that such feelings simply should not exist, that they can
and should be eliminated.
"I don't know if that's good. I would never agree to become different.
I shrugged my shoulders. If you become different just a little, it's
nothing. But if it was completely different, then it just didn't fit in my
head.
"Of course it's a feat," Olla said after much thought. A feat that requires
no less courage and bravery than the first flight on an airplane, than the
first journey into space. Always someone first, the most courageous, must
do something for people and captivate others by his example. And yet
there is something unnatural in this. Both in the air and in space, a person
remains himself. Here he does not go anywhere, does not fly anywhere,
but becomes different.
She reasoned aloud, as if trying to convince herself...
- Who knows what problems await herdecision for the happiness of all
people on Earth. History knows many examples when people became
different in the full sense of the word in the name of a great idea, - I said
quietly.
- Such qualities of a person as his mind, character, feelings, intuition,
make up the essence of his personality, his "I". Artificially deprive him of
one of the elements characteristic only to him, and he will become
different. I am deeply convinced that such artificial interference with the
very essence of the human "I" is not legitimate and not ethical.
- Even if it is necessary to solve a vital task for the sake of all mankind?
She said nothing.
- Corio will become more valuable and useful to people than it is now.
"But it will be different, you know, completely different, alien...
"There are no strangers now," I said.
I hugged Olla and wanted to tell her that now she was talking about

416
"appendicitis", inherited from the depths of centuries. But I didn't say that:
Corio came up to us.
He was very excited.
"Well?" I asked.
I am the first.

4
I, Olla, and Corio walked slowly to the Institute of Structural
Neurocybernetics. There was still time, and we did not choose the shortest
way, but went along the embankment of the Moskva River and further
through the park. The ice on the river has swelled, under the bridges,
puddles of water have formed near the bulls. There was not a cloud in the
sky, and the sun shone like on a warm May day.
Olla, as if afraid that we would talk about the upcoming tests that we
would all have to go through, hurriedly talked about the results of her
work on physiologically active chemicals. She managed to get drugs that
relieve the feeling of fatigue in a person. However, it has not yet been
established whether their unlimited use is harmless. In any case, if it turns
out that the substances will not adversely affect the physiological activity
of the body, they can be recommended to everyone who has to perform
hard and complex work in a short time.
Without noticing it, she touched on a topic that we were all thinking
about. Looking at Corio, Olla instantly fell silent.
"These happy young mothers with strollers do not suspect how bad it is
that the sun is so bright," my friend said thoughtfully.
- How many people know about what is happening now? I asked Corio.
- Very few. Only employees of the Sun Service and several hundred
more around the world. It is too early to sound the alarm, and there is no
need. Maybe everything will work out...
"You're about to undergo an operation that should make you an
extraordinarily intelligent person, Corio. I wonder if you have any ideas
about stopping the impending catastrophe right now?
"Of course there is," he said. "But they're all clumsy and, I would say,
stupid. You see, these ideas are all built on the basis of what science is
now well known. And if they begin to be implemented, then neither
human nor material resources of the Earth will be enough for this.
Something fundamentally new is needed! The solution to the problem
must be sought in something completely unexpected.
"And you think that after the operation you will know where to look for
a solution to the problem?" Olla asked with bitterness and undisguised
irony.
"I'm not sure, dear, Dr. Favranov says that, mI will know.

417
 Olla stopped at the parapet of the embankment and, without looking at
us, said sadly:
"Dr. Favranov... Dr. Favranov... And how does he know that it makes
sense to conduct such a cruel experiment? Maybe all of you who agreed to
work on the problem will not solve anything. After all, you can't come up
with a miracle, really! And no matter what you become after the operation,
you will still not be able to create a new science in ten days, the science of
protecting the Earth from the radiation of the Sun. And what is the risk for
all of you..
Corio objected:
"I do not believe that after the severance of some nerve connections in
the brain, a person's feelings, his worldview, his personality will change.
In the park, the snow had completely melted, and warm steam was
rising over the bare flower beds. There was a real smell of spring, birds
were singing, children's voices were heard from all sides... Corio stopped
and looked sadly at the large group of children who were playing dragon.
They grabbed each other by the waist, and the whole formation wriggled
on the lawn, imitating an old Japanese dance.
"And even if you had to sacrifice your dearest feelings, wouldn't a
person who loves other people do it?"
And here is the colonnade at the main entrance to the institute. We stopped
indecisively. I turned away and saw Corio and Olla look at each other. Tears
glittered in my sister's eyes, as if the hour had come to part forever. I
wandered aside, overcome by strange feelings. The operation on my friend
will take place in five hours. During this time, it will be researched and
prepared. Then he will be led into an unusual "operating room" - a hall with a
large number of measuring and control devices and with a wonderful tool of
Professor Favranov - an "ultrasonic needle", which painlessly tears the
thinnest fibers of nervous tissue at any depth, in any place.
Nervous tissues, nerve fibers... It is in their complex and intricate
labyrinth that the whole rational essence of man, his inner world, his
outward gaze, his perceptions, his analyses, his feelings and moods are
contained. There, in the depths of the human brain, complete darkness
always reigns, and he sees the light. There is dead silence, and he hears a
complex range of sounds. The complex thermostat of the human body
maintains the temperature within strict limits, and the brain senses heat
and cold, although its own temperature is unchanged.
Only in the last fifty years has the brain begun to comprehend itself,
began to analyze its own work, began to meticulously study its own
functions, finding strengths and weaknesses in them. The brain began to
criticize itself! He begins to rebel against his own imperfection, he begins
to develop methods to improve himself! He came to the conclusion that it

418
was necessary to free oneself from the fetters, from the burden of
unnecessary structures that arose in the process of evolution. He found
methods and means to do this. He commands himself to do it at all costs!
And who knows, maybe in the amazing process of self-knowledge lies
the main direction of self-improvement of the human brain. Perhaps the
emancipation of human genius, the leap into a completely new qualitative
state, lies precisely through the process of objective self-analysis of the
brain, self-study, which allows you to eliminate weaknesses and
strengthen strength...
- Come in there together," Corio said suddenly.
He was a little pale and excited. Olla tried not to look at any of us. We
went up to the door and entered the hall of the institute.
At the wide staircase stood a group of people in white coats, led by Dr.
Favranov. Several people in dark suits, calm and unhurried, were talking
to him. These are scientists who have to go through the same thing as
Corio, but only after him.
"Oh!" Here is our hero! Favranov exclaimed, approaching Corio.
"You're a little late. We are waiting for you.
"Meet my friends," Corio introduced me and Olla to Favranov.
Glancing at his sister, Favranov narrowed his eyes slightly and smiled
faintly.
"Judging by your appearance, you have come to see off your friend
almost on a journey to a distant galaxy!"
"You shouldn't think so," Olla said, smiling faintly. - We are well aware
that this is the way it should be.
"Yes, dear girl. You are right. That's the way it should be.
Favranov shook Olla's hand firmly.
- Tell me, will the operation take a long time?
-Trivia. Only three or four minutes. It takes more to prepare for surgery.
But after Corio, everything will be much faster.
Favranov clapped his hands and said loudly:
"So, friends, I beg your attention. Now shake hands with our dear
comrade Corio. We take him away.
Then he turned to scientists - geophysicist Leukert, astrophysicist
Malinovsky, chemist Portella, mathematician Grimzo.
"You shouldn't leave. Dr. Kostorsky will take you to the analytical
laboratory. After working with Corio, we will invite you to our place. And
you, girl, don't worry. Just don't think about it, he said kindly to Olla. "If it
is very difficult for you, come to me. We've got you covered...
"Also for an operation?" - I thought and, taking my sister by the hand,
literally pulled her out.
In January, a furious, violent, ominous spring raged.

419
 5
Two days after we saw Corio off, I met Onks Filitov. In spite of his
advanced age, he walked down the street briskly and swiftly. He was the
first to notice me.
- Oh, Avro, good afternoon!
"Hello, old man.
"How is the weather?" He asked, nodding slyly at the sun.
"Damn it," I said.
"Oh, my dear, it's not good, it's not good. You're foul-mouthed. This is
prohibited.
"Listen, Onx. Honestly, I don't have time for your criticisms now. Now
I am in a hurry to get my sister out of the laboratory. It works like a frenzy.
And at night he does not sleep at all...
-Overwork?
-Yes.
"Do you want me to help your sister?" Onks whispered.
"Since when did you become a specialist in human souls?"
- From today's meeting of the Critical Council of Neutral Industrial
Management. Avro, you have no idea what happened!
I looked at Onks in wonder, trying to understand what could change a
man like that, turn an old skeptic into an enthusiastic youth. He, taking me
by the hand and taking me aside, whispered confidentially:
"An ingenious way has been found to stop all this...
He pointed to the sun.
-Found?
-Yes. And withThe most outstanding, the most incredible, the most...
I grabbed Onks by the shoulders and shook him with all my might.
- Who found and what did they find?
-Aha! Completely different emotions. I'm sure your Olla will get well
as soon as she finds out what happened.
"Tell me, old man, quickly!"
- The problem was solved by the theoretical physicist Corio, who is at
the head of the group...
"Corio!" I shouted beside myself with joy.
-Yes. And do you know what he suggested?
-A what?
"Throw out ordinary water on rockets at a height of five hundred
kilometers above the Earth's surface!"
I knitted my brow, thinking hard about what such an operation could give.
- The discussion on the problem has just ended, and the decision has
been made. In an hour or two, the first thousand tons of water will be in
orbit.

420
 "I don't understand anything," I muttered.
"Nobody understood anything. Everyone was mesmerized by
thousands of old projects. They offered to throw away powdery
substances, metals, graphite, metallized films and who knows what else.
Each proposal was immediately evaluated from the point of view of the
industrial and material potential of the Earth, and all this had to be
rejected. There was a lack of either the required materials or production
capacity. Can you imagine how much ordinary chalk you need to throw
into space to reduce the radiation flux by at least half? A million tons! And
how many missiles are needed! And each rocket will create only an
insignificant cloud, and from them you need to make a colossal blanket for
the Earth. In addition, when the Sun returns to its previous activity, it is
not at all clear how to remove all this from orbit. And so Corio offered
water, ordinary water!
I still didn't understand anything.
He approached the problem from a completely unexpected angle. He
reasoned as follows. It is necessary to close the Earth tightly, reliably and
by the cheapest means, and most importantly - only for a certain time. Of
course, water is the cheapest material on Earth. But what will happen to it
in space? The whole genius of the solution lies in finding out the
mechanism of water behavior there, above the first radiation belt. It turns
out, and he irrefutably proved this, that water itself will spread over vast
spaces, just as surfactants spread over the surface of a solid body. A ton of
water forms the thinnest film with a fantastic area in a few hours. And then
the water molecules of this film under the influence of solar radiation will
dissociate into hydrogen and oxygen, which, in turn, will undergo
ionization, creating areas with an increased concentration of
hydrogen-oxygen plasma. Corio and his comrades calculated the work
that would be spent on these processes, and came to the conclusion that it
could, at will, account for up to seventy percent of the energy emitted by
the Sun. Idea!
Onks slapped me on the shoulder and, running away, shouted:
"Go and tell your sister about everything. Everyone in the Industrial
Directorate knows that she loves Corio and he loves her!
"And he her... Does he love you?"
My excited story made a surprising impression on Olla. She smiled and
said quietly,
"I knew Corio would offer something unusual!"
"We are saved, all the people of the Earth are saved, you understand
that!" Olla
looked at me and smiled.
The windows of our apartment suddenly shook, then again and again.

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 -Started! - I whispered. - Ships with water went into space. The Korio
project is coming true!
The windows continued to shake until evening and throughout the
night. For the first time in a long time, Olla finally fell asleep, and I turned
on the radio. The latest news was followed by a weather report, I listened
to it with bated breath. Yes, the temperature has stopped. In conclusion,
the announcer said:
- In the next day, a sharp drop in temperature is expected to two or three
degrees below zero, and then to ten or fifteen ...
They even calculated that!
Early in the morning, I quietly dressed and went outside. An unusual
cold breeze blew from the north. During the night in the park, clods of
damp earth hardened, puddles were covered with a thin crust of ice. The
morning sky was cloudless, black and purple. The air suddenly shook
from successive explosions, and I noticed how after about five minutes
thin bright strokes appeared high in the sky, like from meteors.
Water was thrown into space from all over the Earth. I hesitantly
opened the door of the Institute of Structural Neurocybernetics and
entered the empty, dimly lit hall.
"What do you want?" The young man asked, rising quickly from his
chair.
"Are you on duty?"
-Yes. What do you want?
"I want to know how things are going with my friend, Corio.
"You can't disturb him. It works. He and his comrades.
- How did the operation go?
- Very successfully. We ourselves did not expect this. Such a surge of
creative energy! It's unbelievable!
The young man's eyes sparkled.
"A stroke of genius! Now we know how to unleash human genius! And
what will happen on Earth when all people become like Corio!
I nodded my head and walked out. It was already dawn. I looked at the
upper floors of the institute building and noticed that the electric light
continued to burn in three windows. Probably, a friend of mine works at
one of them. He's very close to me, but maybe it's very, very far away
now. I caught myself that now, when the problem concerning the whole
Earth was solved, I began to think about myself, about the fate of my
sister. How could it be otherwise? Human happiness is deductive. From
the general to the particular...
A car drove up to the institute, Dr. Favranov got out of it.
"How's your sister?" He asked, shaking my hand firmly.
"She's very afraid.

422
 "Me too," said Favranov. "But there's nothing to be done. She will have
to survive this crisis. Frankly, I don't know what happened to Corio's
emotional world.
Favranov was silent for a few seconds and then added:
"According to my observations, there is no direct correlation between
the intellectual abilities of people and their emotional world. Very often,
intelligent people are completely insensitive.
"When will Olla be able to see Corio?"
-Tonight. Now he is completing the development of a rocket launch
program for the period until May 1. After that, he will rest. In the evening
I will kick him out for a walk.
It snowed in the afternoon. In the beginning, it was huge raw flakes.
They melted as soon as they touched the ground. A prickly north wind
blew, and the snow became fine and frequent. At three o'clock in the
afternoon it was announced on the radio that the sharp drop in temperature
predicted in the morning would come much earlier. At three o'clock, the
snow suddenly stoppedA heavy leaden cloud floated over the city,
exposing the orange sky. The roofs shone with purple colors.
"It should be," I whispered, looking with admiration at the real January
winter, as if I had never seen anything like it.
I went to the institute where Olla worked.
"Let's go for a walk." Look how beautiful.
She looked at me and guessed everything.
-I'm afraid.
-Come along. Corio performed a feat. Are you not able to share at least
a part of it?
"What if he doesn't recognize me?"
"You have to go through that, you know?"
-Yes. Let's go...
The sun was a real winter sun. It hung low above the horizon, and blue
shadows stretched out on the orange shroud. Clods of lush snow swayed
on the branches of the trees. Children were running around in the park, the
first snow slides appeared, young skiers were floundering in snowdrifts.
And no one suspected anything. We approached the institute and stopped
in front of its main entrance.
Suddenly, the door opened, and Corio did not come out, but flew out.
Behind him, a man in a white coat laughed loudly. It was Dr. Favranov.
Corio grabbed a lump of snow and, laughing, threw it at the doctor.
"I'm easy for you to deal with," the old man said loudly. "But try it with
them.
He turned Corio in our direction and disappeared behind the door. My
heart was pounding like a hammer. Corio stood for a few seconds, looking

423
at us. He was wearing a ski suit, his head with lush blond hair was not
covered with anything. As if coming to his senses, he quickly ran down
the stairs and stood right in front of us. I felt like I was going to go crazy. I
didn't believe that Corio's face could have such an expression. I never
imagined that a human face could be so spiritual, inspired, joyful.
"Corio, is that you?" Olla whispered breathlessly.
Corio rushed to her, tore her away from me, and, picking her up in his
arms, ran like mad.
"Corio, Corio!" I shouted, barely keeping up with them.
He stopped and looked at me cheerfully.
"What a funny thing you are, Avro!" Only people who have lost their
common sense are trying to catch up with lovers!
I stopped, picked up a lump of snow and began to rub my forehead with
it thoroughly.
I walked forward straight through the snow, to where the park turned
into the forest. I breathed in the elastic frosty air and looked at the
snow-covered Christmas trees, which had acquired their eternally
fabulous appearance. The forest ended, and I walked and walked through
the snowy field in the winter twilight. My shadow stretched out in front of
me, and I stepped on it step by step. But then two more shadows caught up
with me, and I walked slower to see them. They walked together and lived
the same life. Then I turned abruptly to the side to make way for them.

424
 Striped Bob

1
We looked at the orange pointed hulk that towered half a mile away
against the turquoise sky. It's amazing how this three-thousand-foot-high
rock came to be in the middle of a sandy plain.
"A miracle of nature," said Bob, "It happens!
In the distance, between us and the rock, we could see a barbed-wire
fence, and through it ran a narrow concrete path to the horizon.
- Probably, there were rocks around here once. Over time, they
disappeared, and only this one remained.
I looked at Bob and chuckled to myself. In the bright morning sunshine,
the white streaks on his face turned pale pink, as if the skin had been
neatly cut off with a razor.
"You know what I think," I said. "What rains, thunderstorms, and
winds have not done in millions of years, we humans will do in a dozen
years.
Bob lowered his head and began to pick at the velvety sand with his
foot. It seemed to me that he was embarrassed by the white stripes on his
face. Before we were hired, we were all checked by a medical
commission. Bob was diagnosed with a rare disease called vitiligo. For
some unknown reason, places with a lack of pigmentation appear on the
body. Otherwise, he was a guy like a guy.
"Some scientist or philosopher said that mankind is a cancer on the
body of our planet," Bob said.
-Worse. Black pox. Civilization is marching around the globe under the
explosions of shells and bombs. With each new war, smallpox leaves
deeper and deeper sores on the face of the planet. I can imagine what the
ground will look like when our h-bombs pass over it.
Having seen enough of the rock, we wandered back to the two-story
gray building. To the right stood Colonel Jakes's cottage, and to the left of
the main building stood a huge canvas tent as high as a five-story building.
On the leeward side, three huge blue letters, the initials of our mighty
state, fluttered on the canvas.
"These things are collected in this booth," I explained.
"In Chicago." At Professor Colins's. How about you?
"I'm not a mathematician. I am a dosimetrist. And a little more

425
electronics. But I didn't graduate from anything except college.
Colonel Jakes was walking towards him. Ten paces away from us, he
stopped, folding his arms on his chest.
"Do you like them here?" - he turned to me.
- And the devil knows! Without a job, you can go crazy here.
- We have a good bar. Free. Self-service.
"I already know that.
As we talked, Bob walked slowly toward the building. Apparently, he
did not really like talking to the military. As for me, I didn't care. All of
them, in khaki, are decent blockheads. It is not clear why the government
entrusts them with tasks that require good brains.
"Who is this guy?" The Colonel asked, nodding at Bob.
"It's Bob Wigner, our mathematician
—" Jakes drawled.
-Exactly. So when do we start the hot work?
"And why should you hurry?" The money is coming, and it's good.
"Not really," I said, and trudged into the bar.
In the bar sat George Cramm, Samuel Finn, and a brunette, I think her
name was Ciconi.
"Salute, William!" Where's your striped buddy? Finn asked.
"I guess I went to bed." He doesn't really like it here.
"I can't stand guys with such a spotted face as he has," the brunette said,
without taking her brightly painted lips away from the glass.
"By the way, who are you?" I asked, not looking at her.
-And you?
I can't stand impudent girls. And this one was the most impudent I ever
knew. She had beautiful legs, a good figure and a physiognomy from a
movie commercial. Her glass was stained with lipstick. I was disgusted,
and I poured myself a gin half and half with lemon juice.
"William, she's the only lady we've had," said George.
"I wish she hadn't been there at all," I muttered.
What did this girl care about his face? I wish I could see how she would
behave if she suddenly had some kind of metabolic disorder!
We drank in silence for a few minutes. Then Samuel Finn spoke again.
"It may happen that we are wasting our time here. It was broadcast on
the radio that the tests would soon be banned. All nuclear affairs are
covered.
-Nonsense! Chiconi said confidently. - The government will never
agree to this. Propaganda hype.
"You're not an assistant secretary of state, by any chance?" I asked.
I'm his cousin. Aren't you from the commission of inquiry?
- What does the commission have to do with it?

426
 - You ask questions that are on her part.
"If the trials stop, there will be nothing for us to do here. Our contracts
are terminated," Finn continued. "The most we can count on in this case is
the amount of money needed for the return trip, plus a per diem.
Apparently, Finn was very worried about the money problem. And I
didn't care. If not here, then elsewhere I could find a job in my specialty.
For some reason, I was offended by Bob again. He really hated the
brunette.
After the second glass of gin, I said,
"Women should not be allowed to do that.
The brunette shrugged her shoulders and turned to George:
"Explain to this guy that when he gets dysentery, he'll crawl to me.
"Are you in charge of the men's toilet?"
She gave me a contemptuous look and walked out of the bar.
Kramm and Finn burst out laughing.
"Why are you attached to her?" She is a doctor.
"Especially rubbish. What right did she have to say that about Wigner?
- And what did this striped guy give you? His physiognomy really got
drunk. So what? Must we talk about anything? For example, before you
came, we washed your bones.
"You can wash mine as much as you like, but don't touch Bob."
Really, what do I care about Bob? He is so quiet and shy and painfully
unsightly in appearance. Probably, no girl wants to dance with him. How
can you not be imbued with pity!
"If she's a doctor, she'd better think about how to get the guy out of
stupid vitiligo." We make superbombs, but we can't cure people of such
nonsense...
"You've been led," Kramm said. "You'd better go to bed."
I didn't go to bed, but decided to call on Bob. His room and study were
on the first floor at the left end of the corridor. I stood by the window for a
while and looked at the canvas circus, near the catGuys in purple overalls
were moving lazily. They dragged large tin boxes inside the tent.
Bob was lying stretched out on the couch, leafing through a magazine.
"Why didn't you come to the bar?"
"I didn't want to," he replied and looked me straight in the eyes.
He seemed to me to be a damn smart and honest guy. I don't know why.
"Listen, Bob. If any beast hurts you, tell me. In college, I was a
champion of fighting without any style. Proof of this is four visits to the
police and ten days in prison.
He stood up and smiled in surprise.
- And if some woman offends you, especially if she is a brunette...
At that moment, someone knocked on the door.

427
 "Come in," Bob said. The same brunette came into the room With rage,
my throat caught in my throat.
"Are you Bob Wigner?" She asked, paying no attention to me.
-Yes.
"I've just looked at your medical record. You are prescribed injections
and ultraviolet rays.
Bob nodded his head in embarrassment. I stood to the side with
clenched fists.
- Undress to the waist. And you, please, come out," she turned to me.
"Why on earth?"
"That's the way it should be. If you don't come out, I'll complain to
Colonel Jakes.
She opened a small leather suitcase and pulled out a syringe, an alcohol
lamp, and a box of ampoules. Bob stood in the middle of the room,
confused.
-Well good. Get treated, my friend," I said, shaking his sleeve. "Just
don't put too much trust in these eaters.
I trudged back to the bar. It turned out to be closed, and I went to bed. I
fell asleep thinking that Bob must be a wonderful guy.

2
Soon I got tired of the landscape around our base. Bob and I had seen
enough of the pointed orange rock and the flat desert. The soul-tickling
feeling of a hydrogen bomb resting next to us, under a canvas canopy, has
also been dulled. I decided not to take all this very personally. If those who
advertise themselves as the saviors of mankind don't care about nuclear
war, why should I think about it?
In the bar, we learned from each other that all over the world there was
a protest against the testing of atomic and hydrogen bombs. Samuel Finn
always said,
"Spit on all this chatter, boys! Our business is to make money. If they
agree to stop the tests, we will be screwed.
There was some logic here. The meaning of Finn's statements was very
simple, what is more important - money or life?
I don't know how our boys' thoughts evolved, but as for me, there came
a time when I didn't care whether I worked in secret hydrogen bomb tests
or in some hospital that treated cancer with radioactive rays. In order not
to think about it, I drank whiskey.

After drinking at the bar, I visited Bob. I can't say that he was very
happy when I came to him drunk. He smiled politely and invited me to sit
down. But I felt that he did not want me to stay in his room for a long time.

428
And then there was Margaret Chiconi with his ultraviolet lamp and
syringe:
"Please come out. I'm going to give Mr. Wigner shots now.
The fact that she went to Bob did not reduce the white stripes on his
face. And I, in fact, completely lost it. Therefore, wheneverWhen I got
drunk, I found Colonel Jakes and said to him
, "It's a man's business.
"According to the statistical center," the colonel answered, "the
percentage of mentally disabled guys is growing in proportion to one
quarter of the missing number of women. Chiconi is just this one quarter
that you are missing.
"It must be very scientific, Colonel. But one-fourth can't be equally
good for the whole company, can it?
"Are you jealous of her friend Bob?"
Once I had a big talk with Ciconi.
"Why are you bothering Bob?"
"I'm treating him."
"And what the hell are you showing up at the moment when I come to
him?"
"I can ask you the same question.
"You know, miss, although you are an attractive girl, it does not affect
me. I'm one hundred percent sure that you're a fool, like everyone else. I
don't want you to seduce smart and inexperienced guys like Bob. It's just
mean.
- At what age do you drink whiskey? Chiconi asked.
"Eighteen." This is irrelevant.
-I see. You are a chronic alcoholic.
"No worse than the others. Do you know how one of our responsible
generals drank? It was necessary to keep a dozen guys near it to protect us
from thermonuclear war. This could always happen when he got drunk or
when his mistress refused to go to bed with him.
"We don't care about the generals in charge," Margaret said vaguely.
"So you don't care if he presses the button of nuclear war or not?"
Bob walked into the bar.
"Hello, old man! "Tomorrow is Sunday, and I invite you to go to Santa
Cruz." The village, of course, is rubbish, but the girls are what you need!
Bob looked at Margaret in confusion.
"I've just got a Theano typewriter. A wonderful thing! The memory
capacity is one and a half million binary units.
- What is your car compared to the dance floor in Santa Cruz! I
exclaimed, finishing my third shot of whiskey.
- These are incomparable things. "Theano" is equivalent to the most

429
modern computer. You can run any algorithm into it.
I liked Bob precisely because he was not like everyone else. A
philosopher, he looked at things from a very intricate point of view.
-How are you feeling? Chiconi asked.
"Thank you, all right," Bob replied, smiling shyly.
This comedy was starting to make me angry. Fortunately, Samuel Finn
came in.
-Great. Where have you been? I asked.
Jakes sent me there. What a thing, I'll tell you!
-A what?
- New HT bomb. A stupid khaki monster. Whoa!
He spread his arms wide.
-How many? Bob asked.
"Something like seventy megatons.
I sipped my temples.
In the end, we are all screwed. I'm sure others have the same stupid
monsters, or maybe even worse.
Chiconi got down from her high chair and said,
"Bob, let's go." Let these degenerates get drunk.
Bob followed her like a dog. What a boy!
On meA gray anger was unleashed. When they were at the door, I
shouted,
"Hey, Bob! Does this dyed really mean more to you than your friends?
They stopped dead in their tracks. Then Margaret returned to the
counter with a firm step. I poured myself gin with lemon juice. Before
drinking, she turned to me and slapped me on the cheek with all her might.
After that, she drank her gin.
I didn't notice him and Bob leave the bar. I was completely
dumbfounded, and Samuel Finn was laughing at the top of his lungs.
"What a woman.. With this one, an atomic war is not scary!
Staggering, I trudged to my home. Bob ran out to meet me.
"You know, this Feeno machine is just a miracle! he exclaimed, seizing
my hand.
"Get the hell out!"
"Just listen, She's no worse than the Evenk."
-Bean! - I growled menacingly. - Go to your make-up!
Bob staggered back and pressed himself against the wall in a strange
way. His lips quivered, then closed, and a deep crease appeared on his
mottled face that I had never seen before.
He turned his back on me and ran into his room. Well, let it be! I went
up to the second floor, thinking that Bob was wrong to be offended. Ten
plane engines were humming in my head, and I took whiskey out of the

430
cupboard and drank more. Then he noticed an envelope on the table. It
turned out to be a letter from my mother. She wrote that the most
important thing in life is friendship. If all people on earth, regardless of
where they live and what they do, were friends, then there would never be
any wars. Probably, there was some truth in this. It's too bad that I
offended Bob. Well, it's okay, it will pass. He is so pleased that he was
given a portable electronic typewriter "Feano" for his mathematical
calculations. I was also given something - four ends of wire, two red and
two blue, which I had to attach to the impulse counters "Rocket" and
"Package". When a hydrogen bomb is detonated under the rock, I will sit
in my room and watch the meters to see what they wind up. You need to
know the level of radioactivity on the surface of the earth after the
explosion of a bomb under a rock.

3
George Cramm was in charge of the laboratory of photoelectronics.
These are photocells, thermistors, scintillators, and so on. Measuring the
intensity of the flash, the spectrum of radiation, the intensity of the flux of
radioactive particles - this is all part of it. He did his job silently and did
not boast. And we all boasted. Everyone except Bob. He also worked in
silence.
One day I met Crumb in the corridor.
"Soon the end of the rock.
"It's a pity," he said.
- It's a pity when a person is killed. And here, you think, is a rock!
"It's the only rock for a hundred miles around.
- There are any number of other rocks in the world.
-Still. Our rock makes the landscape unique.
Are they all crazy, or what? Before the bomb test, suddenly everyone
felt sorry for the rock!
Leaving the house, I went to the sentry by the thorny fence. He looked
at the sky and, without looking at me, said:
"A plane has just flown by. It left behind a smoky path. And now she
was gone. Wonderful, isn't it?
I saw nothing in the blue sky and began to look at the orange rock.
"They say that will disappear on Monday too," said the sentry, nodding
at the rock.
"So what?"
"We're a decent piece of rubbish, after all. We spoil nature.
He was a simple guy with a carbine in his hands. He tucked his cap into
a wide trouser belt. Drops of sweat dripped down her tanned face from
under her thick black hair.

431
 I walked to the gate.
-Wait! he shouted. -Must not!
"Why is that?"
"From now on, no one is allowed to go outside the fence.
-Why?
"She's already lying there."
-Who?
- An H-bomb.
A black dot was rushing along the concrete path directly from the rock
to us.
As it approached, it took on a distinct outline. It was an automatic cart
controlled by radio. With the help of her mechanical hands, our military
engineers did under the rock what they did not have time to do with their
own hands. When a hydrogen bomb was placed there, in the cave, people
were not allowed there. Devices and tools were carried by an automatic
cart. She drove up to the fence with some cargo covered with a tarpaulin.
"What is she carrying?" "
It's none of our business. Lucky - and that's it.
The cart rushed past us and, making a sharp turn along the concrete
path, drove to the canvas tent.
"It's rubbish," Kramm said, coming up behind me.
"Why do you think so?" "
They drive an automatic cart back and forth. They did not have time to
set everything up. And the government is in a hurry to put an end to the
ordeal.
With a slight whirring, the cart drove up to the gate again and, slowing
for a moment, suddenly roared and rushed back to the rock.
"He's
a strange friend of yours, this Bob," Crumm said.
I looked at him uncomprehendingly.
"It turns out that he has never seen thermistors. He came to me and took
one. He says he wants to test his teeth. What do you think, why does he
need it?
I shrugged my shoulders. Losing sight of the cart, he suggested:
"Let's go to the bar.
In the bar sat Margaret, Colonel Jakes, and Finn.
- Hello, guys! Samuel said. "Why do you look so dull?"
"It's hot," Kramm said.
"We were afraid the test wouldn't happen," Finn said. "Too much is
written in the newspapers about control.
Jakes grimaced and waved his hand.
-Nonsense. No one will agree to this.

432
 "What if the people demand that all this stop?" Margaret asked.
Jakes looked up at her in surprise.
"And what kind of thing are these people?"
"Well, let's suppose all the people...
The colonel chuckled.
- People are us. Scientists say that an underground explosion can be
passed off as an earthquake.
- And how much will we be paid on the days when we study the hot
zone? Finn asked.
Cramm and I winced.
"Listen, Samuel. If you were paid to kill newborns, would you also be
interested in the price? "
Hot work is hot work. What do newborns have to do with it?..
I poured myself a glass of whiskey, half and half. That Finn got on my
nerves. When I had drunk, I said to Colonel Jakes,
"You can't let any bastard do such serious things.
"I've heard that from you before. Who do you mean now?
"That huckster," I nodded at Samuel Finn.
He jumped up from his chair with a face distorted with anger.
"He's greedy for money. Give such a person a button, pay a thousand
dollars and the whole globe will be blown to pieces. And what do they
think in the department for the selection of special personnel?
Finn jumped back two steps, ran and punched me in the side. Then I
jumped down from a high chair and, wrapping his right hand behind his
back, hit him four times in the face. He was pretty drunk and after my
blows he could not stand on his feet.
"You've done your job, now take him home." Miss Margaret, he's
supposed to be like a cucumber tomorrow," Jakes ordered.
I dragged Finn into his room and threw him on the couch. His nose was
bleeding. Soon Margaret appeared with a suitcase. She took out cotton
wool and ammonia. I sat and watched mockingly as her deft hands made
Finn's nasty, clean-shaven face look good.
"Don't you feel sick of bothering with people like him?" I asked
Chiconi.
"I've never seen such cretins as you," she replied, wiping Samuel's nose
with a cotton swab.
"Can you wait and not bring him to his senses for another minute?"
-Well?
"I'll tell you frankly, it seems to me that a man who makes money on
secret atomic explosions is a decent bastard.
-And you? Aren't you here to make money, just like him? He is stupid
and does not hide it. And you pretend to be a pacifist and calmly receive

433
your salary.
"Yes, but—" I thought suddenly about what Margaret had said.
- There are no "buts". It's just that everyone here is decent brutes.
Finn opened his eyes and, seeing me, turned to face the back of the sofa.
Chiconi poured some liquid from a vial on his temples, and he rubbed it
with his hand. I sat there like a fool. After what Ciconi had told me, I
suddenly felt like a scoundrel. Really, why did I beat Finn? Why am I
better than him?
I left the room and went to Bob's.
"Are you angry with me?" I asked, entering without knocking.
He sat bent over the papers. Sometimes he pressed buttons on his
typewriter, and it hissed like the trigger mechanism of a camera. In the
center of the miniature suitcase, a green light flashed. Bob looked at the
dial and copied the numbers from it.
"Aren't you angry with me?" I repeated and put my hand on his
shoulder.
"No," he answered, raising his intelligent eyes to me.
"What are you calculating?"
"Well, all sorts of nonsense. One algorithm. Tomorrow there will be
trials.
-Yes I know. It's kind of disgusting...
Bob grinned.
"We're kind of like a gang of bandits here. Renegades from the whole
world. An underground explosion will be passed off as an earthquake.
"I know," Bob said.
"Disgusting, isn't it?"
-Very much. You know, I have a lot of work to do. I may not make it
before morning...
"Do you want me to leave?"
- To be honest, yes. Tomorrow, after ten in the morning, please.
Ten in the morning is the moment of the explosion. This means that
Bob is getting out of his skin to prepare for the tests. And yet I don't beat
him, but I beat Finn.
On the desk, I noticed a piece of plastic with two ends of wire.
-What is this Is? I asked indifferently.
-Thermistor. Very sensitive to temperature changes. He can feel the
warmth of the human body up to a mile away.
I went out. Oh, how disgusting my soul was on the eve of the hydrogen
bomb test..
... I was finishing my fifth glass of whiskey when Margaret showed up
at the bar.
"Why don't you go to bed?" Tomorrow is a hard day.

434
 I looked at her with hatred.
"Listen, you. Do you like the rock in the west?
She nodded her head very seriously.
"Me too." Now, tomorrow she won't be there. Understand? Tomorrow
we will wipe it off the face of the earth. This is a state rock, it belongs to
our government... And it decided to destroy it... I see?
- Everything is clear to me. But it's time for you to go to bed," Margaret
said, and sat down beside me.
-I hate you. Let's drink together to the rest of the rocks...
-Come on. Will you give me your word that you will go to bed at
once?"
Her glass seemed to hang in the air, and I aimed for a long time to clink
glasses with it.
"Now take this." Margaret handed me two pills.
"You're a woman." Aren't you afraid that tomorrow the earth that gave
birth to us will shake like a mortally wounded animal? Aren't you sick to
get paid for this abomination? How do we make money? On the fact that
we drive monstrous explosives into our mother's womb and tear apart the
body that gave birth to all of us... And you calmly say that I must be sober
tomorrow... I don't want to be sober, you know?..
-I see it. Take the pills.
"To hell with it!" To hell with your pills..
A vague figure suddenly appeared to my right. I rubbed my eyes and
realized that it was Samuel Finn. He poured himself a double shot of
whiskey.
"Ah, he's here," I said through clenched teeth.
"I've come," he replied calmly. His nose is pretty swollen. He greedily
fell down to the glass and drank it all down.
"Samuel, take it too. Margaret handed the pills to him too.
For some reason, I remembered my mother's letter and said:
"Let's be friends, guys. After all, there is no one else in the world except us...
"Think about it, the size! There is no one else in the world except him!
And two and a half billion people? If every inhabitant of the globe hit you
with a snap on the nose, there would not be even a wet place left of you.
Don't boast about your fists. They are zero against the hydrogen bomb,
and zero to the tenth power against all mankind.
"And yet you have to be friends," I muttered indistinctly.
"I'll see you off," Margaret said.
I stopped at the exit and looked along the corridor. At the end Bob was
standing smoking.
"Does he smoke?" "
Wigner, how are you?" Margaret asked.

435
 "It's all right
, isn't it?" she exclaimed.
- Yes, I managed to do everything on time.
"I'm going to walk William to his room, and we'll talk."
"I want to talk to him too," I grunted.
Ciconi dragged me to the room, pushed me onto the sofa and turned off
the light. Her pills are some kind of sleeping pills. Falling asleep, I saw
how the orange rock slowly rose into the blue sky, supported from below
by thick clouds of purple smoke.

4
I woke up with a heavy head and looked at the electric clock above the
door. It was six in the morning. It means that in four hours everything will
begin - or rather, everything will be over. Outside the window, the
pre-dawn haze was thinning. The room was stuffy, and I went to the
window for a breath of fresh air. The pulse counters were on the table
directly in front of the window. At first, it was said that during the
explosion it would be impossible to look at the rock. However, Bob
calculated that there would be no noticeable flash in an underground
explosion. Therefore, everyone who was associated with the work on the
devices moved them to the windows. It was interesting to see what would
become of the rock when the hydrogen bomb exploded underneath it.
The sentry was no longer standing by the fence, but closer to the
building. The rock was black against the dark purple horizon.
I looked into the thinning twilight and thought about what would
happen here in four hours and what would happen after the explosion.
Seismic stations in all countries will register the shaking of the earth.
Seismologists can easily determine the location of the explosion using
their instruments and plot it on the map. They will compare the nature of
the seismic wave with everything they know about earthquakes, and they
will easily establish that it was not an earthquake. Our government will
deny everything, and there will be our seismologists, of course, specially
bought for this purpose, who will prove that there was no explosion and all
this is a local earthquake. The people will demand that a commission be
sent to us to make sure that there really was no explosion. And then we
will strike an indignant posture and declare that this is an encroachment on
our sovereignty. The newspapers will make noise, the radio will shout,
and everything will fall silent. And we will sit here for a while and process
the results of the observation of the underground explosion of a new type
of hydrogen bomb. And this will be until they find or dig another cave
under some rock. And everything will start again...
I saw Colonel Jakes come up to the sentry, and they began to talk about

436
something. The sentry turned to the rock several times and waved his hand
in its direction. I dressed and went down to them.
-Insomnia? I asked Jakes, lighting a cigarette.
"Damn it!" Now I received a call and was informed that the automatic
cart did not return.
"How come she didn't come back?"
- Very simple. She was sent to a cave to install another dosimeter. And
she, damned, did not return.
- Such an important thing is the automatic cart! A whole rock would fly
into the air, and then there was a cart.
"It must have broken the radio control," Jakes explained.
"And what if we send someone to fetch her?" I asked.
It was ordered that after twelve o'clock at night no one or anything
should be allowed to the rock.
- When did she leave with a dosimeter?
"Eleven," Jakes said, and cursed. "We need to report to the center.
He walked to his cottage, and I stayed with the sentry.
"She jumped out in the dark like a madwoman and ran away. Here is
the technique!
"What are you talking about?"
- Yes, about this very cart. She runs as if she were alive. And who just
came up with it!
It became completely light, and the rock sparkled with purple and pink
colors.
"I'll be removed from my post at half-past ten," said the sentry. - From
now on, no one is allowed to leave the premises. What are you going to do
there?
- All sorts of stuff
I turned around and saw Bob. He walked straight towards me, walking
briskly on the sand.
- Well, the performance will be today, really. Bean?
"Exactly," he grinned. "Let me have a cigarette."
"I don't remember you smoking before.
- Imagine, a rare case when smoking is prescribed by medicine.
I thought of Margaret and decided that Bob was speaking figuratively.
It's disgusting to kiss a smoking woman if you don't smoke yourself.
"This is the last time I admire the rock," I said, handing him a lighter.
"Don't you feel sorry for her?"
"Well, well, admire it. And I need to take injections before the test. Bob
hurried back to the building.
"It's all right," Jakes said, approaching, "It's decided to sacrifice the
cart. In a couple of days they will send a new one.

437
 I looked at my watch. Half past eight. It was getting hot.
- Is it true that it will be like an earthquake? The sentry asked the
colonel.
"You're too curious. Do you know what kind of disclosure of military
secrets...
I never heard what punishment a soldier is entitled to for divulging
military secrets. But I knew what was due to me. No wonder, having
signed the contract, I signed the corresponding oath at the same time.
At the bar, I grabbed bacon and eggs and a mug of milk. When I walked
in, Finn was finishing his portion. After yesterday, his nose is very
swollen. He looked at me with eyes red from insomnia.
"You know, it's worth making peace on a day like this. I was just
drunk," I said, sitting down at his table.
He silently took his glass of milk and sat down by the window. It means
that he was very offended!
"I'm sorry, Finn. Honestly, it's because I was drunk. I went over and
touched him on the shoulder.
He turned abruptly and strained through his teeth:
"There are things that are not forgiven until the grave!
"Well, hit me if it makes you feel better."
"I didn't care about your blow!" Sometimes words hit harder than fists.
He finished the milk in one gulp and left. What did I say to him so
offensively?
"Meg, what did I say to Finn yesterday?"
She looked at me with tired eyes. I guess I didn't sleep either.
- He had a nervous attack. You told him something yesterday about the
price of killing newborns.
"So what?"
"At night, he received a call and was told that his wife had given birth to
a son.
I choked on milk. What an idiot I am..
"I'll go to him at once, apologize and congratulate him.
"It's late," Margaret said. "You should be there in a minute."
Indeed, the loudspeaker hissed, and the announcer announced in an
impassive voice:
"Operators take their places at the devices within thirty seconds.
"When the trials are over, I will definitely ask him for forgiveness," I
said, grabbing Chiconi's hand as if I were guilty before her.
She smiled weakly:
"All right, go. Pore.
"Is Bob there?" I asked, walking down the corridor beside her.
- Bob is always there.

438
 5
Those were cursed minutes. The clatter of the chronometer on the
radio echoed somewhere in the heart. The announcer announced in a
wooden voice the number of minutes left before the explosion. When will
there be abottom minute, it will name the number of seconds remaining. I
sat by the window and stared unblinkingly at the orange rock that shone
like a saint in the sun. According to the Bible, a radiance flashes over the
heads of the holy martyrs before death. So it was now. I knew that the
glow was due to the fact that I was looking too intensely at the orange
block, and yet for some reason it seemed supernatural to me. It became
terribly quiet, as if everything around had died out. Only the chronometer
clicked inexorably on the radio.
"Six minutes... Five minutes..."
Damn me for that Finn affair! I remembered that the murder of a
newborn was somehow idiotically connected with an explosion under a
rock. Now Finn, just like me, sits in front of the window on the first floor,
looks at the rock and thinks... What is he thinking about now? Of course,
about my son, and about the rock, and about what I told him yesterday.
The fact that I knew exactly what Finn was thinking at that moment made
me even more disgusted and even frightened.
I looked at the two huge silent pulse counters on the table. "Three
minutes..." I turned the toggle switches on the instrument panels. Green
lights flashed. Now the devices will crackle like crazy, counting the
number of deadly radioactive decays per second. I wonder what will
happen to the rock? Bob calculated its center of gravity and calculated that
the upper part should fall in our direction The base of the rock, cracking,
would rise slightly above the ground and then disappear into the depths of
the cavity formed after the explosion. Bob drew me on paper how it would
be.
"Two minutes.." I never thought I had such weak nerves. My hands
trembled as I lit one cigarette from another. For a moment, I thought the
floor shook beneath me, even though the announcer announced that there
was still one minute left before the explosion. Then he began to count the
seconds. Now I could see nothing but an orange rock with a blue glow all
around. With each heartbeat, the radiance expanded and then contracted.
Suddenly I heard the pulse counters crackle, and I jumped up, but
immediately realized that it was from a loudspeaker.
"Seventeen seconds, sixteen seconds..."
What is Finn doing now? Bean? Meg? What do they feel as the terrible
moment approaches? Do they feel the same way? like me, the fatal
inevitability of death, the end of the world. death from an incurable
disease? Do they see a dazzling glow around a lonely rock in the desert?

439
 "Five seconds... four..." "Maybe close my eyes or move away from the
window," flashed through my head. But it was a petty, helpless thought
that I could not obey. I froze in front of the open window and looked only
at where the terrible monster released by the will of madmen was once
again stirring...
"Fire!" shouted the announcer.
I clenched my jaw with all my might. "Fire!" - like an echo, repeated
somewhere in the depths of his soul. Now, this second... One more
moment... The brain worked so fast that the microseconds it took for an
electrical impulse to reach the rock stretched out into minutes. "Fire"...
Has the rock swayed? No, it only seemed so. Did the floor tremble? No.
Did the meters crackle? No.
I stared at the horizon. Nothing has changed. Then, from the
loudspeaker, I heard,
"I've already said 'fire!', sir..."
The announcer's voice was confused. The radio fell silent.
I continued to stand at the window, my heart was pounding, and in time
with his beats, I repeated to myselfl:
"O-gon, o-gon.."
But there was no fire...
Kramm roused me from my stupor. He appeared downstairs, right
under my window. Soon he was joined by Colonel Jakes and a guy in
purple overalls.
"Something's wrong!"
I ran downstairs and ran into Bob at the door.
"The thing didn't work!" "
As you can see," he replied and smiled.
Colonel Jakes explained excitedly:
"Now the circuit will be checked, and the experiment will begin again...
"Is the chain broken?" I asked.

"And if it breaks somewhere underground?" Finn asked.

His face was excited. He gave me a quick glance, and I noticed that his
eyes weren't as angry as they had been during breakfast.
"That can't be. The chain was checked last night.
Two military men appeared from the tent and walked quickly towards
the colonel.
"Can I see you for a second, sir?"
They stepped aside and reported something to him in a low voice.
- It's a scandal! Jakes cried. - Who attached the contacts in place?
"Personally, I am," the lieutenant replied.
"How could this happen?"

440
 "I have no idea.
"So someone was there after you and ruined everything!"
"There was no one there.
- Are you sure that the contacts were broken there?
"Exactly," the lieutenant replied.
"Then we need to fix them immediately!" Immediately, you see!
Otherwise, it will be too late. Within an hour, we must end the
experiment! Take a jeep and rush there, accompanied by Sergeant Cooley.
Unlock the outer chain!
"Yes, Colonel!" The lieutenant turned abruptly and ran to the tent, from
which the car had already rolled out. He jumped into the car on the move, and
then the unbelievable happened. Bob ran right up to the car and shouted,
"Stop! It's pointless!
The car braked sharply, spraying Wigner with thick clouds of dust.
-What's the matter? Jakes yelled.
"There's no point in going there," Bob said, coughing. "If there is even
one living creature there, the bomb will explode.
Dead silence reigned. Everyone stared at Bob. He coughed furiously,
tears flowing from his eyes.
"Wigner, repeat what you said!" Jakes demanded.
"He said it was pointless to go there. If there is a single living creature
there, the bomb will explode," Miss Chiconi answered for Bob.
"N-I don't understand," the colonel grunted.
Bob put the handkerchief to his striped face several times and said quite
calmly:
"Now the explosive mechanism is arranged in such a way that the
appearance of a person or any other living creature at a distance of five
yards from the bomb will cause an explosion.
Jakes giggled, then again and burst out laughing.
"Miss Chiconi, you have a hard job ahead of you. The guy couldn't
stand the tension and that..." the colonel turned his finger at his temple.
"Not at all, Colonel. I'm quite normal. I can even tell you how I did it.
Of course, you know that your cart didn't return yesterday...
"What?" What does it have to do with it?..
- The Most Unposingmediated. With the help of this cart I altered the
explosive device of the bomb - or rather, I replaced it with a completely
different one...

6
We gathered in Bob's room and looked at the orange rock. From here,
from the first floor, it seemed a little raised above the ground. The sun
illuminated the desert with oblique rays. Right in front of us, under the

441
fungus, stood a sentry and also looked towards the rock. Now there was
something new and fabulous about this hulk, as if it had come to life and
challenged us all.
"How did you come up with that?" George Cramm asked.
Bob smiled guiltily and looked at Margaret from under his brow.
"It's all her... I probably would never have thought of this.
"I had a premonition that the treatment would not lead to anything
good," I said.
She came over to me and put her hand on my shoulder.
"Wouldn't you do the same if the opportunity presented itself?"
- I just don't know how to do it. Bob, how did you do it?
Samuel Finn answered for him.
- It's all about the automatic cart. It is equipped with a radio
manipulator with mechanical paws, with the help of which engineers
carried out various work in the cave. Remote control. Bob turned off the
telemetry circuitry and put his Feeno calculating machine on the cart. The
trick is what he put into this tiny electronic head.
"Meg installed the car on the cart," Bob said. "Last night, while visiting
a sick man in the tent.
"You've sung in the most unexpected way," Cramm said with
annoyance. "That will be the case!" Both of you will hit the first number.
"In legal terms, this is called deliberate sabotage," Finn added.
I looked at Bob regretfully. He had dreamy eyes, and this suddenly
made me very angry.
"You fool, I'll tell you what!" Do you think this bomb won't explode?
Do you hope that the military will not find a way to blow it up? I don't
understand what idiotic logic you were guided by? They say the truth: if
God wants to deprive a man of reason, he lets a woman on him.
I forcibly threw Chiconi's hand from my shoulder.
"You're two complete idiots, you don't know what's going to happen
now," I went on.
"That bomb won't explode," Bob said separately. Unless someone
dares to go to the cave. The devil knows, maybe there will be volunteers...
"There may be some unemployed," Finn said. "By the way, if the
gentlemen from the investigating authorities pull you well, you yourself
will tell me what needs to be done to unhook your stupid fuse from the
bomb.
- The fact of the matter is that I will not say. Simply because now I
myself do not know how the fuse is arranged.
We looked at each other. It was clear that Bob was lying. He was afraid
that there would be a traitor among us.
- Do you know what a machine that works on the principle of free

442
search is? No? Imagine that you are in an unfamiliar, dark room filled with
furniture, and you need to get out of it. You begin to prowl randomly in the
dark, bumping into unfamiliar objects, fumbling along the walls with your
hands until you find a door. You act, in cybernetic language, without any
pre-designed program, with only one ultimate goal in mind. That's the
actionshaft an automatic cart on which I put a "Feano" with a very
primitive program: to get to the cave, disconnect two wires from the bomb
and connect two others to the same terminals, with the thermistor turned
on in series. During the yaw of the cart, the "Feano" machine made a
program for itself what should happen next...
- And what about the power supply? I asked.
"I don't see how this lady could help you if she knows nothing but
syringes and enemas.
For some reason, I still disliked Chiconi. She laughed.
- Nowadays, everyone knows how to turn on or off a radio receiver.
Bob told me what I had to turn off and what to turn on on the cart. I
covered the calculating machine with a tarpaulin.
"And the cart went on its own?" Kramm asked.
"A minute after I set up the Feano, the cart took off. In the darkness, I
didn't even notice where she had gone. By the way, why did she go along
the concrete path?
Bob had a look of annoyance on his face.
"Lord, how difficult it is to explain anything to people who do not know
mathematics! It's just that I programmed the work of "Theano" in this
way. And then, in the process of work, she herself improved this program.
"You wish you had never studied that damned math," Finn grumbled.
"She'll come out sideways for you...
The door of the room swung open and Colonel Jakes and two
plainclothes men entered. We stood around Bob.
Started!
I looked at the civilians. How similar they are, all of them! Blunt square
muzzles, broad shoulders, long arms, a stony expression on his face.
-Who? One of them asked, looking at us all.
"There's that one with the spots on his face, Wigner," said Colonel
Jakes, "and that lady—"
"We don't need a lady yet," said the civilian. "Everyone leave the room.
- Why don't you have a special room for such cases? The second
civilian asked Jakes rudely.
"For what business?" "Unable to stand it, I leaned forward.
Wow, how I love to hit such faces! And the more their owners resist,
the more pleasure I take!
"And who, in fact, are you?" One asked.

443
 -And you?
His square face was full of gizzards. The desire to hit him darkened my
eyes. Kramm touched my arm.
"Let's go," he said. "We have nothing to do here.
"Exactly," the civilian said through clenched teeth.
I looked at Bob and nodded encouragingly.
"Offer these two buffaloes to become famous all over the country. If
they want the bomb to explode, they should climb into the cave under the
rock!
A civilian standing next to me discreetly took my right hand and
squeezed it with all his might. His eyes turned into two narrow, watery
slits. He was damn strong, but he clearly underestimated me. Working
with only one hand, I twisted his arm so that he bit his lower lip and
relaxed his fingers.
We understood each other.
"Bob, you're going to tell me how those gentlemen behaved later." I
shouted, leaving the room last.
Colonel Jakes went to the bar with us.
- What discipline! He grumbled, sitting down on a high chair. "Idiots
like you could make me lose my job." I will be kicked out.
- What is your resignation compared to a hydrogen bomb! Finn shouted
suddenly. - All the military must be kicked out, and then there will be no
need for bombs.
Jakes looked at him with tired eyes.
- What difference does it make who will test, military or civilian? By
the way, bombs were not invented by the military, but by intelligent
gentlemen with higher scientific education like you...
I didn't expect such a tirade from Jakes!
"Still, Colonel, it's a good thing the bomb won't be detonated. At least,
this one. It's easier to breathe," Kramm said.
Jakes shrugged.
"It will be blown up. It will definitely be!
He swallowed his whiskey and suddenly burst out:
"You are considered clever people, but you behave like snotty boys!
Well, what has this guy achieved? Did he disrupt the experiment? For
what? To show that he is a hero, that he is against atomic tests? Who needs
it? I don't know what he did there and what mathematics and a calculating
machine have to do with it. Today, everything in the world has been
turned upside down, and what scammers used to do, mathematicians are
now doing. I don't understand how they do it. And in general, what kind of
filth is cybernetics and why can you do whatever you want with its help?
But no matter what Wigner did with the bomb, it would explode anyway.

444
You understand, puppies! Sooner or later, everything will fall into place. I
have never seen a more stupid boyishness. I think you're on Wigner's side.
But only this is a hopeless matter, I assure you.
- And what will happen to him? Chiconi asked.
"Are you not interested, miss, what will happen to you?"
"I'm interested in what will happen to him.
"I don't know what the laws are," Jakes grumbled. "But his ribs are
remembered. After all, these guys will not believe that you performed a
trick with a bomb without touching it with your hands. Try to prove to
someone that you can replace the fuse of a hydrogen bomb with a stupid
suitcase with wires stuffed into it...
- Smart people will believe it.
- Do you think that smart people will knock out the teeth of your
brilliant mathematician? Holy naivety! No smarter than those who are
talking to him now.
I stood up and looked at Jakes questioningly.
"Sit still." I agreed with them that here, at the base, they would not do
anything like that with him. Otherwise, I cannot vouch for the
consequences. If the workers and engineers in the tent find out that
Wigner is being treated badly, riots may break out at the base...
"Aha!" Kramm exclaimed. "So not only us, but the guys from the tent
are on Bob's side!"
Jakes finished his glass, stood up, and said,
"Yes. Are you satisfied with this?
-Of course.
"Well, to hell with you!
He walked out of the bar. I tried to imagine what those stupid-faced
figures were talking to Bob about now. And why are degenerates always
used only to perform the most important state tasks? Probably, the dirty
work of the state can only be entrusted to complete blockheads. After all,
smart people will not perform it.

7
Bob was taken to a room on the second floor, next to the radio room,
and a sentry was placed at his door. When I'm higherIn the corridor to
smoke, the sentry approached me and said:
"I feel sorry for the guy. He'll probably hit hard. Does this mean that
this bomb will not explode?
Bob, of course, had a lot in mind. And everything that he provided is
stored in the electronic head of the automatic cart.
"They say this thing lies under the rock, and until a man comes there, it
can't explode.

445
 - Quite right. And how do you know all this? The sentry winked slyly.
"We know everything," he said. - I feel very sorry for this guy. And the
woman is involved. Is it true that it was she who incited him to such a thing?
"I don't know who hit whom.
The room in which Bob used to work was occupied by investigators.
Sometimes they came out of it one by one, then together, visited the tent,
looked into other rooms, including mine, wrote down something and took
pictures. Then Margaret Chiconi was summoned for interrogation.
I was very worried about her and waited for her at the entrance to the
house. To my surprise, she was released very soon, after about ten
minutes.
"Dear boys," she said, lighting a cigarette.
"What did they ask?"
"Well, all sorts of things. They say that a girl from a decent family
should not get involved in such affairs. I told in detail how I unhooked
the red and green wires on the cart battery and instead of them attached
the red and green wires from the Feano machine. "And where did you
fortify the thermistor?" one of them asked. "I don't know what it is," I
answered, and another answered for me: "He put it in the socket instead
of a warning light." Then he showed me a small electric light bulb and a
green cap, which I had previously seen on the dashboard. They found
them in Bob's desk.
"Is that all?" I asked.

- What will happen next?

- Probably, soon we will be taken away...
"Listen, Meg, how did you both come to do this?" She
grinned and walked slowly across the sand. As we stepped out of the
shadow cast by the building, she exclaimed,
"Look, there's a helicopter over the rock!
Indeed, a helicopter hovered right over the rock. The roar of engines
reached his ears.
"They're researching something."
She nodded her head and laughed.
"Bob made it so that nothing would help them. Unless they find a
volunteer to climb under the rock.
"Did you make him think?"
She looked at me in surprise. Meg was really very pretty. I was even
embarrassed, she seemed so beautiful to me. An oblong, tanned face, big
blue eyes, lush black hair, and all that...
"How could I have made him think if I don't understand anything about
atomic affairs, and even more so about mathematics?"

446
 - So how did it happen?
"I really don't know. It seems to have started with medicine. Bob has a
disorder of internal regulation, and hence hormonal deficiency. During
ultraviolet radiation sessions, we talked about this and the causes that
cause these types of disorders. I hold to the theory that secretory
dysregulation has deeper causes than is commonly believed. For example,
this can happen if the inner world of a person is in irreconcilable
contradiction with the external world. InYou know that every year the
number of schizophrenics, epileptics and alcoholics is constantly growing.
This is the result of the inability of the human nervous system to adapt to
what is happening in the world. After these conversations, we began to
chat about the time in which we live, and finally came to the hydrogen
bomb. Do you understand?
I nodded my head. The helicopter slowly circled over the rock, then
began to descend.
"What if they blow it up after all," I whispered.
Bob is so smart... So, when we started talking about the hydrogen
bomb, I said that I was outraged by scientists. Is it possible that science, so
powerful and so omnipotent, cannot do anything to stop people's desire for
suicide? Are there not scientific means that would make wars simply
impossible? We have learned how to conquer rivers and seas, how to
control spaceships, and how to harness nuclear energy. Is it not possible to
develop something that would automatically kill the very germs of war?
Bob said that this is a very interesting idea and that it should be
considered from a mathematical point of view. I once read a story in the
Sunday supplement to the newspaper. It described a scientist who
invented an apparatus capable of shattering the entire earth into small
pieces if at least one bomb exploded somewhere on the globe. You see, if
someone detonates an atomic bomb, the device automatically starts a
chain reaction that kills the whole earth. The scientist announced this to
the whole world, and people were forced to come to an agreement never to
fight. Is it not possible to create such a device? It is very necessary.
"Well, what did Bob say?" Is it possible to create such a device?
- He didn't say anything about such a device. A day or two later, when
we returned to the subject, he asked me how I felt about the rock under
which lay the new hydrogen bomb. I replied that for me the rock is a
symbol of death and that I do not believe that people will ever become
wiser. I can't look at this rock. I'm scared, I dream of her at night...
"By the way, me too...
"Bob said then that the hydrogen bomb under the rock would never
explode... At first, I didn't believe it, but he talked about it so seriously...
And I agreed to put his typewriter on the cart. I believed that everything

447
would be as he said. And I was not mistaken about Bob.
- Don't you think the rock is a symbol of death now?
Margaret smiled and shook her head.
"I love Bob very much," she said suddenly.
We walked slowly on the soft, warm sand, and I tried to understand
what had happened in the soul of this beautiful girl. If someone had told
me at the beginning that Margaret would love a guy with Bob's face, I
would never have believed it. And now it seemed to me self-evident. I was
not in the least surprised when she directly and openly said that she loved
him. I was even waiting for it. Does a real woman love a man only for a
beautiful face? As if divining my thought, Meg said,
"Women always love heroes. This has always been the case. It is
impossible to remain indifferent to a man who, by the power of his mind,
tamed a monster capable of killing millions of people at once. It's like in
ancient fairy tales about legendary heroes. They defeated evil titans, fiery
dragons, terrible monsters. My Bob defeated the hydrogen bomb. If only
every scientist would do something like that! Thatwhere life on earth
would be eternal...
"She'll last forever," I said with some certainty.
"If only nothing happened to Bob," Meg whispered.
"Nothing will happen to him. Did you hear what Colonel Jakes said?
"We'll be taken away from here soon..."
I thought about it and said,
"It's important that as many people as possible know what Bob did!"
Meg stopped and looked slyly into my eyes.
- William, you drink a lot and are not at all interested in what is
happening in the world.
Indeed, I even forgot the last time I listened to the radio.
- And what is happening in the world?
"The whole country is agitated. All the newspapers are full of reports
about Bob's act. Prominent scientists approve of his actions. The
"Scientific League of Solidarity with Wigner" was created. Yesterday, on
the radio, a prominent physicist came up with the idea of creating a
committee for the development of active scientific methods for combating
the atomic danger. He bluntly stated: "The example of the young
mathematician Bob Wigner shows how much we can do if we think
carefully. It's enough to talk about peace. The time has come to act
actively. Scientists must be ahead..." Maybe they will really be able to
come up with such a device that was mentioned in the story?
I took Meg's hand and shook it firmly.
"If all scientists speak in this language, no special apparatus will be
needed..."

448
 8
The next day, the investigators left, and Bob was allowed to leave. We
were waiting for him, gathered at the bottom of the stairs. When he
appeared, leading Meg by the arm, we gave him a standing ovation. They
whistled and shouted as if there were not three, but thirty-three of us. I
didn't expect Samuel Finn to yell the most. Bob was smiling and bowing
to us like an inexperienced young actor. A sentry stood behind him and
was also smiling.
"Why the hell are you broke?" Colonel Jakes barked suddenly. "You've
made a mess, Wigner..
"I serve my country," Bob reported. "But I've come up with a great
idea, Colonel!"
-Urchin! This is only the first act of the drama. They'll come for you
soon. I have been ordered not to let you leave the territory anywhere.
"Okay. Only this will not help. You can consider the bomb buried alive.
The colonel shook his head and, without saying a word, left. We all
tumbled into the bar.
"I suggest a drink to the newlyweds," I said, pouring champagne.
"For whom?" Cramm asked, surprised.
"For the Wigner couple. Come on, Bob, let's clink.
Our mathematician froze with his mouth open. Then he turned his
frightened eyes to Meg. She smiled bravely and slyly.
"Why are you looking at me?" She said to Bob. "Don't you want me to
be your wife?"
Bob started babbling nonsense, and to make it easier for him, we started
screaming at the top of our lungs again.
- Guys, our base is not needed now! It will be closed because the cave is
occupied! Finn shouted, tipsy. "And if you only knew what kind of boy
my wife gave birth to!" Then he looked at me and said in a muffled voice:
"This is not for you.
"Stop being angry. Let's make up. Such a day!
Everyone supported me.
"Samuel, don't be angry with him. He was the one who was drunk then.
PshawNn frowned and stared at me from under his brow. But his eyes
were not evil, but very cheerful.
-Ok. I agree to reconcile. But only I must fight back.
"All right, to hell with you, beat me. Just not on the nose.
I stood in front of Finn, lifted my chin and closed my eyes.
- Guys, hold his hands. He has very developed conditioned reflexes.
Cramm and Bob came in from behind and took my hands.
-Please wait! Meg shouted. "I'm going to run for cotton wool and lotions."

449
 -Do not. Strike, Samuel, only quickly. I'm not used to waiting long.
Everyone must have laughed at how long Finn had been trying on Then
he hit me with all his might, and I flew all the way to the bar. Circles swam
in his eyes.
Crumb and Bob couldn't hold me back, and I fell to the floor.
"What a blow," I grunted as I stood up.
For a long time I could not see anything, because my right eye instantly
swam. Finn handed me a shot of whiskey, and we drank and kissed. Meg
still ran to her room and brought a piece of gauze moistened with some
kind of filth.
"I don't want you to have a black eye," she said, adjusting the gauze
with a plaster.
Then we drank more and talked all sorts of nonsense. In the midst of the
fun, Colonel Jakes appeared at the door of the bar with a strange guy. We
immediately fell silent.
The guy was tall, blond, with a pale pink, almost childlike face. He
looked like a boy, with beautiful, plump lips, like a child's. He bowed
politely and said quietly.
-Good afternoon.
"This is our new mathematician. Meet.
Colonel Jakes went out, and we continued to stare at the newcomer in
silence.
"My name is Scott, Robert Scott," the guy finally said. "Will you allow
me to sit down?"
"Please," Finn nodded to an empty chair.
"What's your name?" The novice's voice was soft and quiet.
We were silent.
"I recently graduated from the mathematics department in Chicago," he
continued. "And immediately after my thesis, I was recommended here.
He smiled, then stood up impulsively and said, "Let's drink to our
acquaintance."
He went to the bar and began to pour gin. He had no idea how to behave
among adults.
"Please, take it," he said, arranging the glasses. His face was flushed all
over his cheek.
We remained dead silent, watching the new mathematician intently.
"Which one of you, Mr. Wigner?"
"I am," Bob said hoarsely.
"The memory unit for the Feano calculating machine was developed by
me, under the direction of Professor Colins. He knows you...
Bob nodded his head slightly.
"The Feano is a good machine. Convenient, right? Robert Scott

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continued to babble, his lips slightly touching his glass.
We didn't answer. The bar became somehow uncomfortable.
Silence reigned for several minutes. Scott was completely lost. Then,
out of nowhere, turning to Cramm, he spoke:
"Delta quantization is a wonderful thing! In fact, this is a completely
fail-safe method of composing any algorithms. Even those that cannot be
expressed in analytical functions.
Bob took a bite lip and stood up.
Margaret also rose from the table.
"Come on, Bob.
They walked out of the bar, and Robert Scott looked at them in surprise.
"Are they husband and wife?" he asked timidly.
No one answered him.
"Drink," he said pleadingly, and then added very quietly: Please...
I suddenly felt sorry for him.
- So what did you say about delta quantization? He
instantly perked up.
"Are you a mathematician?"
- No, I'm a dosimetrist.
- Delta quantization is, so to speak, the decomposition of continuous
operations into sequential pulse operations. If, for example, you are
working with digital machines of discrete action, then in order to make
them perform arbitrarily complex continuous actions, you must
decompose these actions into separate impulses. Perhaps this is what Mr.
Wigner did when he decided to replace the fuse of the hydrogen bomb.
Really?
Finn smiled wryly.
"N-I don't know...
"It can't be otherwise," the boy went on. "Mr. Wigner has never been to
the cave where the bomb lies, and he has never seen the bomb. He only
knew that it was equipped with an electric fuse. And so, having such
insignificant initial data, he was able to draw up a witty program for
"Theano". From the point of view of mathematics, this is simply genius!
At the university, we all admired. Professor Collins instructed me to
explain how to do this at a university seminar.
Robert smiled embarrassedly and drank a little from his glass.
"Do you know how it's done?" "
Yes," he answered, and added, "Wigner must be a very talented
mathematician.
"What are you going to do here?"
-I? Robert Scott asked. "Weren't you told?"
"And what kind of a big shot are you supposed to tell us about you?"

451
Kramm couldn't stand it.
"It's just written about it in all the newspapers and...
"We don't read newspapers," Finn cut him off sharply. "Let's go, guys.
We got up and left the bar without touching the gin offered to us by
Robert Scott.

9
We gathered at the hedge, about the sentry, and looked at the concrete
path that ran down to the rock. It was early in the morning, but the sun was
incredibly hot. Bob paced up and down nervously, thinking intensely.
Margaret watched him with inflamed, moist eyes. Not far away stood
Colonel Jakes, a blue-eyed mathematician boy, and two civilian
representatives from the center. To see what would happen, all the
workers came out of the tent. In purple overalls, they kept at a distance,
behind us.
"Stop hanging back and forth like a pendulum," Kramm said irritably.
Bob stopped.
"What an idiot I am!" I did not take into account such elementarism...
-A what?
"The fact that a second cart with the same electronic device can defuse
the first...
"Oh, you mean that... You, the lords of the most exact science, also
have mistakes," Finn said, not without irony. "Did Scott use the same
method as you?"
Bob nodded.
"Don't be upset, Bob, for God's sake! Meg exclaimed. "In the end,
maybe it's not about this particular bomb, it's about something bigger. The
main thing is to give people a direction of thought.
- A direction of thought?
Bob looked angrily at Robert Scott, who was anxiously awaiting the
results of his week-long work programming the "defusing operation." The
new mathematician was as worried as a schoolboy before an exam.
Least of all did he imagine what a monstrous meanness he had
committed, what hopes he had destroyed. For him, it was just a solution to
the delta quantization problem. Not a single human thought stirred in his
brain.
"You can't give them a direction of thought!" Bob went on bitterly.
"They're mindlessly working for war, and when the atomic flames engulf
them, they'll never know where it came from...
"Life will teach them," Cramm said.
"Maybe he won't succeed?" Meg asked.
- Judging by the way he talks about programming methods, it will

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work. He is a student of Colins. The Elder knows nothing but
mathematics. He doesn't care what he expects: killing people or a
mechanical children's toy. He inspires his thought - "Mathematics rules
the world, and everything else is nonsense" - to all his students.
Bob spoke passionately and passionately.
"Maybe he's not as smart as you think?" Margaret whispered.
Robert Scott stepped into the middle of the path, covered his eyes with
his hand, and suddenly shouted,
"Look, they're coming!" Are they coming here..
At first, nothing was visible, but then an approaching dot gleamed on
the gray concrete...
-Go! Both carts are moving! That's great.. Scott shouted, joyful and
excited, and he began to rush from one to the other, repeating, "That's
right! So I was not mistaken! The great thing is delta quantization!
Running up to us, he shouted:
"Guys, now you can see it quite clearly! My cart is behind. She leads
the first!
Finn pushed him away with all his might.
"Get out of here, puppy, lousy worm," he said through clenched teeth.
But Robert didn't even notice it. He jumped on the spot, clapped his
hands and pointed to the two carts that were rapidly approaching us.
Bob's cart was in front, with a Feano car under the tarpaulin. Behind
him, Robert Scott's cart rolled closely, attached with a metal paw to a
nickel-plated bracket. It seemed that she was escorting the first cart.
The military engineer picked up both Feano calculating machines on
the move, the wires broke, the carts stopped as if rooted to the ground.
It became very quiet. Bob's face contorted as if from terrible physical
pain.
"That's it," Finn said, and turning sharply, he walked toward the
building.
We slowly followed him. Silently the workers disappeared into the
tent.
"Wigner and Chiconi, come here!" Jakes shouted.
Bob and Margaret stopped.
"You will go with these gentlemen now.
Jakes pointed to the civilians. Bob nodded silently.
"We'll bring our things."
"Only quickly."
Finn appeared at the door of the building with a suitcase in his hands.
"Will you take me with you?" He asked one of the civilians.
He looked at Colonel Jakes questioningly.
"Samuel Finn gave me a contract termination report the day before

453
yesterday. He signed an oath of secrecy.
"I have nothing against it. You can get into a car with a woman in it.
I walked over to Finn and shook his hand.
- Kiss your baby.
"Now I understand that my baby needs something more than kisses.
-You are right.
Everyone left, and I stayed downstairs to see Bob off. He showed up
with Meg earlier than I expected. It turned out that they had everything
ready to leave.
The three of us stood and looked at the rock.
"Then she's not destined to live," Meg said, sighing.
"The rock is not so important. The main thing is people...
"Meg, you're sour!" Bob suddenly exclaimed cheerfully. - The fight is
just beginning!
-Exactly. Listen up.
It was Kramm. He walked over to Meg and handed her his pocket radio.
"This is my wedding gift to you. Listen, Bob, what have you done!
"... There is no need for talk now! - I heard from the receiver. - Leading
scientists of our time are actively involved in the fight against the nuclear
danger. Who, if not us, knows what an atomic war brings to humanity?
We cannot sit back and wait for God to give us peace. You have to fight
for him persistently, tirelessly, like Bob Wigner."
The program was broadcast from some huge area. The speeches of the
speakers were interrupted by noisy exclamations, whistles, shouts: "Down
with the scientists working for the war! Let's not let Bob be offended!
Let's defend peace! No to atomic and hydrogen bombs, universal
humanity!"
"It's stronger than hydrogen bombs," Cramm said.
Two cars, one after the other, disappeared behind a canvas tent. Kramm
and I watched them for a few minutes. Then I went into a bar.
In the corner, Robert Scott was sitting at a table, sipping lemonade. He
was purring a song and writing something on a piece of paper.
"Ah, William, salute!" He said cheerfully. He was in a great mood. "Do
you know what I've just calculated?" It is possible to create a hydrogen
bomb testing system that is completely invulnerable. There is simply no
algorithm by which this system can be violated. One hundred percent
reliability!
I drank a full glass of whiskey and walked over to him.
"Come on, show me your system..."
-You are welcome. Only you are not a mathematician and you still will
not understand anything.
"I'll figure it out somehow."

454
 "I'll explain it to you. Suppose that in this block there is a fuse, which is
activated by a certain group of electrical impulses...
I took a sheet of paper covered with formulas and clenched it in my fist.
Robert Scott looked up at me in surprise.
"I haven't told you yet...
- Everything is clear to me.
I jerked Scott up from his chair. His bulging eyes were filled with
terror.
"William, what are you... I'm ... Really, don't... I just...
"Do you understand, puppy, what you did?"
-Nothing... I was just instructed...
"And if you were instructed to calculate the best way to kill your
mother?" I whispered, pinning Scott against the wall.
I had a wild desire to strangle him.
Scott shook his head furiously.
-No... No... No," he said through clenched teeth.
- And helping to kill millions of other mothers is good?..
For a moment he wriggled out and, huddled in a corner, shouted:
"Why are you bothering me? I am only a mathematician. I solve
problems - and that's it.
I have nothing to do with bombs! I don't even know what it is!
And then I hit him. He toppled over the table, jumped to his feet in the
heat of the moment, and then collapsed to the floor, writhing in pain like a
snake pinned to the ground by a slingshot.
I looked at this puny creature with contempt and decided that my blow
would help Scott understand something in the future. And if he does not
understand, then he will have to experience even worse blows.
I stepped over it and went upstairs to pack my bags.

455
 The Last Story about Robots
Dear friend!
I am writing to you from a distant city, which is located on high hills
above a wide, tired river. As the plane breaks through the clouds and
begins to circle to choose the landing direction, you can see the entire city
in a lush outfit of greenery and flowers, the blue ribbon of the river with its
sandy banks overgrown with vines, and three reinforced concrete bridges
connecting the right and left banks. After that, the car rushes along a wide
concrete road among steppe grasses and rare acacia bushes and then bursts
into the blocks of residential buildings, shining with glass and metal.
In this city, I had a strange feeling. I know the city to the last alley and
to the last square, I know the hills on the sandy islands and the shadiest
lagoons on the left bank of the river, I know the oldest poplars along the
main avenue, because for me this city is native. And yet I came to it as a
stranger, because the last time I was in it thirty years ago, and no one lives
here anymore from those whom I knew and who knew me.
Why did I come here?
There are personal reasons for this, but they may not seem interesting to
you, since you are not a sentimental person. I'd rather tell you about the
main thing that brought me here. You probably don't know that in recent
years I have been interested in studying the work of a poet, my
countryman, who also lived here thirty years ago. His name and surname
are Andrei Olenin. He, like me, was born in this city, at the same time.
This extraordinary poet managed to write more than a hundred sonnets
in one gulp, in just three months, and after that...
However, more on this later.
One hundred and seven marvellous sonnets in three months is
something incomprehensible. Poetry historians, specialists in the
psychology of creativity, literary critics are at a loss to guess how this
could happen, what mysterious inner forces burst out in the form of poems
sparkling with beauty, depth of thought and elegance. There are many
different theories about this, but none of them stand up to criticism. Andrei
Olenin remains a "blank spot" in our literary criticism, and the most that is
said about him is: "A unique and unique case in the history of poetry..."
Olenin's sonnets are compared to Shakespeare's sonnets. All of them
were dedicated to one person, a girl or a woman. But her name is never

456
mentioned in them.
I read all the existing studies on Olenin's work, some original, others
compiled, but nowhere did I find any hints of the question: "Who was
she?"
And here I am in the poet's homeland and in my homeland, digging
through archives and museum relics. I was shown the house where the
poet lived, but no one could show me the house where she lived.
Then I turned to the caretaker of the local museum of local lore, a
sweet, no longer young woman, with a request to show me the place where
the poet was buried. She smiled strangely and said,
"There is no such place.
"I mean...
"You see, Andrei is not exactly dead. How can I tell you... He just
disappeared. He disappeared shortly after writing his last poem.
The events date back to the times of thirty years ago, and at that time, as
you know, such words as "disappeared", "disappeared", simply
"disappeared" were sometimes used to refer to people. Like a thing. Like
an inanimate object. But most often this happened during some kind of
catastrophe, or wars, or something like that, and Olenin wrote to the
Mirnyears...
I was already leaving the museum, when suddenly she caught up with
me, took me by the hand and said:
"There is a very curious person living in our city. He is not like a writer.
He is just a collector, a collector of various strange stories and cases. Try
to address him.
She gave me the address of this man, and I went to him without any
hope of success.
Tall, thin, with an aquiline nose and red eyes, he received me very
dryly, almost hostilely. I briefly stated my request to tell about the fate of
Andrei Olenin... It seemed that my request did not surprise him at all, as if
he was waiting for it. He frowned even more, looked at me from under his
brow and asked,
"Have you ever collected anything?"
— Yes. As a child, I collected old coins.
— And you, of course, know how new exhibits for the collection are
acquired?
Of course I knew. I simply exchanged one of my coins for the one that
interested me more.
"Well, I can offer you my story for something like that.
He looked at me in such a way that I knew that he would not compromise
or say a word to me unless I told him some strange story of mine.
As I left, I trembled with rage, because now I knew that this collector

457
had some secret that might be key to unraveling the poet's work.
What could I offer him in return, when the last decades of my life were
so everyday, academic, bookish? I was lying on the couch, clenching my
head and trying to remember something, even if not my own, heard from
someone. I was in a daze, I could not move, and only my brain worked
feverishly, remembering everything I had experienced and reread.
"What should I do, what should I do?!" I sometimes exclaimed, and my
robot, you know, this little robot specialized for literary research,
occasionally clicked the relay, preparing to read any sonnet of Olenin or
some paragraph from the monograph of a researcher of his work at my
command. But I knew that now he could not help me in any way, because
his ferrite brain is saturated only with the work of Olenin and the work of
those who wrote about him.
In the middle of the night I jumped up. Remembered! Yes, I
remembered three strange, strange stories, or rather fairy tales, that my
mother told me when I was a child, in this very city. I had never heard
these tales from anyone, they were only ours, my mother's and mine's.
I barely waited for dawn and rushed to my new acquaintance.
"I've got something for your collection, though I'm not sure it's what
you need. But these are the strangest stories I've ever heard.
He sat down in an antique chair, propped his chin on a lean hand with
swollen veins, and prepared to listen.
"The first fairy tale is about rails," I began.
"He liked to walk on one rail. He walked along it boldly, as if on a road,
and only occasionally swayed his hands to maintain his balance. The rail
always glittered and went into infinity or turned over a hill, and was
straight, shining and solid. And he walked and walked, peering into the
mysterious distance, where the calling and alluring silver paths fled.
Occasionally he had to give way to green-faced electric locomotives, and
then he stood on the side of the road, looking hostilely at the cast-iron
wheels that raced along hisabout the road. And then he walked again,
smiling at the unknown distance, and again frowned when the steel
electric monster rushed towards him. And one day rage and anger boiled
in him, pride stirred up, and he decided not to give way to this creature...
She rushed away, and he continued to walk, smoothly waving his arms.
Only now for some reason he was not visible..."
After my first story, the collector's face did not change at all. Only red,
watery eyes squinted, pierced me, and the right hand, propping up my
chin, fell on the armrest of the chair.
I started the second story without a break.
"A black cat sat on a gate made of thin sheet iron, painted light green. It
was very black and shiny like a block of freshly crushed asphalt. It was

458
amazing how she perched on the edge of a sheet of metal—it had been so
thin before, and there was a television tower next to it, and people were
passing by. She followed them with green slanted eyes. Like, this is not
mine, this is your world... And then a storm cloud came, which turned the
twilight into a dead night, torn apart by lightning. Broken elastic lightning
struck the television tower, and after that it hummed for a long time. And
the cat continued to sit, indifferently looking at the running people. Why
are they fleeing? After all, it won't rain anyway. When the surroundings
became completely deserted and real night began, a fat purple lightning
struck the TV tower. The tower shone from top to bottom, and the cat
jumped down from the metal gate and walked away. Probably, this was all
she was waiting for. Because she walked down the street slowly, very
satisfied, all shining and completely black..."
I saw that the old man felt uncomfortable. He somehow shrunk,
crumpled up like a boxer unsure of victory, and prepared to listen to the
next strange story. It was a story about a freckled boy.
"He was lying prone on the operating table, with a pink freckled face
immersed in an anesthesia mask. He did not yet know how to breathe
anesthesia, and so his sister pressed the mask directly to his face. The
surgical field, a little below the place where the elastic from the panties
left a pink mark, was stained with iodine. When the electric knife did its
job, the pneumatic suction cups began to quickly lick off the swelling
bright red lumps - traces of the crime.
The summer was very hot, and no one planted flowers, and his mother
had to carry water in a bucket from a pump near the ice cream kiosk that
stood next to the cemetery gate. And then I saw him again in the yellow
river, as he jumped into the water from a cliff, his tanned brown body
writhing in a wild desire to dive and swim. No one interfered with him
then. Only on the other side of the river stood a small gloomy factory
made of red bricks, and above it towered a tall brick chimney, from which
clouds of acrid orange smoke were occasionally emitted into the air.
"Enough!" The collector of strange stories exclaimed. "I've had
enough!" You honestly exchanged your strange stories for the story of
Andrei Olenin. So listen!
He left the room for a second and returned with an old notebook in an
oilcloth binding. Oh, I knew for a long time what a jewel he held in his
hands!
"Once upon a time, a girl named Marina lived in our city. Now no one
remembers the place where she lived with her mother, because the house
was demolished, and a large multi-storey building was built on that site.
They say that Marina was a girl of amazing beautyThat rare, unique,
merciless beauty that frightens ordinary people... The beauty of a woman

459
is not always happiness. If it repels and frightens, then it is shunned and
avoided. Seeing it from afar, the inhabitants of the city avoided it,
hurriedly, without looking back. She was always alone, and no one ever
dared to approach her and talk. She had no friends because the girls were
afraid of appearing ugly around her. Young guys, seeing her, tried to hide
as soon as possible, so as not to show how unworthy they were of her.
In the park above the river, not far from the central flower bed, there is
a dense alley, and at the very end, above the sandy steep, there is a bench.
In the summer she often went there, sat alone and looked at the river, and
at the bridge, and at the gentle bank on the opposite side, and at the gray
distance that merged with the endless steppe. She sat for hours, as if she
were not alive, and many people knew that she was sitting there, and
avoided going into this alley. She returned home when the park became
crowded, and everyone gave way to her and whispered something behind
her back. And she walked slowly, proudly, beautifully, the only one in the
whole world.
… One day, while she was sitting on her bench, a young man
accidentally wandered into the alley. Probably by chance, he knew
nothing about Marina and what she was like, and boldly approached the
bench. She turned her face to him and... Do you remember how Olenin's
first sonnet begins? Remember how he paints the first impression, how he
froze paralyzed, petrified...
This is how it all started. Every day he went to the abandoned alley and
looked at it from afar, and then returned home and wrote, wrote, wrote...
And so it was for three months in a row, day after day, until autumn came
and it rained. One fine day, when the sun peeked out from behind the
clouds for a short time, he saw her again, and this time he boldly
approached her and put this notebook on her lap.
All night long he tossed about as if in delirium, and in the morning,
very early, he went there and waited for her.

In the twilight he saw her again, and she came up to him smoothly like
a ghost and returned the notebook.
The old man fell silent, and for a moment I was frightened.
"Pay attention. The cover of the notebook was completely worn and
cracked, and the ink on the pages was blurred.
I flipped through page after page, and lines of familiar poems flashed
before my eyes...
"This is the original manuscript of Olenin's sonnets. It was rewritten,
reprinted and published hundreds of times. But not a single critic, not a
single publisher paid attention to a single line of the last, unfinished, one
hundred and eighth sonnet. It is written on the penultimate page. Read:

460
"Your eyes attract like an abyss..."
And also pay attention to the very last page.
In a completely different, almost childish handwriting, the terrible
words were inscribed: "This is not for me. I don't understand it."
- And what happened to the poet afterwards? "
Disappeared," the old man said harshly. "He went somewhere,
disappeared forever.
Dear friend!
I visited the place where Marina lived. Now there is a multi-storey
modern building made of glass and aluminum. I found the alley above the
sandy steep, but now it is dressed in asphalt, and only on the very last
bench there is a bronze plaque that says that the poet Andrei Olenin came
here.
And that's it.
Recently, I was sitting on the sand near a huge railway bridge and
listened to the trains rumbling over it. In my head, I painfully repeated:
"Disappeared, disappeared..." It became dark, a damp, gusty wind
pounced on the river. He stirred up the water and pressed the vines to the
sand, and I could not leave the place.
Bridges!
I love looking at bridges. They are openwork, majestic and massive at
the same time. They fly over rivers, waterfalls and precipices, and I am
always amazed at how very young people can create such beautiful and
difficult structures. People always do something difficult that no one else
can do. Like this bridge, on which electric locomotives thunder and over
which the shaggy wind always rustles, carrying sand across the river from
the other side.
"Disappeared, disappeared..."
I could not stand it anymore and shouted:
"What happened to the poet?
And suddenly my little literary robot, who was standing motionless
next to me, said:
"Your eyes attract like an abyss..."
How does he know this?
"How do you know that?" Nobody taught you this, did you? "
Your eyes attract like an abyss..." he repeated.
I did not immediately realize what had happened. It was very dark, and the
robot was standing right by the water, and its chrome hull dimly reflected the
lights that shone over the park, on the embankment, and in the windows of
the houses above the river. I didn't notice how my robot entered the water and
went further and further until it was overwhelmed by a wave...
"Back, back!" I shouted,

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 but it was too late.
I pulled it out without difficulty. It wasn't heavy at all, and it was
shallow.
I shook it, water poured out of it, and it became lifeless.
In the hotel, I turned it over this way and that, and all the time river
water dripped from it. After that, I decided to put it in the corner, on the
parquet, putting a sofa bolster under it. I hoped that when it was dry, it
would come back to life again. He was absolutely necessary to me, I was
without him, as without memory.
Every morning I went up to him and always found a small puddle on
the parquet. Then I called a local craftsman, and he came with tools and
dismantled the car.
"Why did he go into the water?"
The master shrugged his shoulders and said vaguely:
"These literary robots are not always all right with behavior and logic.
No one has really figured out these anomalies yet.
"Look," he continued, "the film elements of the memory are damaged.
They are afraid of moisture. It would be necessary to cover them with a
protective varnish. And so...
He spread his hands and put the remains of the car on the floor.
Although the robot is no more than an empty tin can now, I didn't throw it
in the landfill. I will keep it. I need it as an expensive souvenir. About
what? The answer to this question is a personal one that I would not like to
touch upon in the letter.
In any case, this is how my meeting with my distant, distant past ended.
Hugs to you.
Yours, Andrey.

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 Afterword to Wells

The Invisible Man

The door opened, and no one entered. The professor was very afraid
of a draft, but the attempt to close the door failed.
"Come in," he said to the Invisible Man, and sat down at the table.
Both were silent for a minute. Then the professor asked,
"Have you read what Wells wrote about you?"
The invisible man chuckled.
"These things of yours may end badly.
"I couldn't resist," muttered the Invisible Man guiltily.
"How new!"
- Ingested a substance that bends the course of light rays.
-Don't understand.
"The rays flow around me like jets. They fall here," he seemed to
point to his back, "and then, on the opposite side, they go in a straight
line, starting from the place exactly opposite to the point of fall. And so
it goes around the whole body...
-Curiously. What do you want?
"I'm naked," said the Invisible Man, and sobbed.
"Dress up, then."
"You remember that story with Mrs. Benting—" Bandages, gloves,
glasses and so on...
The professor got up and walked over to the closet. In a second, he
had a bottle of black mascara and a brush in his hands.
"Turn your back on me."
-Oh Lord! The Invisible Man exclaimed. - I see a piece of the belly.
After the entire back half of the Invisible Man was painted black, the
front half became visible by itself.
In the costume of a professor, he retired, grateful and completely
visible. Black neck! Who cares.
From time to time, he tints the erased places, but this is not such a
big inconvenience. We
saw the Time Traveler with his head bowed, sitting on the edge of
the sidewalk. The time machine was leaning against the wall.
"Why don't you go back to your place?" Your friends are waiting for
463
you there.
He raised his disheveled head and grinned wryly.
- I tried, but nothing works.
"Have you forgotten the day you left?"
-Oh no! I remember him well... But it simply does not exist.
-What?
"The day I have left... There is a day before my departure and a day
after. And that's not there...
We looked at each other in surprise.
- Have you ever jumped into the water from a boat? The Time
Traveler asked gloomily.
-Of course...
"Well, it's all about the damned recoil, the reaction... Then I rushed
hard into the Future, and the day... the day sailed into the Past."
We sighed sympathetically.
"I've searched all the Middle Ages. I am tormented by the thought
that they are waiting for me, suspecting nothing...
- Excuse me, but did you often stay there, in the past? - we asked.
-Of course.
"So all the days you left...
He dutifully confessed.
"And thirteen Thursdays in a row in October 1582 is also your job?"
He painfully squeezed his temples and nodded his head again.
"You're not going anywhere else," we said sternly and took up the
Time Machine. - There is no need to confuse history.
The Time Traveler got a job in a design bureau and is now sweating
over the creation of a recoilless Time Machine.

Struggle of the Worlds

Not all aggressive Martians managed to land on the British Isles.
One cylinder went off course and after a long timeOn June 30, 1908,
the elongated orbit crashed in the area of Podkamennaya Tunguska.
The Martians who got out turned out to be smarter than their British
counterparts. They immediately realized that the Earth's climate was
not suitable for them, and they set out in search of a place with the
lowest level of infectious diseases. The Himalayas with their
bactericidal ultraviolet radiation of the mountain sun were most
suitable for them. Angry, hungry and fearful, they still roam there in the
form of snowmen, avoiding any meetings with earthlings, from which
you can catch the Asian flu. As

464
 is known, Mr. Cavor lost radio contact with the earth, and it was
suggested that he paid the price for blurting out unnecessary things to
the Selenites about the development of human civilization. An
expedition that recently returned from the Moon completely refuted
this opinion. Mr. Cavor is alive to this day. Hiding in a cave, he burns
dry moon wood and uses the smoke coming out of the hole above to
signal to the people about himself. This smoke was first discovered by
astronomer N. Kozyrev in 1958 in the Alphonse crater.

465
 Prophets
Two weeks ago, he came to the laboratory, silently threw off his
exotic jacket, put on an excessively large white coat and, standing in
the pose of a reader-reciter, said:
"An Arab physicist of the twelfth century wrote: "We know that a
magnet loves iron, but we do not know whether iron loves a magnet, or
whether it is attracted to it against its will. It's a shame that we can't
answer that question!"
A tiny, stooped graduate student Kolya Spirin, without looking up
from the eyepiece of the microscope, said:
"A typical example of anthropomorphic thinking. Our ancestors
knew something about human behavior and attributed the properties of
living things to a less studied nature. By the way, Kucherenko, good
morning.
Vladimir sat down on a high stool near the laboratory table, unfolded
his workbook and immersed himself in reading some notes. It took at
least fifteen minutes before he spoke again.
- By the way, in French, a magnet is called l'aiment, which literally
means "loving". A curious coincidence, isn't it?
Spirin and I looked at each other, but said nothing.
The second time, Kucherenko reminded us of magnetism in a
completely different way. It was also in the morning, and again he did
not greet me, but put an open English magazine in front of me.
Photographs were printed on snow-white glossy paper. A white box
with a hole from which ants crawl out. There were several photographs,
like frames on a film. The head of an ant appeared. So he crawled out.
Behind him - the second, third, tenth. Finally, a lot of ants crawled in all
directions. And suddenly... Under the glass on which the ants were
crawling, a sheet of white paper was placed, on which iron filings were
distributed along magnetic lines of force.
- Reptiles, crawling along the magnetic field, as if on paths. From
the South Pole to the North Pole...
Spirin looked at the drawings for a long time, and then read the
article.
"Yes, they crawl along the lines of force," he said and sighed sadly.

466
 And now, as I stood on the platform waiting for Kucherenko, I
remembered a twelfth-century Arab physicist and a French l'aiment.
At last he appeared in his usual jacket, with two huge string bags in
his hands.
"Let's go," he smiled cheerfully and immediately pulled me into a
fairly crowded car.
We left the train on the semi-deserted platform of Chizhi and went
deeper into a young spruce forest. I immediately felt that Kucherenko
knew the way and that he had walked this path more than once.
Sometimes the path disappeared, and he bravely rushed to the rows of
fir trees and walked ahead, not looking around.
"In my opinion, this guy, Kolka Spirin, is just an inflatable
crocodile. Vladimir heated a can of stew on the fire and broke the loaf.
"Why do you think so?" "
This morning I tickled him about the nature of the subconscious. He
carried such nonsense, just terrible. I don't understand why Valery
Stepanovich took him to our group.
"He's a biochemist. And now you can't understand the brain without
biochemistry.
Kucherenko stepped aside, groped for brushwood and threw it into
the fire. His voice sounded from afar.
- If I were Valery Stepanovich, I would rather take an electronics
engineer or a nuclear scientist.
"Do you think the case is hidden at that level?"
-Are you sure.
He came up to me, sat down next to me on the damp grass and began
to look into the black sky, densely strewn with stars. It was early
autumn, and the sky was now and then pierced by orange meteor trails
that emanated from the mysterious space center directly overhead.
Below, the stream ran into a small naked area, and there the water
gurgled and squealed, and behind, in the alder, birds sometimes
screamed, disturbed by their birds' dreams.
"For example," Volodya broke the silence, "I can predict with
certainty that in the next forty seconds the meteorite will not crash into
the atmosphere. How do I know that?
He began to count aloud, and indeed, he counted to sixty, and the sky
remained calm.
-Experience. You observed the sky, and your subconscious
generalized these observations. This is where you got the ability to
make such outstanding predictions.

467
 Kucherenko sighed and stretched himself to his full height.
- How easy it is for you. Experience, experience... The subconscious
sums up experience... The subconscious is synonymous with intuition.
The subconscious and the supersensible... The subconscious and
prophecy... Nonsense! I don't believe it!
"Well, don't believe it.
I inflated the pillow, and we lay down next to each other on the
raincoat-tent and soon fell asleep, slightly covered by the warm, bitter
smoke of the dying fire.
Saturday morning turned out to be cloudy, sometimes it rained, and
it was even good, because the remaining eighteen kilometers we passed
unnoticed and reached the cherished goal just at the moment when
hunger sucked under the spoon painfully.
At the place where we stopped there was a tall wooden pole, hewn in
one place, and on it were written some numbers and letters in red oil
paint. Most likely, it was a trigonometric landmark.
- A geologist I know told me about this find. He says they just
gasped when they found such treasures right next to our city. Vide.
Kucherenko pulled out a compass and put it on the ground. The blue
end of the needle rested on the bottom, and no matter how I turned the
tool, it showed anything but the cardinal points. Then I put it
perpendicular, and the needle became exactly the same.
"A terrible anomaly! Magnetism is still flowing out of the earth. But
that's not all...
We sat down to dinner. Vladimir began to talk about electron
paramagnetic resonance, nuclear paramagnetic resonance, free radicals
and conduction electrons, in general, about things that I knew only by
hearsay.
"Equilibrium, equilibrium," he grumbled, chewing on the hard, cold
meat. - If we talk about the balance of the body with the external
environment, then we need to take into account electromagnetic fields.
Why do we give high-frequency workers free milk at our institute for
being harmful? Doctors know that these fields affect the body. But
how? They don't know that. And milk is unlikely to help here. Three of
the seven high-frequency riders left their wives. The highest percentage
of all laboratories. One said that he began to have such dreams that he
moved to another job. And the second one spilled the beans that he also
had terrible dreams, but he was used to them. So much for equilibrium,
or rather, disequilibrium.
"So the same variable fields," I remarked.

468
 -Ha! In here! And why do ants crawl along the lines of force? And
how do migratory birds navigate on thousand-kilometer routes? Have
you thought about it?
"I thought that the mobility of ions in the blood was so small that...
"Don't give a damn about this movementIn addition, there is a lot of
EPR and JPR - that's where the dog is buried.
Vladimir bent right to my ear and said with some emphasized
mystery:
"Special magnets will be installed on future lunar stations to create
an artificial magnetic field similar to the Earth's.
"Is that really important?"
- And who knows what would happen if the earth's magnetism
suddenly disappeared? For example, all migratory birds would die at
once. They just wouldn't know where to go...
"Well, that's enough.
- And people? He went on excitedly. "They would lose the ability to
predict even the near future, they would not be able to foresee what
would happen if they took even one step along the road of time. After
all, it is terrible to lose the ability to foresee!
"All this would be true if your theory turned out to be correct.
"But we crawled here to check it.
I looked at my watch. It was the beginning of the second, and we
began to feverishly prepare for the last throw, for the descent into a
small cave, the entrance to which yawned right in front of us.
"Pay attention," Kucherenko remarked. "There is a forest all around,
and there are some miserable bushes here. And try to find at least one
living creature in the sand.
- Plants do not grow here: the soil is highly mineralized. And since
there are no plants, insects also have nothing to do.
He leaned on his hips, stood in front of me, and shook his head.
"And how you biologists know how to turn everything upside
down!"
At the bottom of the cave there was exactly a place for two. The
floor went down at a slight angle and was hidden behind a large crack
in the wall. In the light of electric flashlights, the gray walls gleamed
slightly.
- Pure magnetite. We are now in the most magnetic inferno. They are
pierced through by magnetic field lines. Everything - the heart, and the
stomach, and the lungs, and... and the brain, along with its experience
and subconscious.

469
 I felt creepy for a moment, but I didn't experience anything special.
It was just a little stuffy. And it's also hot from the tension, even though
I knew it was cooler here than outside. Volodya guessed my feelings
and cheerfully said:
"Science requires sacrifices. There is dramatic medicine. Doctors
voluntarily vaccinate themselves with the plague. Dramatic biophysics
begins. A book will be written about us, Zhenya, someday. Like, so and
so, Kucherenko and Filatov ended up in a psychiatric clinic with
prophecy syndrome after spending a day in the Cave of Love.
- And what does the Cave of Love have to do with it?
"I forgot to tell you. I read somewhere that on an island in the
Aegean Sea there was a so-called Cave of Love. It is said that before
asking for the hand and heart of a charming Athenian woman, the
Greeks climbed into this cave and spent a whole week there. After that,
their love outpourings turned out especially well, and the brides could
not resist them. In our industrial age, the Cave of Love has turned into a
mine where magnetic ironstone, in other words, iron ore, is mined.
I suddenly felt annoyed. For a moment it seemed that our idea was
not worth a damn, but I did not express it, so as not to offend
Kucherenko. On the contrary, I wondered why I was annoyed: I was
tired of the deification of magnetism, especially since I did not have a
very good idea of the mechanism of interaction of the magnetic field
with the nuclei and electrons of a living body. But a plan is a plan. By
the light of electric flashlights, we took out a thick oilcloth notebook,
sat down with our backs to each other and began toIn large letters on
the first page of "Forecast of events at the Institute of Neuropsychology
for the week, from September 5 to 12". We agreed not to talk to each
other during the preparation of the report, and not to peep at each
other's writings.
The first minutes passed in some confused thoughts, then I wrote the
first sentence, and then the work gradually took me over, and I began to
write unrestrained, so that I had to stop from time to time, because my
hand was numb. In the end, it even became funny and a little funny.
The "prognosis" poured out of a cornucopia with a lot of insignificant
details that I wanted to record in order to laugh at Kucherenko's whole
theory later.
The valley I had seen in my dream was covered with tall succulent
grass, and only near the very shore of the sea was a strip of sand pink in
the rays of the setting sun. My bare feet felt the evening dew that had
already fallen and the damp soft earth under the grass. I approached the

470
shore with a nagging feeling of some kind of expectation, something
very wounding, which was about to happen. For a moment I admired
the beautiful birds that circled over the sea and which were also pink. A
cool wind was blowing at my back, and the waves... The waves of the
sea rolled in wide, rounded waves, and the warm water touched my
feet. With each passing minute, the feeling of anguish and expectation
of the inevitable intensified, and it became simply unbearable when on
the horizon, already completely red from the sunset, first a black dot
appeared, and a little later - a blue boat with the open mouth of a sea
monster on its bow. Two pairs of oars went down and up, and the glare
of the sunset glittered on the shoulders of the black oarsmen...
She waved to me and, when the bow of the boat crashed into the
sand with a slight hiss, she easily jumped ashore.
"Have you been waiting for me for a long time?"
"A long time ago. Eternity. In a minute it will be exactly eternity..."
"I couldn't before," her voice sounded like an ancient musical
instrument, "I couldn't, because..."
"I know. I know everything, and say nothing more."
The black oarsmen fell face down on the sand, their curly heads
clasped in their mighty arms.
"A year ago, my father returned to Earth and brought an order that
we..."
"I know that. Even before your father left Earth, I already knew that
he would return with bad news. Otherwise, why would he have been
called back?"
"They believe that it will be better for you this way. It will be better
for you..."
We sank down on the grass opposite each other, and I admired her
beautiful face, her pink hair falling over her shoulders, her light pink
tunic, under which her chest rose and fell and her distant heart beat ...
"You're beautiful."
She put her hand on my shoulder, turned in profile, and I saw red
drops on her long eyelashes.
"My father is very smart, and he doesn't want to harm anyone. What
is it called in earthly terms?"
"Love, I love you."
"I don't understand very well what it is. But, probably, this is very
important for you."
"If you don't understand, then why are you crying?"
"I don't know," she smiled bitterly into the darkness, "it's very hard

471
for me. I feel how hard it is for you..."
"So you love me too..."
Her head drooped, and her hands, barely visible in the darkness,
gently stroked the grass.
"It's time for me to go. My father is waiting for me. He already
violated the order when he allowed me to see you againe times".
"May I kiss you?"
"What are you talking about! She covered her lips with her hand.
"You know, then we will die, you and I!"
"I want it!"
"No," she jumped to her feet. -No! No! No!"
She ran to the boat, repeating "no", and the oarsmen jumped into the
boat, grabbed her by the arms and dragged her there, and I, petrified,
heard only a dying "no" in the noise of the sea... And I also heard: "I'll
be back! Someday I will definitely come back!"
Years, decades, centuries passed, and I kept wandering along this
shore, listening to the sea surf, watching how snow-white birds fell like
a stone into the blinding blue and how they repeated "no"...
But I believed her. I will wait for it for thousands of years until the
Sun goes out.
"It's time to get to work. It is Sunday, and in three hours we will start
on our way back.
I opened my eyes and stared at the electric flashlight that stood on
the ledge of the gray wall.
"Why not?"
Kucherenko laughed.
- Did you dream anything?
-Yes. Something sad and charming. And you?
"Me too.
We set to work again. Now I wrote very slowly, somehow squeezing
out words and phrases, but, strange to say, they began to seem weighty
and reasonable to me, although I knew that I was just fantasizing. It
seemed to me that Vladimir also wrote more slowly than yesterday.
Sometimes he put down his notebook, closed his eyes and sat like that
for a minute or two... The work clearly did not go well, there was some
kind of heaviness in my head, a heavy emptiness, in which lazy
thoughts occasionally floated.
"That's it," I said, "give me some beer and roach."
While I was drinking beer, Vladimir pulled out two large gray bags
from my backpack and put them in his and my notebooks. He carefully

472
sealed the bags with adhesive tape, and handed one package to me.
- You take my forecast, and I will take yours. We will open it on the
evening of the twelfth of September.
It was strange: when Valery Stepanovich entered the laboratory, for
some reason I shuddered. It seemed to me that Kucherenko, always
careless and lax, pulled himself up and became alert.
"Hello, kids," was his usual greeting, though we never called him
Daddy, not even among ourselves.
He approached each of us, looked at the devices, and flipped through
our notebooks.
"Well, is anything going well?" Any ideas? Why are you staring at
me like that?
Indeed, Kucherenko and I looked at our leader as if we were seeing
him for the first time. And suddenly Kucherenko, for no reason at all,
with some uncharacteristic excitement, said:
"You have come to us with news, haven't you, Valery Stepanovich?"
"True," he answered. - Has someone already chattered to you?
"I chattered," Kucherenko answered.
But I knew that no one had told us anything...
This is how it all started.
I did not see, but rather felt how she entered, how she greeted me
almost in a whisper, and how emphatically important Valery
Stepanovich said:
Nadezhda Ivanovna, you will work with these nice guys. Here's your
workplace.
Her workplace was next to mine, but I buried my face in my
notebook and was afraid to look at her.
"I want to tell you everything honestly. - The voice of the supervisor
has become very official. "This is my nephewAnd it took me a lot of
effort to convince our director to hire her. So, I want you all and
Nadezhda Ivanovna to know that I will demand from her and from you
in the same degree, without any indulgences in kinship.
"Understood," I heard a terribly familiar voice.
Kucherenko got up and left the laboratory. He sometimes smoked,
and this was not allowed in the laboratory.
Valery Stepanovich left us, I senselessly flipped through the
workbook, then turned on the microtome and began to cut the frozen
brain tissue of a white mouse into thin transparent slices. I didn't need it
at all, but I had to do something.
- I was accepted as a laboratory assistant, and I studied at a special

473
school with a biological bias. Only last year I graduated. I know how to
handle a microtome. And
then I looked at her for the first time and my eyes darkened: I had
already seen her somewhere!
- You have a very pleasant tan color.
My phrase crept out by itself, neither to the village nor to the city.
Nadya smiled.
"I just flew in from the south the day before yesterday. From
Yevpatoria.
- Golden beach and so on...
-Exactly. You were there? I lived not in the new, but in the old city.
There is sand, and a little further from the shore there is grass...
I had not been to Yevpatoria, but I knew the place she was talking
about to the smallest detail.
Kucherenko returned to the laboratory, came up to me and asked in a
sad voice:
"Well, how is it?
"L'aiment," I answered.
"That's it," Kucherenko hummed edifyingly.
And the usual working five-day week dragged on, usual in the
laboratory, but not quite ordinary outside the walls of our institute.
Valery Stepanovich came to us on Wednesday and solemnly handed
me some paper.
- Here is a travel order for you. Nadezhda, you and Kucherenko go
to the station, get on the train and go to the address indicated here. This
is the Research Institute of Magnetic Alloys. They say that there is a
group of sons who, so to speak, in their free time, or rather during sleep,
put very strong permanent magnets under their pillows, and they
begin... However, you will figure everything out for yourself. Some
kind of devilry!
At the Research Institute of Magnetic Alloys, we found the same guys
who put their own magnets under their pillows, and they reluctantly
began to tell us that they did it just like that, out of curiosity, having read
somewhere about the experiments of a certain Dr. Mesmer and,
consequently, about mesmerism, that is, about strange phenomena in the
human psyche if this very psyche is disturbed by a magnetic field.
- Well, did you get anything interesting?
I noticed how Volodya Kucherenko's eyes sparkled.
"Nothing special. True, I managed to see the magnetic field in
complete darkness. The north pole of the horseshoe appeared blue, the

474
south pole red. And the color of the ley lines gradually changed from
blue to red. Stupidity, of course. During the day you look at these
magnets so much that you can see them even in complete darkness.
- And if the magnet is under the pillow, do you have dreams?
- I don't, but Zhorka dreams.
Zhorka is a laboratory assistant from the magnetometric laboratory,
a shy blond with a freckled nose. In the presence of Nadia he blushed,
at first he did not want to tell us anything at all, and pOsle confessed.
- With the magnet under my pillow, I see everything that will happen
tomorrow... True, not quite accurately, but... Well, how can I tell you?..
Symbolically, or something...
Zhora had no idea what the "subconscious" was and where it came
from, and was very surprised that this was what we were studying.
"And for what?" He asked timidly.
- To understand why there were such personalities as Elijah the
Prophet, Cassandra, Mohammed, fortune-tellers, soothsayers and
clairvoyants.
The guy looked at Kucherenko and smiled.
"You're playing a trick on me. What fool would spend money
researching such nonsense?
"Oh, that's nonsense. Is it bad to know today what will happen
tomorrow?..
We interviewed two more employees. In one, the magnet caused
"terrible nightmares," and in the other, a little bald old man, the
experiment always led to the same dream: he always saw his own
funeral. The old man was a man of humor and remarked:
"The funeral was so interesting, so heartfelt, that as long as I am
alive I will do my best to make it so.
We returned to the city in the evening. Kucherenko was dozing, and
Nadezhda and I were sitting at the window facing each other and
looking at the world sinking into purple. Everything was damn familiar
to me.
- Let's get off at the next stop. And we will get to the city by bus.
She looked up at me with her huge gray eyes.
The air was humid and fragrant. To the left of the railway track in the
valley there was a narrow river, and next to it was an asphalt road,
along which cars occasionally ran. We were walking towards the road,
and I quietly took Nadia by the hand. She tilted her head, her hair fell
on her face, and it seemed to me that she could not see anything and
was only groping.

475
 "We should have warned Volodya that we are going out here...
"He already knows that," I muttered.

- All people are a little strange, some more, some less...

"Did you agree with him that we would get off here?..
Instead of answering, I asked:
"What is your father's job, Nadya?"
For the first time I called her on a first-name basis.
"He's my best friend. And in addition, he is a pilot-cosmonaut. Just
please, don't tell anyone about it...
"I love you!"
It burst out of itself, the girl shook up, broke away from my embrace
and shouted:
"No! No!..
She ran to the bus stop, panting, saying that damn "no."
"I'll wait for you forever!" I shouted absurdly after her, making no
attempt to catch up with her.
I knew it was useless.
On September 12, Kucherenko and I opened our notebooks with a
prophecy for the week. The content of the notebooks was different, but
if you put the two plots together, then I had what was missing from
him, and my notes filled in his gaps. So together we got a good forecast.
Of course, with some minor inaccuracies...

476
 Direct Evidence
Do you remember how it began? Zuckerbiller went up to the lectern
and adjusted his glasses. Then he blew his nose loudly and pulled a scrap
of paper from the pocket of his narrow, shiny jacket.
- Modern science finally has the opportunity to unequivocally solve the
most dramatic issue that has tormented mankind since time immemorial.
Every person, aloud and quietly, silently and in the company of friends, by
virtue of his mental abilities, solves this question every day and every
hour. He decides and is tormented in powerlessness to solve it. He solves
it...
- What question? - Unable to stand it, they shouted from the audience.
Zuckerbiller turned his bony head, flattened on both sides, abruptly and
gave the audience a withering look. He did not like to be interrupted.
- He, that is, a person, tirelessly struggles over the solution of the
problem from the moment of birth and does not stop struggling over its
solution even in death agony. Probably, my esteemed colleagues and
listeners are interested in what this gigantic problem is, the question of all
questions, which has finally waited for the opportunity to be finally
resolved, to the joy or sorrow of all mankind? I will not torment you and
will reveal the secret. The problem is this: whether or not there is an
immortal soul.
A wave of rumbling swept through the hall, chair lids slammed, and
people began to cough in the back rows.
- Now I will show how modern science can answer the question posed.
And I will present the theory, and then propose an experiment that even a
provincial university can do.
Turning the paper in front of his nose, Zuckerbiller continued:
"All the proofs of the reality of the soul that have existed and exist have
hitherto been circumstantial.
- Closer to the point! What do you suggest? Someone shouted
impatiently.
"I say that if there is a soul, then it is, and therefore it must be proved. It
is necessary to prove its existence by direct experience, and not by
scholastic reasoning. Let's look at all the objective data we know about the
soul.
Zuckerbiller walked over to the broad black board and picked up the

477
chalk. On the black field, one after another, the numbers "1", "2", "Z"
appeared...
- The first property of the soul is immortality. The soul is eternal and
indestructible. After the death of the body, it begins its independent
existence, limited by any time frame. In other words, the soul is a stable
stable formation.
The second important physical property of the soul is its incorporeality
and invisibility. References to the possibility of communication with the
souls of dead people, allegedly confirmed by spiritualistic experiments,
are unconvincing, and here we are dealing simply with impudent
charlatanry.
The third, no less important property of the soul is its unlimited space.
There is no physical possibility to confine the soul to any room, room,
box, or vessel. It can move completely freely through any obstacles, even
through the thickest reinforced concrete or metal walls, even through us.
At will, the soul can make any journey in the universe, live with equal
success in the sun or on cold planets, soar in an absolute vacuum, or settle
in any living body. In the language of physics, the substance of the soul
practically does not interact with any of the forms of matter known to us.
Now let's see what consequencescan be deduced from the enumerated
firmly established properties of the immortal soul. Firstly, the very fact of
its immortality testifies to the fact that the substance of the soul must be
built from elementary nuclear particles that have high stability. The soul
cannot consist of short-lived particles, because then it would not be
immortal.
What, in the light of our modern knowledge, can be the material basis
of immortality, unlimited by space and time? What can be an atom of the
human soul, its immortal quantum?
Such a structural unit, gentlemen, exists, its existence has been proven,
its properties completely coincide with the physical properties of the
soul...
Zuckerbiller wrote on the blackboard in huge letters:
"Neutrino. The rest mass is zero, the charge is zero, and the interaction
with matter is negligible. Lifetime is infinity."
Zuckerbiller's message made such a stunning impression on the
audience that people stopped breathing.
- Neutrinos move completely freely through huge thicknesses of any
matter without absorption. All the matter in our galaxy is not enough to
absorb a single particle. There are a lot of neutrinos in nature, because
many nuclear decays are accompanied by their production.
I assert that if we stand on the position of the real existence of the soul,
then it has a neutrino nature and is formed at the moment when there is a

478
change from one type of biochemical reaction to another.
The presence of rotational momentum in neutrinos contributes to the
fact that the particles that escaped at the moment of death from each atom
of our body remain interconnected, creating a stable invisible and
incorporeal cloud that has the configurations of our body. This neutrino
cloud is the soul!
For at least ten minutes Zuckerbiller stood motionless on the lectern
and contemplated the ocean of human passions beating and bubbling at his
feet.
Then he imperiously raised his skinny long arm, and the hall instantly
fell silent.
"Since we now know the physical substance of the human soul, we can
easily set up an experiment to discover it. The experiment is extremely
simple and feasible at the most insignificant cost. What is captivating in
this experience is not only the possibility of discovering the soul as such,
but also the possibility of real, physical communication with it.
"Whoa-u-" swept through the classroom like a steamer's whistle over
the ocean.
- An unstable nuclear particle, a neutron, emits neutrinos when it
decays into a proton and an electron. It is this fact that should be used to
solve the problem.
Imagine neutron decay in a thick cloud of neutrinos. Calculations show
that in such an environment, decay will occur more slowly than in a void.
The presence of a large number of neutrinos around neutrons will cause
the lifetime of this particle to increase. If the soul consists of a number of
neutrinos equal to the number of atoms of a living body, then the average
concentration of neutrinos in the volume of the soul is about ten to the
thirty-eighth power of particles per cubic centimeter. At this concentration
of neutrinos, the neutron lifetime should increase by about one-tenth of a
percent. Hence the idea of the experiment: you need to take a neutron
source, for example, a radium-beryllium alloy, and measure the frequency
of proton production in free space.
If a neutrino soul appears in the region of the neutron source, we will
register the abnormally long life of neutrons...
"Whoa," swept through the room. But now the female part of the
audience was silent. Everyone's eyes were wide with fear, they were chilly
pressed against each other.
"Perhaps souls walk here too," someone muttered.
"That's more than desirable," Zuckerbiller said. "The more souls there
are, the better. They should know that we, the living, have found a way to
find them and communicate with them.
"I appeal to all souls in this room," Zuckerbiller shouted with shrill

479
pathos, "go to all the nuclear laboratories in the world to be present at the
experiments to measure the lifetime of neutrons. Soul! Keep in mind: by
getting in the way of neutrons, or stepping aside, you can modulate their
lifetime, making it 11.8 minutes or one-tenth of a percent longer. In this
way, you can tell us, living people, whatever you wish. Both we and you
will finally establish a strong physical connection, a contact between the
mortal and the immortal. We are waiting for you at neutron sources!
Overturning chairs, overturning tables and bumping into each other, the
audience rushed out of the classroom. Some fled to their laboratories to
immediately conduct an experiment on measuring the lifetime of
neutrons, others, having felt the reality of immortal souls, fled from terror,
and still others fled simply because everyone was running. That's how it
started...
Soon after the publication of Zuckerbiller's report, the first reports on
the measurement of the lifetime of neutrons appeared in a theoretical
journal. And, surprisingly, the more sophisticated and accurate the
experiments were conducted, the more objective the data were recorded,
the more the spread of figures decreased. Life-time values crowded
around a single point, showing no tendency to jump out of the slowly but
inexorably narrowing circle of precision.
At first timidly, and then more and more frankly, laughter and jokes
began to be heard about Zuckerbiller's theory, and one experimenter, who
was especially sophisticated in his measurements and to whom, after the
seventy-fifth variant, they were tired of their monotonous result, could not
stand it, at the end of the article declared: "It can be stated with the
probability of a million against one that either there are no immortal souls
at all, or Professor Zuckerbiller's neutrino concept needs substantial
additions from His high priesthood..."
It is not known what would have happened to the creator of the new
theory in the end, if suddenly, like a bolt in broad daylight, a message from
the head of the Laboratory of Nuclear Physics of one of the largest atomic
centers in the world, Professor Arnold Connovan, had not appeared. With
the speed of lightning, the message flew around the world, and at least for
this reason it should be quoted in full:
"On the night before Good Friday, I made six hundred and fifty-third
experiments to test the theory of R. A. Zuckerbiller. I was tired and
decided to myself that this would be the last dimension. The continuous
repetition of "11.8 minutes" drove me to despair, and I was about to turn
off the unit, when suddenly my eyes fell on the dial of the electronic
watch. No way! Or is it just my imagination, or is the installation out of
order? The hand showed 13.2 minutes. But before I had time to pull out
the high-voltage switch, the needle shuddered and dropped to the value of

480
11.8 Somewhere the contact is broken, or the resistance is burned out! But
then the arrow again crept to the figure 13.2. Through someFor a while it
again became 11.8 and so on several times ... No other neutron lifetime
values appeared... So the device was in good working order.... Only then
did the fatal meaning of what I was watching reach me. Someone, or
something, from time to time stood in the way of the neutron flux,
changing the lifetime of the particles... I grabbed a pencil and began to
patiently write down the time intervals between the two readings of the
device. The message that I got in the form of Morse code meant this: -
"We exist, we exist, we exist..." I was horrified and turned off the
installation. An oppressive silence reigned in the laboratory. The mere
knowledge that there was someone else in it threw me into a fever, and I
hurriedly retired home, where I took four tablets of bromolyn at once.
Early in the morning, I returned to the neutron box and checked the
measurements... Everything repeated. Only this time the message was as
follows: "Please reduce the neutron flux. They harm us. "Oh my God," I
thought, "most of the measurements that have been made so far have been
deliberately performed on beams of enormous intensity. We fought for the
accuracy of the measurements, not caring at all about the fate of those who
were pierced by the neutron beam. Is this not the reason for the negative
result of the experiments conducted so far?"
If this report had been not from Professor Connovan, but from another
scientist, then it would have been taken for another sensational canard.
But the name of the authoritative nuclear experimenter was so well-known
in the scientific world, and his role as an adviser on science affairs to the
head of the government was so tangible among ordinary people, that the
scientifically impartial and acutely emotional report of the scientist was
instantly reprinted in all newspapers, it was broadcast on the radio and on
world television.
After that, the world fell silent. Jokes about Zuckerbiller instantly
stopped, and those who sang obscene couplets about immortal souls or
danced vulgar dances of immortal souls on the stage retired into the
silence of the cathedrals to pray for their sin. All scientific reports stopped.
But behind the tense and oppressive silence there was a feverish and
comprehensive verification of the reported results. Over the past two
weeks, only a short article by Zuckerbiller appeared in the Philosophical
Journal, which stated that, according to refined calculations, "the neutrino
effect of neutron decay retardation is best observed at a beam density of
thirty-seven neutrons per second per square centimeter..."
Alarming rumors spread that the experiments had been confirmed, that
some kind of negotiations were going on between souls and competent
government circles... Somewhere information leaked out that the killer of

481
the film actress Jenny Lippenstück was caught on the basis of data
reported by the soul of the victim... Cautious people began to take shares
to the stock exchange... Some people began to buy gold... The demand for
foreign passports for trips to uninhabited islands has risen... An anxious
and unstable time has come.
However, in the circles of many impartial people, among philosophers
and small merchants, the hope was expressed that Professor Connovan
was mistaken, that his attitude was simply a mess, that, thank God, there
were no immortal souls at all.
And at the moment when people almost completely recovered from the
first shock and began to gradually forget about the terrible scientific
discovery, suddenly three dramatic messages appeared at once, one after
another.
The first was again from Connovan. He completely rewrote theI made
my own measuring device for weak flows. Measurement accuracy is
guaranteed up to one millionth. The results are the same. He received
several reports, which, due to their confidential nature, which have no
scientific significance, he cannot cite. Conclusion: Professor
Zuckerbiller's theory of the neutrino soul has been brilliantly confirmed.
The second report was published by a Canadian scientist who
confirmed Connovan's results, but drew attention to the fact that he had
recorded cases when the neutron lifetime increased to a value several
times higher than predicted by theory. In several experiments, he recorded
a lifetime of thirty and eight tenths, sixteen and five and twenty minutes,
respectively.
Zuckerbiller, as always, came up with theoretical considerations. This
is their main essence. The neutron lifetime can exceed the originally
calculated value simply because there may be not one, but several neutrino
souls nested inside one another in the path of a neutron beam. As the
density of the neutrino cloud increases, the neutron lifetime will increase
accordingly. Further, he calculated the weak interaction of neutrinos with
the matter of the universe and established that in addition to all the known
properties, neutrinos have another one. It can travel in time... In particular,
not only the souls of those who died in the past, but also the souls of those
who will die in the future, can be found in this way. The article ended with
the words:
"When we began our theoretical investigations, we did not anticipate
their fatal significance for humanity. Now it is quite obvious. Through
communication with neutrino clouds, we can simultaneously determine
our entire future history."
The tragic meaning of these three scientific publications was especially
emphasized by the decision of a number of governments to ban all private

482
measurements of the neutron lifetime, as this could cause damage to the
state. Experiments to measure the life of neutrons were allowed to be
carried out only by strictly named laboratories under the control of the
security agencies. Censorship received a clear list of questions that could
be published in connection with these measurements. There were only 3
items on the list.
1. Neutron lifetime in free space.
2. Communication of neutrino souls of a personal nature (sending
greetings, waiting for a meeting, brief information about living conditions,
complaints about relatives, information about permanent residence,
opinions about the weather, films, art exhibitions, television programs,
products and products advertised in the open press).
3. Theoretical considerations related to the results of numerical
processing of experiments to determine the neutron lifetime.
It was strictly forbidden to publish:
1. Information of a military nature, which was sometimes blurted out
by irresponsible souls.
2. Messages concerning the life and activities of persons holding
responsible political and business posts.
3. Information about persons of the criminal world.
4. Otherworldly criticisms of the state, political and economic structure
of the country.
5 Historical facts that compromise the present.
6. Facts about the future that can cause serious damage to the present.
7. Information about life in space and on other planets.
Next came another hundred and seventeen points. Not If there had been
such a strict government ban, perhaps the world would not have taken so
keenly the reality of the existence of immortal souls. But after the list was
made public, a real panic began.
First of all, the population of a number of countries was shocked by the
fact that for no apparent reason, completely voluntarily, many ministers,
directors and owners of trusts and concerns began to resign from their
posts for health reasons. Petty government officials and businessmen
followed them. The catastrophic state of affairs in the legal instances is
evidenced by the fact that people began to be invited to the post of
prosecutor through tabloid newspapers.
Churches and cathedrals were suddenly overcrowded. The Holy
Fathers simply gasped when persons appeared at the confessionals with
such famous names and titles, of which the Church had only a theoretical
idea until now. Humbly bowing their heads, next to each other, major
statesmen, famous murderers, poisoners, photojournalists and ordinary
street girls muttered prayers.

483
 The expansion of churches and religious communities was urgently
needed, because there were so many people who wanted to pray for their
sins that the existing premises turned out to be unsuitable. Catholic
churches, mosques, churches, synagogues and temples functioned around
the clock. Church communities urgently established the production of
prayer machines and installed them on the streets and squares of cities and
villages. Crowds of penitents flocked to Mecca, Jerusalem, Memphis, to
all the holy places in cars, scooters and on foot. Several dozen new holy
places, deserts and caves had to be organized.
Sins and guilt before the dead stirred up humanity, and feeling the
inevitability of a future meeting and fear of the exposed, living souls
desperately sought to purify themselves before facing the judgment of
invisible but real neutrino clouds.
There was not a single person who was not interested even in the scant
information that was allowed to be published. Four laboratories in four
countries reported the lifetime of neutrons every day, like reports from the
battlefield. To everyone's horror, it was constantly growing, because the
number of souls who wanted to tell the living was constantly increasing,
they crowded around the measuring boxes, creating incredibly dense
neutrino clouds. A month after the publication of the government decree,
the neutron lifetime of Professor Connovan increased to five hours, that of
the Canadian scientist Schnopferer to seven and a half hours, in France to
twelve, and in Italy to a day. And it continued to grow steadily.
Based on these data, theorists quickly calculated that by crowding and
interfering with each other, souls created fantastic concentrations of
neutrinos, corresponding to a million souls per square meter. Squeezed
into one another, they strenuously tried to change the lifetime of neutrons
with their movements and thus communicate to the living what they
wanted.
When the neutron lifetime reached two days, there were menacing hints
that the souls of all people who had lived and died since the time of Adam
and Eve had gathered in the measuring centers. Then the association
"Neutrino and Immortality" unanimously adopted and published in the
newspaper "Neutrino Times" an appeal to souls:
"Dear immortals! Modern technology does not allow us to serve four
million two hundred and forty-seven thousand billion souls by means of
communication. Organize Billion-Dollar Groups Among You showers at
each of them and select a representative who will give us only the most
essential information. Put things in order and don't crowd all at once at the
neutron boxes."
But the souls did not heed the appeal at all and hung out in the
laboratories for days on end. Moreover, from the results of the

484
measurements, it suddenly became clear that souls from other planets
were flocking to earth. At a symposium on neutrino physics, scientists
listened with deathly silence to the report of a young theorist from
Chicago. His report had a brief but expressive title: "Neutrino Danger".
- If the predictions of cosmologists about the presence of inhabited
planets in our Galaxy are correct, then very soon the density of souls on
Earth will reach a concentration of one and a half billion two hundred
thousand per square meter. With such a neutrino density: a) neutrons will
turn into stable particles with an almost unlimited lifetime; b) Betta - the
decay of radioactive elements will stop; c) radioactive isotopes will cease
to be radioactive; d) atomic and hydrogen bombs will stop exploding; e)
people will begin to feel the presence of a dense neutron medium, first in
the form of a slight tickling, and then as impregnable obstacles...
The Chicago theorist's estimate was clearly underestimated, because
from the moment the neutron lifetime reached one week, cases of strange
human behavior began to appear. For no reason at all, some faces shied
away from emptiness, or screamed at an unexpected touch, or began to
flee from an invisible pursuit. Everyone was especially shocked by an
event that occurred one night in the New York subway. One middle-aged
woman suddenly began to shriek as she tried to free herself from the
invisible embrace. All attempts to help her led to nothing. She, panting,
fell down and urgently had to be taken out at the nearest station.
Along with churches, a heavy burden fell on psychiatric hospitals and
asylums for the insane. Women and men with sensitive nervous systems
poured there in a wide stream. They were the first to feel the
overpopulation of the Earth with souls. The souls, seeing in these people a
possible medium for communication with the living world, pursued them
relentlessly. Patients with a mental disorder called "neutrinomania" were
completely incurable, because no thick walls, no cellars, could protect the
unfortunates from the hordes of shadows that irritated and tickled them
day and night.
A peculiar activity was developed by the wealthy classes. With the
huge money raised, they created an institute where scientists were
supposed to create a material that would protect against neutrino
penetration. It was planned to build antineutrino shelters from this
material. The task was to create a substance with super-dense packaging in
the conditions of the earth, with a specific gravity of a million tons per
cubic centimeter.
Those who were poorer and did not hope to acquire an anti-neutrino
shelter quietly bought mines and caves or ocean bathyspheres and
disappeared, hiding somewhere in the depths of the seas or in the bowels
of the earth.

485
 Since the easiest way not to meet the unwanted neutrino soul was to
live longer, the prices for all kinds of elixirs of life rose to fantastic
proportions.
The most calm in this enraged world were the youths who had not yet
had time to sin. They laughed at their restless fathers and mothers, and
they themselves gathered in nightclubs and danced neutrino-twist,
neutrinoNo-rock and neutrino-sweep. In these dances, some kind of
neutrino soul acted as a partner, or several million neutrino souls nested
one inside the other. The second option was more preferable, because it
was easier to feel the rhythmic movements of the invisible partner. Youth
neutrino clubs were organized, where girls and boys got acquainted with
representatives of the other world.
Such sensitives began to appear, who, without the help of measuring
neutron boxes, by light touches and pinching, could establish a connection
with souls and conduct long and very meaningful conversations with
them. It was from such people that the Neutrino Times drew information
about the life of souls.
It turned out that souls see everything, hear everything and understand
everything. There are no language barriers for them. They have a
phenomenal memory and they remember not only what happened during
their lifetime, but also everything that happened after their death.
Moreover, they (the triumph of Zuckerbiller's theory) can visit the future
at will, but such journeys are associated with great overloads and with
overcoming the so-called time barrier.
By the way, all the paragraphs devoted to the description of the past and
the future were carefully erased by the censorship. Several issues of the
Neutrino Times were confiscated. Editors, correspondents, and sensitives,
on pain of the gas chamber, kept silent about what they had learned from
their hearts. For the phrase: "The future is not so good..." the political
editor of the newspaper was hidden in an insane asylum with a diagnosis
of neutrinomania.
When a hydrogen bomb failed to explode during an underground test in
Nevada one day, the government decided to convene a conference of souls
for a confidential and frank exchange. Apart from the speaker, the
Minister of Defense, and the neutrino box for soul performances, there
was not a single living person in the hall. A hundred chairs were occupied
by invited souls. The names of the souls were known. Once they belonged
to very intelligent and loyal citizens who held important government
posts. The doors to the conference room were guarded by specially
selected teams, ten people at each door. Telephone, water and electricity
were cut off. The meeting was held by candlelight.
The details are not known, but people with the ability to think

486
deductively immediately guessed that the Minister had revealed all the
maps to the souls, showed them the location of the storage facilities for
atomic and hydrogen bombs, the location of the reactors for the
production of plutonium, revealed to them the routes of atomic aircraft
and submarines, and explained in general terms the basic principles of the
strategy and tactics of the future war. There was only one request to the
souls: not to accumulate more than a hundred pieces per square meter in
the areas where the listed objects are located.
After the meeting, the souls dispersed around the Earth and conducted
explanatory work for several days. The difficulties were enormous,
especially when it was necessary to explain the meaning of the
government's demands to souls who were born in the Stone Age or to
those who came to Earth from other galaxies. It was not until two weeks
later, amid a great deal of noise, that Professor Connovan received a
soothing message: "We promise not to interfere with the normal course of
your human life."
Perhaps everything would have been fine, and people would have
somehow adapted to living in conditions of neutrino overcrowding, if not
for an absolutely stunning event.
The Canadian reported that the neutron lifetime has reached four
months. MThe atopic processing of this result showed that the number of
souls accumulated on Earth significantly exceeded the number of protons
and electrons combined in the entire visible Universe. So, it was necessary
to assume that souls from extragalactic regions flocked to Earth to declare
their existence. But this did not fit in with the postulate of the theory of
relativity about the limiting value of the speed of light... In order to reach
the Earth in such a short time, the souls had to move at a speed greater than
"C". Is Einstein right or wrong? - this is the dramatic question that the
catastrophic colonization of the Earth by souls from the depths of the
universe led to.
The second event took place in the small provincial town of Santa
Monica, in the market square, where a businessman who came from the
center set up his spirit-box and predicted the future for a dollar. The fact is
that for a long time, in violation of government instructions, companies
began to produce small portable neutron life meters and sell them illegally
at the request of those who wished. The device contained a neutron source
and an automatic neutron life time counter. The accompanying
instructions explained how to translate the oscillations of the needle into
English. At first, spiritboxes were purchased for personal consumption,
and then, speculating on the thirst of ordinary people to say hello to the
dead or find out their future from them, the owners began to accept orders
from outside. There are especially many of them in the provinces, where

487
state supervision was not at the proper level.
So, during communication with souls in the market square in Santa
Monica, a small chubby fat man approached the owner of the spirit-box
and, throwing a dollar into the box, asked to be told about his future. The
needle soon moved and the operator, opening the instructions, read:
"- According to absolutely accurate and irrefutable information from
your grandson on the line of your second wife, you will have the next
happy marriage in the near future..."
But the cameraman did not finish his prediction.
The fat man shouted at the top of his lungs: "Police, charlatanism!" In
the presence of a policeman and numerous witnesses, it turned out that the
fat gentleman was a Turk by nationality, that he sang in the boys' choir of
the Italian opera in Santa Barbara, and that he could not have
grandchildren, not to mention wives, and even several.
Then, at the request of the crowd, they broke down the spirit box and
found that instead of a radium-beryllium neutron source, there was a piece
of brick painted with silver paint, and the needle was driven by a small
clock mechanism.
The public demanded immediate verification of experiments to
measure the lifetime of neutrons...
Professor Connovan had suddenly retired, and experiments conducted
by his assistant had suddenly shown that the neutron lifetime was normal,
only eleven and eight-tenths of a second. Soon reports came from other
laboratories. No one found anything unnatural anywhere. It seemed that
all the souls, as if by magic, left the Earth...
Commissions and subcommissions, investigations and trials,
investigations and acquittals went. Feral sinners began to return from
caves and holy places. The insane began to recover. Only the old maids
continued to insist that their suitors remained with them.
Passions gradually faded and the invasion of souls was forgotten. Only
once did a tiny caricature slip into a run-down provincial newspaper. The
drawing depicted a very fat man in a cardinal's cassock, with a cross
around his neck, and next to him a man in a tailcoat, somewhat
reminiscent of Professor Connovan. "How much is one minute of life
worth?..."
The word "neutron" was crossed out by the censorship.

488
 Purple Mummy
I
Of course, you know how you feel when you come to the capital. As if
he was in a completely new world. Rushing in helicopters from one square
to another, silently gliding over giant palaces on cables on gyroplanes,
descending into the bowels of silent underground railways, filled with
streaming sunlight from nowhere, you feel that it is here, in this amazing
ancient city, in Moscow, that all the most extraordinary, outstanding,
calling forward is concentrated.
I do not consider myself a hopeless provincial. In the north, in the city
of Leninsk, we also have cable cars, helicopter communications, and
television information centres in all large areas. Nevertheless, in Moscow
I feel a little embarrassed and even overwhelmed. I thought about the
reasons for this for a long time and finally came to the conclusion that it
was all about speed. Yes, in the capital, the speed of traffic is many times
higher than ours. Even the inhabitants of the city, friendly and sincere
Muscovites, move faster than we do. They do not stand still on the sliding
pavements. They are almost running over them. They seem to continue the
traditions of their ancestors, the very ones who a few decades ago did not
stand motionless on the rattling stairs of the old metro, but ran along them,
having time to read on the go.
On Vosstaniya Square, high hanging between two gigantic buildings -
the Palace of Sports and the Palace of Arts - I stopped at a television
auto-informer and dialed the address I needed - the address of the Museum
of Material Culture. The necessary coordinates quickly floated through
the screen, and the car began to show me the way to the museum.
I had to go down to the lower park, fly along the Peoples' Friendship
Canal on a winged reactoplane to the Freedom Monument, then change to
a helicopter and land on the Blue Highway, leading through the Agate
Tunnel directly to the Museum of Material Culture. On a color screen, the
museum appeared before me in the form of a thirty-story parallelepiped,
lined with orange ceramics, with a fifty-meter snow-white marble
bas-relief depicting the first space rocket launched by us towards the
Moon. I boldly moved along the path indicated to me and in less than one
hundred and thirty seconds I was at the goal. On the way, I used my
personal radio-automatic telephone exchange and warned Professor Sayen
of my arrival. He met me at the entrance to the museum.

489
 "Greetings, my young friend!" - he said in his melodious voice and
shook my hand with both hands. - What fates brought you to our quiet
corner in this huge, ever-pulsating city?
I looked attentively into the slightly mocking eyes of the already
elderly scientist and remembered him as I knew him when I took a
postgraduate course in history at the Revolution University near Moscow
two years ago. It hasn't changed a bit since then.
"I'm afraid I've come at the wrong time. From radio information I know
that you are going to Africa, to Togo...
"What are you, what are you! The professor exclaimed. "I have thirteen
more hours at my disposal. I think that during this time we will have time
to resolve all your issues.
"It seems to me that two or three hours of your precious time is quite
enough to solve my questions. If you don't mind, let's get started...
I had no idea how wrong I was at that moment!
We entered the marble hall, and a silent elevator swept us up to the
seventeenthwhere Sayen's study was located. During our upward flight,
the professor briefly told me the program of his trip to Togo.
- It is necessary to supplement our data on the secondary period of the
struggle of the peoples of this region for independence. Many years have
passed since then, but no one has yet sorted out the archives... In our
museum, this is a gap," he concluded bitterly. "So I am at your disposal,"
he said, sitting down on the sofa.
I sat down in a chair, quickly opened my folder, took out a photograph
of my wife, Maya, and handed it to the professor.
"Do you know this person?" I asked the professor.
I looked at him attentively to see the movement of every muscle in his
tired face.
Saien took a quick glance at the image, furrowed his brows slightly,
and then glanced at me. His eyes expressed bewilderment. Thinking
intensely about something, he shook his head. Back in Leninsk, when
saying goodbye, my wife said to me: "You'll see, he'll do this..." And she
shook her head just as Professor Sayen had done, her lips sticking out a
little.
"I don't know," the professor answered, looking inquiringly into my
face.
He was surprised when I nodded my head in satisfaction and rummaged
through the folder again to get the latest issue of the catalog of the
Museum of Material Culture. Sayen moved impatiently closer to me.
-What are those? I asked, handing him the catalogue that had been
opened on the page where the Purple Mummy's head had been inserted.
It often happens that the editor-in-chief of a reputable publication does

490
not know everything that is printed in it. Like all mortals, he has his own
interests, and naturally, he follows the materials of his specialty the most.
His assistants are responsible for the rest. Apparently, it was the same
now.
Professor Sayen took another look at the photograph of the mummy
and flipped through several pages of the magazine to determine the name
of the newly received exhibit from the museum. Suddenly he exclaimed:
"Why, it's the same thing!
-A what? I asked, anticipating what turn the conversation would take in
a few minutes.
"The face of the Purple Mummy and that!" He said in surprise.
"I knew it," I remarked, putting the paste in the catalogue and the
portrait of my wife next to it.
-A what? He was surprised now.
"I knew beforehand that you would say so. And Maya and I were
arguing. She said you'd notice a difference right away...
Sayen's face took on a stern expression.
"I don't understand you. What are you saying? Which Maya are you
talking about?
- I'm talking about portrait resemblance. And Maya is my wife.
"What does she have to do with it?"
- This is her portrait. And this," I pointed to the insert, "is a portrait of
the Purple Mummy...
Professor Sayen quickly rose from his seat and looked down at me. I
noticed how his eyebrows twitched slightly.
- I hope that you have traveled five thousand kilometers not at all to
joke? He asked me restrainedly.
I understood how much it cost him to say this phrase calmly.
-Not at all. Moreover, it is this similarity that has brought me to you.
You know that in Leninsk I am the head of the local history museum.
When I received your catalog, I was struck by the resemblance of the
mummy to my wife...
He took the portrait and the magazine from my hands and went to the
wide window. It was about noon, and through the thin, almost
imperceptible glass, bright daylight poured abundantly. A helicopter
flashed past the wide windows, but the professor did not pay attention to
it. He carefully compared both images.
"He will say that there is a difference in the structure of the neck," I
remembered Maya's words.
"Yes, but they have different necks!" Sayen exclaimed happily.
Smiling, I approached him.
-Yes. Different. But the face is the same. For now, I'm only interested

491
in similarities. As for the differences, more on that later...
We sat down again as before, he on the sofa, I in an armchair.
"Tell me more about your mission," he said.
I was a little worried, because now the most crucial moment has come:
to convey my thoughts as accurately as possible. I pursed my lips and
began to move my eyes restlessly around the professor's vast office, trying
to find an object with which to begin the story.
"Pay attention to the bust of Academician Fillio in the left corner
behind his desk," I remembered Maya's instructions.
I found the bust of Fillio, then opened the catalogue again and showed
it to the professor.
"Here, look again," I said to him, "do you know who it is?
"Phyllio," Sayen replied without hesitation. "What's the matter?" What
is this picture guessing game?
Now it was my turn to express my impatience. I glanced at my watch.
Our dialogue was definitely dragging on. A helicopter flashed past the
windows again. This meant that another five minutes had passed.
"Excuse me, Professor, apparently you don't read all the materials in
the catalog you edit?"
He clenched his hands nervously. It seems that only now did he
understand the meaning of what I was leading to. Indeed, why is the bust
of Fillio in the catalog of the Museum of Material Culture?
He smiled embarrassedly and lightly passed his hand over his forehead.
"I confess that I did not pay attention to this... That is, I watched, but so,
superficially. This is in the department of radio astronomical information,
and I guess...
Interrupting himself, Sayen suddenly turned pale. He began to slowly
get up from the sofa, not taking his widened eyes off me. "What does
Academician Fillio have to do with it?" - I read in his frightened eyes.
"Come on, give me the magazine," he whispered. With the magazine in
his hands, he crossed the office diagonally, almost hit his desk and froze at
the bust of the famous polyglot linguist.
A tense silence lasted for several seconds. Then the professor turned on
the recorder:
"Androva immediately to my office...
His voice was soft, but there was a subtle note of threat in it. Picking up
the phone, he said:
"Avginova, you? Who edited Androv's materials for the last issue of
our catalog?.. And they checked with the originals?.. That's right? Who
took the photos?.. Thank you.
Forgetting about my presence, the professor sat down at the table and
studied the image in the catalog.

492
 Suddenly he remembered me:
"Give me a portrait of that girl...
-What?
"The one you showed me."
-Maya?
"I don't know how it is... Let's hurry...
"This is a portrait of my wife," I said firmly.
-No matter...
He stared at both images for a long time, clutching his head in his
hands.
The door opened, and a tall man of middle age appeared in itt, in a light
yellow tracksuit. He walked up to the professor with broad strides.
- Your job? Sayen asked, without looking up.
-My.
"Aren't you ashamed?"
"I don't understand you...
"You'll understand now. Here!
Sayen almost poked a portrait of my wife into Andros' face.
"Here's your Purple moo-mi-ya." Then, throwing an angry glance in my
direction, he asked with caustic irony: Or maybe she, this girl of yours...
"This is my wife," I prompted.
Is this wife of yours really moo-mi-ya?
Androv carefully studied the portrait of Maya. The professor looked at
him contemptuously.
"In our time, and all of a sudden... Such a lie, such a deception...
Androv finally realized that I was directly involved in the whole
conversation, and ran up to me.
"Did you make a mirror reproduction of my mummy?" He asked
threateningly.
I shook my head. Then, without saying a word, he grabbed me by the
arm and dragged me out of the office. Professor Sayen could hardly keep
up with us. Turning on the moving belt of the corridor as he went, Androv
rushed to the right, then pushed me into the elevator, then we flew down,
ran through the corridor again, at one corner almost collided with the
professor, who was running to the same place by another route, and finally
burst into a huge, dimly lit hall, in which quartz sarcophagi stood in the
center and along the walls. We stopped at one of them...
-See.
I looked into the sarcophagus and instantly closed my eyes. This cannot
be. It can't!
"Look, look!" Androv ordered me, panting.
"I see," I muttered timidly.

493
 The professor asked, looking into my face.
"I see Maya," I whispered, averting my eyes from the plastic figure of
the naked woman.
"What kind of Maya is this?" Androv asked sharply. "Won't you say
you know the creature?"
Silence reigned. I was the first to speak:
"Excuse me, but this is a sculpture of my wife, Maya...
Androv burst out laughing and shouted:
"Take a good look, maybe there are some special marks on your wife's
body!"
He put a scathing emphasis on the word "your." I looked again at the
sculpture of a woman who looked like she was alive and lying with her
eyes open. The plastic mass from which it was made had a purple color.
The most incredible thoughts were spinning in my head. It seemed to me
that I was going crazy.
"That's right, only the color of the body...
Another burst of laughter.
-Aha! Color! Then she doesn't quite look like your wife!
And again a snide emphasis on the word "your"... I was embarrassed.
I cast an imploring glance at Androv. These metropolitan scientists, in
order to prove their rightness, sometimes go ahead, neglecting the
elementary rules of ethics.
"In fact, I have nothing against the fact that this figure is here.
Although, you understand yourself... However, it's good that in the
magazine you printed only the image of the head and...
"Do you hear?" You hear what he says! He has nothing against it! Do
you know what it is? This is the damn greatest find! Four of the most
powerful radio telescopes worked continuously for more than a hundred
hours in order not to miss a single signal. Information deciphered
simultaneously in Moscow and Paris! The best machines have been used
to convolut information into this! And you say...
The passionate flow of phrases was interrupted by Sayen's sharp
remark.
- Did you also roll the head of Academician Fillio in cars in Moscow
and Paris?
Androv froze with his mouth wide open.
"What Phyllio?"
"And this one."
The professor dragged us to a quartz cap in the center of the hall. I
recognized a copy of the bust that stood in the office. Here it was made of
plastic mass, also purple.
Androv nodded his head.

494
 "Say something," the professor insisted.
"And this one... We used the same equipment for both of them... We
are...
"Who are we?"
"I, that is, the entire staff of the decoding group of space radio
information... It's there, behind the Pantheon, in the district...
Androv stammered. He looked wildly at me and at Professor Sayen.
-You don't believe me? He muttered at last. Sayen shrugged. For some
reason, cold waves ran down my spine. A terrible thought was born in my
brain. And at this time, Androv almost whispered:
"Honestly, these two figures were assembled on the basis of pulse-code
information received by us three months ago from the outskirts of the
constellation Cygnus. At first, we accepted this head... On a wave of
twenty-three centimeters... Three months later, on the same wave, the
Purple Mummy.. The noise at the time of reception did not exceed five
decibels... The ratio of the signal to the noise was no less..." And suddenly,
out of nowhere, he shouted: "It can't be! You are clever about something!
Who is this Maya? Who is Phyllio?
The professor handed him a photograph. Androv compared it with the
figure lying in the sarcophagus against the wall...
"And Phyllio?" Is this the one who passed away three months ago? Did
you know him personally?
The professor nodded affirmatively.
Androv stopped dead in the middle of the hall, suddenly rushed to the
door and disappeared.
With every second I was getting scarier and scarier. I tried not to look at
the glass bell under which lay a purple copy of my wife... Suddenly, the
door swung open, and Androv and a woman with a small bag in their
hands ran in. Without saying a word, they ran up to the sarcophagus with
the mummy and began to remove the top lid from it.
"What are you going to do?" Sayen asked anxiously.
"Dissect," Androv whispered, panting. "And immediately... And if it is
confirmed that...
- Who should be dissected?
-Mummy.
-What for? I thought they were going to cut my wife.
At this time, the woman opened the suitcase and took out a scalpel and
a circular saw.
"I forbid you!" This is a national value, and you have no right to do this
without the permission of the World Science Council," Sayen stated
categorically. "Besides, I don't see the point in treating an exhibit that was
so painstakingly obtained from space, if it was obtained from space, of

495
course.
"Don't worry, Professor. All information is recorded on electret
cylinders, and it can always be recovered. In a day or two... Anthony,
begin.
He spread his arms wide, blocking the professor's way to the
sarcophagus. I heard the saw squeal. Ice waves continued to drift down his
back.
"Now open the chest," Androv commanded. "Damn it, cut it quickly!"
Sawed up? Now turn the sternum away. Do you see the heart? Aha! And
where is the liver! Correct! Spleen. All. Androv
grabbed me by the shoulder:
"Why are you afraid? After all, this is a mummy, it is made of plastic.
Replica. However, see for yourself whether this is an exact copy or not...
I hesitantly approached the sarcophagus. The plastic parts of the
destroyed body lay torn apart on both sides of the axis of symmetry of the
body, and the internal structure of the figure could be easily seen. The
organs were of different colors, but all with a purple tint... The mummy's
eyes remained open and did not express any suffering. With great
difficulty, I forced myself to think that this was not a living organism, but
only a skillfully made copy of a human being.
- Copy or not copy? Androv asked, shaking me. His eyes shone with
inexpressible joy. - Watch carefully!
I nodded my head despondently.
"What do you think, Professor?" Androv asked eagerly.
The answer came from the woman who opened the mummy:
"Comrades! Why, it's the other way around!
I stared blankly, trying to understand what she meant by "the opposite".
"What do you mean, Antonia?" The professor asked hoarsely.
-All! Heart, liver, spleen... It's the opposite! Only then did I realize what
was going on. The mummy's heart was on the right, the liver on the left,
everything was like a normal person's, but only as if reflected in a mirror!
"Now you understand what we have accepted!" This is a gigantic
confirmation of the theory of the existence of anti-worlds! It's amazing!
This is...
"Tell me what all this means?" The professor demanded.
Androv remembered us. He stepped away from the mummy and,
embracing the professor, said in a solemn voice:
"At last, we have experimental proof that somewhere in the depths of
the universe there is an anti-world, just like ours, but consisting of
antimatter. This world is like a mirror image of ours!
Moving along the fast-flying panels and roads of Moscow to the Palace
of Science, I heard a restrained rumble, from which excited shouts burst

496
here and there: "Purple mummy. Purple mummy..."
After a special report by the World Scientific Council on Androv's
hypothesis, which was astounding in its boldness, the Purple Mummy was
talked about not only in Moscow, but all over the world. Instead of the
opened exhibit, a new copy was exhibited in the Museum of Material
Culture. The influx of visitors from many cities around the world was so
huge that several more copies had to be made. They were exhibited in the
largest public halls of the capital. By a special order of the Supreme
Soviet, the image of the mummy was broadcast three times a day on color
stereo television. "Purple Mummy, Purple Mummy..." Moscow was
buzzing, and at that time I had something completely different in my head.
"Maya, Maya... Is there a woman like my wife somewhere in the
universe?"
Finally, I could not stand it. In the center of the capital, in one of the
secluded corners of the Kremlin Park, I pulled a radio phone out of my
pocket and dialed Leninsk. A few seconds later, a long buzzer beep was
heard.
"Maya, is that you?"
-Yes. What's the Purple Mummy's fuss? I will probably use the law on
respect for the personal dignity of citizens and demand that I not be shown
to the whole world!
My Maya is a very cheerful and cheerful woman. I breathed a sigh of
relief when I heard her sonorous, perky voice.
- Silly, you should be proud of it!
"And I'm proud!" Here I am pestered by the press, radio and television.
You know, an academic commission flew to me from Moscow, and I was
examined! They wanted to make sure that my heart was really not on the
right side, but on the left side!
"Well, how?"
"You're convinced, dear!" It turns out that I am not from the anti-world!
She laughed loudly. "What are you doing?" she asked.
- I try to be silent. Imagine what would happen to me if the people
found out that I was an earthly copy of the husband of this red-violet
person.
"But then you'd have to be painted that ugly color, too!" By the way,
why did they make it purple?
"They didn't do anything. This was done by the machine that coagulates
the information on its own. So, according to the rules of anti-worlds, this
is how it is necessary... Most people think the mummy is pretty good,
though," I tried to quip.
"Well, you know, don't compliment me!" I've heard enough of them
here. What are you going to do now?

497
 I looked at my watch.
"In eighty seconds, the conference will begin in the Great Marble Hall
of the Academy. Now I'm flying there.
"All right, dear, go." And I will sit in front of the TV and also listen to
what they will say there. Until the next conversation!
"See you next time!"
The Great Marble Hall of the Academy was overcrowded, and I could
hardly find a seat at the very end, at the main entrance. I put on my
headphones and turned on the screen on the music stand. The president of
the Academy, physicist Jonatoz, briefly described the task of the
conference - to discuss the scientific validity of Androv's hypothesis. A
strict time limit was established: three-minute reports at the plenum, two
minutes for reports in sections. Discussions on reports are held in absentia,
in the halls of the Academy, where sound recording devices were installed
and where any delegate could speak and receive copies of all statements
and reports.
Androv's report was the fifth. The first word was given to the Chicago
radio astronomer Horner, who told the story of the discovery of the
semantic meaning of radio signals coming from space. The equations of
information theory appeared on the screen, on the basis of which the
problem of deciphering signals of any physical nature was solved. Horner
was followed by a Muscovite named Solvin, who described the
capabilities of the equipment with which signals from the Alpha Cygni
region were received. Zuggan from Rhodesia spoke about the principles
of recording and storing space radio information.
The most boring to me was the scrupulous report of the French radio
engineer Suji, who dwelt in detail on the principles of ultrasonic
volumetric sweeping of physical bodies and then their reverse model
convolution into material information. Actually, everything was the same
here as in two-dimensional television, but only the scan was carried out by
an ultrasonic "needle" - a beam of sound with a diameter of several
microns. At the end he said:
"Naturally, in order to transmit information about organisms, it is
necessary that they are clinically dead. In any case, with this method of
scanning. UltrasThe wook bundle irreversibly destroys a living cell...
Preliminary reports were delivered so that the scientific delegates could
get an idea of the soundness of the experimental data.
Then Androv spoke.
- I will not repeat the well-known data on elementary particles and
antiparticles of matter. I will simply list them. Electron and positron,
proton and antiproton, neutron and antineutron. The rest of the short-lived
particles are of no interest to us. The experiments of Malinowski and

498
Sague proved that it is possible to create stable antiatoms of any element
from elementary particles. This is enough to build an anti-world. But this
is not important. Antiparticles are born in pairs. At the known energies of
quanta, it is possible to produce paired atoms and, as the latest studies of
binary stars show, entire planetary systems, one of which consists of
matter, the other of its mirror antipode, antimatter. Birth pairs are
physically identical, except for the charge and spin characteristics you
know. The latter cannot influence biological evolutionary processes due to
low energies and weak interactions. I assert that our sun and our planets
have their counterparts of antimatter, which arose at the same moment
from electromagnetic quanta of colossal energy. Such quanta appear in the
Universe from time to time as a result of fluctuations in the radiation of
other stars. If so, then there is an Anti-Earth inhabited by anti-humans...
Laughter swept through the hall.
The chairman stood up and turned to Androv:
"Anti-people, anti-man - bad terminology. It has an offensive meaning.
-Forgive me. I was referring to a man built of antimatter.
The noise stopped.
Androv further described in detail what the structure of man from
antimatter should be, especially emphasizing the need for mirror
symmetry with respect to the earth's structure. When he came to the story
of the Purple Mummy, he was carried away, and the chairman suggested
that he dictate the rest of the report in the hall.
The largest specialist in anthropology and social statistics, Guton from
Novosibirsk, raised objections. His inexorable figures proved how often
there are striking similarities between people living in different parts of
the globe. As for the mirror arrangement of the internal organs of a
mummy, he gave several examples when this was observed on Earth.
Suddenly, in violation of all the rules of the regulations, someone from
the audience shouted:
"Your probabilities must be multiplied and thus will be reduced by ten
orders of magnitude!"
-Why? Guton was not at a loss.
- The purple mummy looks like an earthly inhabitant. In addition, it has
a mirror arrangement of organs. In addition, a bust of a man similar to the
linguist Fillio was accepted from the Universe. It is very unlikely that
three such complex events coincide!
Guton frowned and fell silent. A restrained hum swept through the hall.
"Go on," said the chairman.
"No, I don't think I will. The remark is convincing...
Guton retired to his seat.
I entered the hall and stood at the electronographer, who was typing the

499
first reports of the discussion. The speakers were nearby, in soundproof
booths, and they were talking...
They argued, objectedand, doubted or refuted Androv's hypothesis.
Then I went out onto the open veranda and contacted Leninsk again.
Maya did not answer me for a long time.
"Don't you listen to what they say here?" I asked.
I felt a little tired. I think that Outon is right, although he left the
podium. It's just an accidental similarity. Even on Earth, there are often
amazing coincidences. And on the scale of the Universe, they are
inevitable. Well, I kiss you, dear. I'll go lie down...
Maya turned off the machine, and before I could tell her that I would
rather the Purple Mummy look like someone else...

ll
For me, the worst thing began when the conference was over. The
delegates dispersed to their cities, having unanimously decided that
experimental data were not enough to confirm Androv's hypothesis. In a
few hours, interest in the Purple Mummy faded away in the world, its
copies were removed to the basements of the museum, and only one, the
one that was first dissected by Androv himself, was transferred to the
Central Anatomical Theater.
Anatomists, pathologists, physiologists, cytologists continued to study
it. Before leaving for Leninsk, I decided to ask what their work had led to.
On the threshold of the sectional room I was met by Androv. He looked
tired, exhausted.
I peered through the half-open door and saw several doctors in robes
bent over the shapeless remains of the Purple Mummy.
-How is it going? I asked Androv.
-So so. The mirror symmetry of the structure of internal organs does not
raise any doubts...
"In that case, what are they doing with her now?"
Androv shrugged his shoulders carelessly.
- They want to use this model to determine her age and compare it with
your wife's age.
"What a pity that the inhabitants of the Counter-Earth did not attach a
piece of paper with her biographical data to the woman they broadcast on
the radio," I joked.
- I regret something else. It would be more difficult for my opponents to
perform if we could accept the whole mummy of Professor Fillio, and not
just his head...
I agreed. Androv roused me from my thoughts:
"Did your wife work with Fillio?"

500
 -Yes. She was his graduate student. Under his guidance, she studied the
Indonesian group of languages.
Androv nodded his head and then said:
"There is another way to prove that my hypothesis is correct... But now
it depends on them. He nodded in the direction of the sectional room.
- Age of the mummy?
-Yes. And maybe something else...
Androv suddenly took me by the arm and led me along the corridor.
"There's nothing interesting there yet, you know. Do you want me to
show you how a machine works that rolls up models according to the
volumetric scan of the originals?
-Want to.
We drove along the escalator to the upper air road, sat on a gyroplane
silently gliding along the cable and flew over the whole of Moscow in a
few minutes. The sky was blue, cloudless, cool. The city was buried in
greenery, covered with a bluish haze.
"Were you born here?" Androv asked me.
-No.
"What amazing transformations our city has undergone in some thirty
years!
"Yes. Tell me, what else, besides the age of the mummy, can prove
your theory?
Androv, as if evading my question, continued:
"I have been living here since my birth, and the second reconstruction
of Moscow took place before my eyes. Everything was like in a fairy
tale... Giant palaces grew, parks were created. Underground roads
switched to silent transport. Helicopters circled over the city. The web of
thin wires for trolleybuses and trams disappeared, and instead of it, light
suspension bridges and towers of shining metal stretched at a height of up
to a hundred meters, and ropes were attached to them, on which
gyroplanes glide... Life has become exciting and beautiful... Life has
become wonderful," he repeated thoughtfully.
I wanted to repeat my question, but at that moment the gyroplane
stopped at the passenger platform.
"Well, here we are," said Androv. "And there's our reception center
over there.
Covered with green ivy, there was a low house with a flat roof below.
The machine that created three-dimensional models from plastic mass by
their pulse scan was called an electron-acoustic repeater. It was a gigantic
structure shining with stainless steel and dazzling white lacquered paint. It
worked with a barely audible hum. Sometimes jets of warm or cool air were
thrown out from its inside, from the cooling channels.

501
 Behind a glass partition at the end of the hall was another car, much
smaller than the first. That's where we went.
A girl was sitting at the control panel, reading a book. Occasionally she
took her eyes off the pages and glanced at the dashboard. A neon light
bulb flashed unevenly in front of her face.
- Galya, what is going on with you now?
- Model of a new nuclear reactor. From Rome," the girl answered,
getting up.
"By radio or by cable?"
- Via radio relay line.
Androv nodded his head and then turned to me:
"Look how it's done. It receives pulse-code information, which
encrypts the coordinates of each point of the transmitted object, as well as
the color of the material from which the object is made, and its structural
details, thickness, length, and so on. After amplification, the pulses enter
the decoder. After separation by channels, they turn on and off the relay
that controls the mechanical and chemical parts of the device.
We returned to the car in the large pavilion and approached a wide
mirrored display case in the center. Androv turned on the light, and the
inner chamber shone brightly. In it stood some shapeless object, which
was touched on all sides by thin metal needles.
- Convolution of information into the object model occurs here. These
are thin needles, like those used for intramuscular injection. A thin stream
of plastic is squeezed through them with small pushes, which is blown
with cold air to cool down. The needles move in sync with the ultrasonic
needles that are now feeling the real object in Rome... So, drop by drop,
from point to point, a thin trickle of plastic builds a model. With these
levers, you can adjust the size of the model, make it sometimes larger or
smaller than the original...
- And what about the color?
- It's very simple. In its original form, the resin is colorless. The
photocalorimeter, in accordance with the color information, enters into
itamount of this or that dye...
"So this is where the Purple Mummy was born?" I asked.
Androv nodded his head.
"By the way, I still don't understand why it's purple. If everything is as
you say, it must be, so to speak, flesh-colored...
- There was a lot of debate about this at the conference. The explanation
of one physicist seems plausible to me. Do you know what the Doppler
effect is?
- This is when the wavelength of light increases if the radiation source
moves away from the observer.

502
 -Exactly. For example, you can move away at such a colossal speed
that to a stationary observer, the color of your body will appear red. I think
that the color of the mummy indicates that the Counter-Earth is moving
away from us at a tremendous speed...
At this time, a girl's voice was heard from behind the glass partition:
"Comrade Androv, you are on the phone!"
Androv left me, and I remained to watch how the needles with the
plastic mass flowing from them "painted" a three-dimensional model of an
object located at a distance of tens of thousands of kilometers. I tried to
imagine the excitement of scientists when these same needles drew a
three-dimensional image of the human body, located at a distance that
consciousness is unable to imagine.
Androv literally rushed at me and pulled my shoulder.
"Let's go!"
-Where to? - I was surprised.
- Back and immediately! To the anatomical theater...
Without thinking anything, I rushed after him. We flew up to the line of
the gyroplane and only stopped here.
-What happened? "
When was the last time you talked to your wife?"
-That is...
- When was the last time you talked to your wife? He repeated the
question again, his deep black eyes fixed on me.
A gyroplane flew up. Androv dragged me inside, then opened the
porthole. A strong jet of air blew from it.
"Take the cordless telephone and contact your wife immediately."
I took the device out of my pocket.
-Show. yes, it's with a ferrite antenna. Not good... However, try to stick
it out slightly through the window and say. The body of the gyroplane is
metal and protects your device from radio radiation.
Clinging to the porthole with my whole body, I dialed the number of
Leninsk. His heart was beating faster. What's the matter?
-Well?
"He doesn't answer...
- Try to push the device out even more.
I dialed the number again.
"He doesn't answer," I said hoarsely.
"Let me hold him at arm's length, and you listen."
Androv took the radio phone from me and put his hand out the window
up to his elbow. But at that time, on the descent of the cable car, the speed
of the gyroplane increased sharply, something jerked violently, and the
phone burst out of my hands.

503
 "Oh, damn it! Everything is lost!
My device was blown away by a powerful air current. From hitting the
edge of the porthole, Androv's hand began to bleed a little below the
elbow.
We looked at each other in silence for a while. I read horror in his eyes.
"What happened to her, to my wife?" I whispered at last.
Now we'll find out... Remember to the nearest day how many yearsor
how long it has been since Fillio's death.
The devil knows what was going on in my head, and simple arithmetic
was confused. In addition, I did not understand the meaning of his
demands. At last I said,
"My wife is twenty-three years, four months and six days old. Phyllio
died three months and three days ago...
- Have you taken into account leap years?
-No.
-Ok. Let me do it. Name the day, month and year of birth... However, it
is better to name the date of Fillio's death.
The gyroplane stopped gently. Androv dragged me by the hand to the
exit, muttering something to himself.
We were silent until the sectional room in the anatomical theater. I have
forgotten the date and day on which Maya was born. I didn't remember
when Phyllio died.
In the corridor we were met by a doctor who was smiling happily. In his
hands he clutched a large lump of purple-orange plastic mass. Androv put
his index finger to his lips, but he did not pay any attention to it.
"I almost congratulate you, almost congratulate!" The doctor
exclaimed. "Now we only need to establish what our earthly inhabitant
died of!" As for the Purple Mummy, everything is clear. See! He handed
Androv a lump of plastic. - Lymphosarcoma! An amazing plastic model of
a tumor!
I stepped back, seized with terror.
-What are you saying?! Androv exclaimed.
-Nothing much. I'm surprised that there, on your Counter-Earth, they
can't cure such nonsense. They learned to transmit the corpses of their
inhabitants by radio, and they did not think of treating tumors! Deformity.
The doctor made a disdainful grimace and turned to the sectional room.
He walked slowly, with dignity, and I could hardly move my legs,
intensely thinking what was wrong with Maya. The distance to Leninsk of
five thousand kilometers began to turn into a cosmic one. My heart
clenched...
- At what age did she die? I mean the mummy, Androv asked.
"Kugel will tell you that now. By the way, I don't understand, couldn't

504
we cure this woman either? However, often neoplasms do not make
themselves felt until the very last moment. A slight malaise, and that's all.
Do you know our youth? Think of it, it's a malaise. We don't care about
medicine. Here is the result...
The doctor spoke in a loud and harsh voice, like a bad radio
loudspeaker.
We entered the sectional room. An elderly man without a dressing
gown was sitting at the marble table and making some calculations in his
notebook.
- Kugel, how long, in your opinion, did the patient live? Our guide
asked. He pointed his finger at the torn plastic scarecrow.
"Eight thousand five hundred and twenty-three and a half days. I can't
vouch for half of it," Kugel replied, continuing his calculations.
"Doctor," Androv turned to him, "here is her husband...
Androv gently pushed me to the doctor.
-Husband? This one? He pointed to the purple rags of plastic.
-Awesome! He will tell us exactly the day when his wife died. Do you
remember?
At that time, I remembered something completely different. I
remembered the words of the French radio engineer Suzhi that the
volumetric unfolding of an organism is possible only after its death. I
remembered that the interval between the reception of the bust of Phyllio
and the Purple Mummy from space was three months... I also remembered
that somewhere now, maybe today, it will be three months since my death
Phyllio...
The doctor repeated the question in an artificially affectionate tone, as
if he were addressing a patient. I shook my head.
"Don't you remember?" Don't remember when your wife died? The
doctor asked in surprise.
I was speechless. Androv answered for me:
"Perhaps she is not dead. Two hours ago he had spoken to her on the
radio telephone.
"Isn't she dead?" This cannot be! The doctor said categorically. "I have
infinite faith in your theory of the anti-world, Comrade Androv, and
therefore she, that is, his wife, must die. Otherwise, there is no way we can
prove the existence of the Counter-Earth and our anticopies there," he
looked up, "in the Universe...
My throat caught in my throat with anger. I moved menacingly towards
the pathologist, who was carried away.
"Shut up, you!" I don't care about the theory of anti-worlds, do you
hear! She did not die. And if she is sick, then she needs to be treated
immediately!

505
 Androv rushed to me:
"Calm down, calm down. Please. In a minute we will contact Leninsk.
Come.
As if in a dream, I was walking along some corridors, floating along
some streets, going up in elevators, hearing someone's voices...
- On what wave did you work to communicate with your wife? I heard a
voice.
-I don't know...
- And your subscriber's number?
- I don't remember...
"What is your last name?"
I said.
"Sit here."
Androv sat down next to me, putting his hand on mine.
"They'll find her now...
I nodded my head. A dull silence reigned all around. A huge clock with
a pendulum was slowly ticking right in front of me. And I also remember a
large palm tree in a wooden tub, and to the right of it a bust of Lenin
against the background of a wall of red marble. And the clock kept
clinking, clattering, very slowly.
Then I was told:
"Go to the third cabin.
I continued to sit petrified, insensitive, thoughtless...
"Go to the third cabin," the voice repeated.
-You go. The connection has been established," Androv tugged at my
sleeve.
I went. Here is cabin number three. Here is the telephone receiver.
Shoot.
I am silent. The voice of the telephone operator:
"Speak.
- Maya, - I whisper.
- Hello, hello, Moscow? - I hear somewhere very close.
-Maya! - I shout in a voice that is not my own.
-Yes! Is that you, Vadim?"
- Maya, are you alive?
-A what?
"You're alive!!
"Stop screaming!" I don't understand anything. Why are you without a
cordless telephone?
Suddenly, my consciousness became crystal clear. I knew what to do!
"Maya, listen to me carefully," I began separately. You're sick. Very
seriously, you know, very seriously. Go to the clinic immediately and tell

506
them if there is a suspicion that you have lymphosarcoma. Immediately,
dear. Give me your word that you will go at once!"
On the phone, I heard my wife's cheerful, carefree laughter.
-That's amazing! she said at last. - We have lived together for only four
years, but we think the same. Even when there is a distance of five
thousand kilometers between us!
"Don't go to the doctor!" I cried.
"I'm calling you because of the liar!" Maya answered.
I felt an unpleasant ache under the spoon. And she continued to chatter
merrily:
"You understandI didn't feel very well yesterday. Some kind of slight
malaise. Today I came to the clinic. I did all the tests. And what do you
think? When they began to do X-rays, they found that the lymph nodes
somewhere in the pancreas were slightly enlarged. Dr. Eitrov yelled at me
so much, shouted at me so much. You, he says, are a cultured woman, but
you come for an examination so rarely, and now, he says, your lymph
nodes are enlarged by two percent. How do you like it?
"I like it," I whispered. "Go on, Maya...
- Well, then everything is very simple. I was injected with a serum just
in case and ordered to appear in six months for a second injection to be
sure! Isn't it interesting?
"Really, Maya," I said.
How is the Purple Mummy?
"She's dead... That is, it was cut into pieces. Copies in the basements.
- Was Androv's theory confirmed?
"N-I don't know. When I come, I'll tell you.
"Yes, yes, dear, come quickly, I miss you so much..
"I'll be home tomorrow!"
-Waiting! See you!
-See you.
Androv's face beamed as I stepped out of the cockpit. He hugged me
and held me tightly to him. For some reason, I laughed.
- And what are you happy about? The fact that Maya's lymph nodes are
enlarged by two percent does not yet prove your theory of the existence of
anti-worlds and anticopies of our people.
"It doesn't matter. The main thing is that your wife is healthy. I was so
worried...
- Do you really believe in the existence of anti-worlds, in the existence
of a mirror copy of our world? I asked him seriously.
"You believe in her, too," he replied evasively, "otherwise you wouldn't
have taken the fate of the Purple Mummy so close to heart..."
I smiled embarrassedly. Indeed, why was I so afraid for Maya? My

507
wife and her mirror image received by radio from space - what could they
have in common? Of course, nothing!
- If you believe in the existence of anti-worlds, then continue to catch
and decipher these wonderful signals from the depths of the Universe...
Look for... Maybe you won't find exactly what you're hoping for, but it
will still be important...
"I will definitely do it," Androv said thoughtfully. "And not only me.
But now I was struck by the thought of the doctor who dissected the
Purple Mummy.
-Which?
- There, in the Universe, they know how to transmit a volumetric scan
by radio, but they do not know how to treat lymphosarcoma...
"Well, so what?"
- You need to send them information on how to treat lymphosarcoma.
Sure. It is very important for them...
- For whom and where?
- For those who radioed the Purple Mummy.
"So the signals traveled millions of light years!" Androv
frowned and rubbed his forehead.

508
 Fifth State

A thin, motionless stream of water stretched from the nickel-plated

faucet to the very bottom of the snow-white shell. The stream froze. The
light from the table lamp silvered one side of it, and it seemed that it was
not a fragile string of water, but a hard glass stick. Only at the very bottom
of the sink did the stream break into small droplets, scattering in all
directions with a barely audible rustle. And I could also hear the hastily
clinking of a hand watch left on the table in the corner of the office...
Life is a flowing phenomenon. A stream of water froze in front of me.
She seems to be motionless and dead. But in reality, the flow is the very
essence of its existence... It is enough to turn off the tap, and the life of the
jet will stop. And suddenly someone reached over my shoulder and turned
the tap sharply. Before my eyes, the jet fluttered, broke into small shreds,
then into droplets and disappeared.
"Sister, call the plumber tomorrow." Something is wrong with the
faucet.
He turned and stood up. In front of me stood a tall, middle-aged man in
a white coat. His tired eyes looked at me attentively, and his hands slowly
twisted and untwisted the tube of the stethoscope.
"So you are Samsonov, then?" The doctor asked me.
-Yes. Do you know me?
- In a way. Your friend told me about you.
"How is she feeling?" What does she have? I asked hurriedly.
"I don't know what she has yet, but she feels generally satisfactory.
Satisfactory for the patient, of course," he corrected.
"Can I see her?"
The doctor nodded his head.
"Only for a short time. Talk to her about something, uh... Interesting.
About the theater, about football. Understand?
- Can I talk about work?
The doctor stepped aside and looked out of the window.
"Not philosophically. Do you work for Professor Parnov? I know his
work. They, I would say, are very intricate. In general, go. It is waiting for
you. He turned to me again and, touching me on the shoulder, pushed me
to the door behind which Anna was lying. Semi-darkness reigned in the
ward. The window was open, and the light of electric lanterns from the

509
square below, in front of the clinic, penetrated through it.
"Well, go quickly," Anna called in a low voice.
I ran to the bed and grabbed a hot, slightly wet hand.
We were silent for a minute or two, not knowing what to say...
"I'm so tired of being here!" She whispered at last.
"The doctor says that your condition is satisfactory.
She smiled sadly.
-Satisfactory?.. I know better... However, all this is nonsense. You'd
better tell me what's going on behind these walls. And I began to tell her
carelessly, almost foolishly, about everything that was going on at the
institute. I spoke hurriedly, spoke, stumbled, and most of all I was afraid to
stop. I forced myself to smile and laugh, looking straight into the big sad
eyes. There was something in those eyes that made my heart sink every
time I stopped to catch my breath.
They brought a transformer. Seven poods in weight. All day long they
turned it with levers of the first and second kind, until they installed it in
the corner, near the high-voltage switchboard. And what do you think!
The nachkhoz appears and declares that it is in this place that the least load
on the floor is allowed. According to his calculations, the transformer
must inevitably fall into the director's office. It was cursedtiy! And
Mishka Grachev assembled a model of a radio spectrograph. There was so
much joy! Launched. And suddenly Berger made a stunning scientific
discovery: all substances - from a piece of bread to a porcelain cup -
absorb radio waves in exactly the same way. It turned out that Grachev's
generator generated waves of one and a half kilometers instead of three
centimeters!
Anna listened with her intelligent, understanding eyes fixed on me, and
then laid her hand on mine. I fell silent.
- Seryozha, do you still love me?
I leaned over to her and kissed her dry lips firmly.
"Tell me you love me."
"I love you.
"So you'll never forget me, will you?"
"What are you talking about, Anka! But you will break out of this hole
- and... wedding! Really?
"And if I don't break free?"
"Why is that?" Come on, get up, I'll shine a light on you. I don't
remember my cocky Komsomol organiser speaking in such a voice.
I hugged her and lifted her over the pillow. A stiff hospital gown was
tied with ribbons in the front...
- Do you all wear such robes? Do you want me to buy you a silk one?
- Seryozha, I have a feeling that I will never get out of here. My breath

510
caught in my throat.
"Why is that?"
She licked her lips. I felt how hard it was for her to speak.
"The doctor talks to me very kindly," she almost moaned and pulled the
blanket up to her chin.
I laughed artificially. It was an inappropriate laugh, but there was
nothing else I could do.
"He's supposed to be affectionate with the sick by the staff.
"No, Seryozha, not that. How can I tell you... In his attentiveness, in his
heartfelt warmth to me, something inexorable, terrible is felt. I'm afraid
when he comes up to me... He sits on the edge of the bed, looks into my
eyes for a long time, strokes my hair and asks about my well-being in a
pinching, gentle voice. And he does not say what is usually said to
patients. And so, all sorts of things. And he himself is always looking
somewhere to the side... You know, they don't treat me with anything...
That is, almost nothing... I understand a little about pharmacology. In that
bottle is Bekhterev's mixture. And these pills are luminal. And that's it...
I got up and walked around the room.
"It's a disgrace!" - I was indignant. - We need to make a scandal!
"Sergei, please, don't..." So, this is how it should be. Maybe any
treatment is meaningless... At that moment the door opened softly and my
sister entered.
"Young man, sick, it's time to retire.
I looked at Anna pleadingly.
"It's time, it's time. Goodbye. It's too late. My sister took my hand.
"Goodbye, Seryozha," Anna said quietly and held out her hand to me.
I kissed her forehead. As I closed the door, I heard my sister say,
"Now, dear, take these pills and try to sleep." Sleep is the best
medicine.
I stopped at the sink and looked at the faucet, from which large rare
drops of water were now falling.
Our laboratory. Two vacuum stations in the middle of the room, a radio
spectrograph assembled by Misha Grachev on a large physics table, a
paramagnetic resonance device in the corner, to the right of the door. On
the left in the wall there is a deep niche. It contains a laboratory electron
microscope. But that's not all. In the next room to the left, everything is for
spectral analysis. There is a wonderful self-registering car, a jobin the
infrared region. Georgy Alekseevich Karpov, our leader, "crossed" this
spectrograph with a microscope. He created a hybrid of two devices. Now
it is possible to study the spectra of microscopically small objects.
The chemical group of the laboratory was located on the opposite side
of the corridor. It is engaged in analysis and synthesis, chromatography

511
and ion exchange distillation. Ultracentrifuges and ion exchange columns
are installed there.
In general, our laboratory is the entire fourth floor of the institute.
My desk is next to the electron microscope, although I have nothing to
do with it. My field is paramagnetic resonance, I am not a physicist, but a
biologist who is infected with physical methods of research. I have
worked hard to break free from the tenacious embrace of the biologist's
descriptive thinking and to learn to think in terms of rigorous,
mathematical science. This is the merit of Anna Zorina, whom I met here,
in this laboratory, a year ago... She is a physicist.
At first, the guys accepted me into their team with a degree of distrust.
It was felt that they thought to themselves: "Here is a paddling pool among
us." It was not without ridicule. They laughed at how confused I was in
elementary physical concepts. But then Anna came to the rescue.
"Here, start with this," she said calmly and handed me a physics
textbook.
Anna was a strict teacher, more strict than those to whom I took physics in
the second year. Several times I was "sent", and I crammed everything from
the beginning. There was a case when I was threatened to raise the issue of
my "technical studies" at a Komsomol meeting. Anna, we have a Komsomol
organizer! I was very embarrassed. In addition, I managed to fall in love with
a blond teacher, who, walking around the room, liked to repeat:
- According to the Fechtner-Weber law, even sit down irritation grows
exponentially, excitement grows only in arithmetic. Explain why this is so.
It goes without saying that our classes took place after the work in the
laboratories was over. Anna called classes with me a "load", for the sake
of which she skipped rhythmic gymnastics lessons.
My true fascination with physical methods of research did not occur when
I told Anna that I loved her and that I could not live without her, but much
later, under completely different circumstances. We were brought a device
for studying electron paramagnetic resonance. It was a unique device created
by experimental workshops according to the project of Professor Karpov,
modeled by Misha Grachev. We could now probe the magnetic properties of
a single living cell. The device was installed during the day, and in the
evening Anna and I stayed to study. And suddenly she said:
"Let's test the device!
-Are you crazy! Let's spoil something.
"Nonsense, we won't spoil it. I know how it turns on.
"Georgy Alexeyevich will be angry. She winked at me and, just like a
schoolgirl, giggled:
"And he won't know.
We disassembled the cords, checked the circuit, connected some ends

512
to the power panel, displayed the image under a microscope on a
television screen, and the magnetometer readings on an oscilloscope.
"Now let's take some drug."
-What?
"Something alive." What do we have, Seryozha?
-Anything. The thermostat stores the bacila coli culture.
- Give me your "Kolya".
While I was installing the slide under the microscope, Anna turned on
the television screen and the oscilloscope. Soon, an image of a bacterium
appeared on the screen.
"So we'll see what happens to her," Anna said excitedly.
The drug was covered with a cap and a waveguide was connected to it.
The generator hummed. The bacterium was simultaneously affected by
high-frequency and constant magnetic fields, On the oscilloscope, the
green dot wrote a strange curve.
"Well, what's next?" I asked.
See. We hugged and stared at the television screen. The bacterium
gradually swelled, stretched, and the nucleus swayed.
"What's wrong with her?" Anna asked in surprise.
"Mitosis is about to come," I said.

I looked at her mockingly.

"You know, after your physics course, I'll study biology with you!"
"Isn't it early!" she exclaimed, and laughed. And suddenly she grabbed
my hand and whispered: "Look, look what's going on on the oscilloscope!
As the process of cell division proceeded, the curve on the oscilloscope
began to change abruptly, became clearer, more convex, and at the
moment when the nucleus of the bacterium split in half, the electronic
bunny flashed brightly and shot off the screen, leaving behind a shining
green trail.
-Great! Anna whispered admiringly. "Let's wait a little longer until
mitosis comes again."
We waited patiently until the bacterium underwent a few more
divisions, and every time the cell nucleus bifurcated, a strange electron
beam dance occurred on the oscilloscope...
On that memorable evening, no one could say what was happening. But
I decided to myself that I would expose physics to the last point. And at all
costs I will get to the bottom of the explanation of the strange
phenomenon. The most striking phenomenon of life, cell division, was
somehow accompanied by a surge in voltage on an oscilloscope that
measured the magnetic properties of living matter... At that time, it
seemed to me that if the key to this phenomenon was found, the great

513
mystery of life, its innermost essence, over which generations of scientists
fruitlessly rack their brains, would be revealed.
And now, when hundreds of experiments have been carried out, when
not only the paramagnetic resonance of the cell at all stages of its life has
been studied, when the finest chemical and physical structure of living
matter has been studied, when all the contents of the cell - the nucleus,
cytoplasm, mitachondria, membrane - have been analyzed to the smallest
detail, to the last enzyme, when all the constituent substances that make up
a living cell have been isolated in their pure form and there are no
structural mysteries of the chemical structure of living things for us
matter, the problem of life has become even darker, hazy, unclear...
A touch of fatigue appeared on Georgy Alekseevich Karpov's face. At
the beginning of the study, he said with such enthusiasm that it was all
about structure, about accurate analysis. Now we know all this...
I walked through the numerous groups of our laboratory and saw how
painstaking and hard people worked. Biochemists recreated the
microscopic structure from the same elements that it consisted of when it
was alive. After the construction of the cell was completed, it was
transferred to a nutrient medium, but life was not revived...
Biophysicists tormented rabbits and sea mice, inserted them into their
liveselectrodes and recorded electrical control impulses on a magnetic
tape. Then, for the hundredth time, they were convinced that there were no
electrical signals in artificial cells, which so abundantly accompanied the
processes of life...
-Gosh darn! - shouted Arkady Savko, our leading biologist. - We don't
do anything artificially! We take everything ready-made, natural. We put
it all together just like in a living cell. And why the hell doesn't she live!
Can you explain such rudeness to me?
Synthesis did not work. Something most powerful and most mysterious
was slipping away.
"It seems that the vitalists are right," Professor Karnov said bitterly. - It
is not enough to build a cage. You still need to breathe life into it. What
does it mean to breathe life into it?
After visiting Anna, I was met by Volodya Kabanov, a biologist from
Savko's group, our party organizer.
- Well, how is she, getting better?
I could not answer anything, because I did not know anything myself.
The memory of what she had said to me made my heart ache.
"She's in a bad mood," I said. She does not know what her illness is.
She is stubbornly not told about it. They didn't tell me either...
- Maybe you should go to the hospital officially, through the
directorate?

514
 "Perhaps it's an idea, and in the end we may ask some other doctors for
it.
"All right," said Volodya, "today I'll talk to the director. And you don't
hang your nose. With Anna, you should be cheerful and cheerful as never
before! I got it?
- Volodya, what do you think about our work? It seems as if she has
reached a dead end," I asked.
He smiled and scratched his head.
"In my opinion, we are missing some unforeseen quote, a very
important trifle...
I returned to my room and sat down at the combined
potentiometer-magnetometer. Someone left a living culture of nervous
tissue on the stage of a microscope with electrodes fixed on the nucleus
and protoplasm of the cell.
Electronic bunnies floated on the oscilloscope screen, exactly repeating
the same cycles of life: small, medium, large...
"What is this secret of life? How carefully she keeps a secret from
herself! Life and its pinnacle, the human mind, have hidden their own
essence in a realm beyond the reach of knowledge. Here they are, two
electron specks with a diameter of several microns, running after each
other as if nothing had happened. And we know why this happens..."
There was no response from the hospital to an official request about the
state of health of Anna Zorina. Just a few days later, the attending
physician himself, Associate Professor Kirill Afanasievich Filimonov,
came to our institute. At first, he talked one-on-one with the director, and
then they called Volodya Kabanov, Professor Karpov and me.
The director of the institute sat at the table, sullen and thoughtful, and
Filimonov cleared his throat for a long time before starting a confused and
excited explanation.
- We talked with Alexander Alexandrovich here and decided that...
uh... I need to inform you about everything. You see, it's a very
complicated matter... A rare case in medical practice...
- Will Anna live? Kabanov asked.
Silence reigned. The director of the institute sighed heavily. A cold
drop of sweat crept down my spine.
-No. Probably not...
PhilimHe turned away. He put his hand in his pocket, and there was the
crack of a matchbox.
"You have no right to say that!" I cried, panting.
He smiled sadly.
"Young man, do you think it's easy for me to say that?" Zorina has been
in the hospital for three months now. For two months I knew about the

515
lethal outcome of her illness, and for two months I was silent. I could
remain silent to the end. But your letter, your wonderful letter in the name
of all comrades... You know, I couldn't stand it anymore... I could answer
as medical ethics requires. The condition is serious, but there is hope.
After all, there is always hope, right? But I am a communist myself...
His lips quivered, and the matchbox in his pocket cracked even more
violently.
"What has she got?" Kabanov asked timidly.
- The signaling system that regulates the heart's nutrition is disrupted.
At first, I thought my nerves were damaged. But, it turns out, they are
completely intact. However... They are not able to regulate the vital
activity of heart muscle cells...
"And what is the reason?" asked Professor Karnov.
- Zorina bruised the third vertebra four months ago. It is in it that the
nerve fibers that regulate the heart muscle end. The bruise turned out to be
fatal...
"Can't we do anything?"
- I consulted with leading neurosurgeons. All of them unanimously
assert that these neurons of the spinal cord do not regenerate...
I do not remember how I left the director's office, how I left the
building of the institute and found myself on the street. I walked for a
long, long time and found myself in front of the building of the clinic
where Anna was lying. As I began to climb the steps to the main entrance,
someone put a hand on my shoulder. It was Volodya Kabanov.
"Do you want me not to go to her?" I asked angrily.
"You'll go to her." So do I...
We began to rise, and our legs seemed to be filled with lead... We
stopped for a second.
"You don't know the most important thing," Volodya said breathlessly.
-A what?
- Anna knows everything... Some fool, her friend from the medical
institute, brought her a course of heart disease... There she found her
illness... She asked Dr. Filimonov point-blank what she had and
demanded that he tell her the truth. "I understand why you're studying my
third vertebra so carefully..."
"And he did?"
He just didn't answer. He left. He says that he became scared to date
this girl.
We entered the lobby of the hospital and put on our gowns. Here it is
again, this accursed long corridor with a polished parquet floor. My legs
gave way...
"Just don't talk about the disease," Volodya said excitedly. "If she—"

516
She will be the first not to talk about death... And we won't. We're going to
talk about work, you hear! About how successful our work is! It is going
damn well! Not today or tomorrow the secret of the cell's vital activity will
be revealed! It will be a revolution in science, a revolution more important
and brighter than the mastery of atomic energy. Understand? And we will
also talk about what wonderful people we have and how much they love
her. And you, especially you, must say how much you love her. After all,
this is the truth. Take courage. You are not going to a funeral, not to mourn,
not to pity. You are going to instill in man the most important thing - faith in
the power of human genius, faith in his reason, in the power of his noble
lipsIn the 19th century, the Turks and Peasants You go to your beloved girl
to give her a piece of great courage that our people are full of. Understand,
Sergei, this is not just a visit to a sick woman. No! You bring her immortal
faith in the future... There will be a moment when I will leave you alone.
This will be the most frightening moment for you. But you must not think
about death... Repeat to yourself: "She will live, she will live." Believe in
these words yourself. And then everything will be fine.
Nna was lying with her hands behind her head, and when I entered, the
first thing I saw was her eyes. On their emaciated, pale faces, they seemed
huge and surprised. I kissed her cheeks, forehead, lips for a long time,
without looking up, before I uttered the first words:
"Hello, my dear.
-Hello... Oh, and Vladimir Semyonovich came...
"Hello, snub-nosed. Why have you been idling around for so long? Not
good, not good, dear daughter.
Volodya was only two or three years older than me, but he sometimes
called us sons and daughters.
"Come, give me a pulse," said Volodya, and took Ankin's hand out
from under the blanket. Look, what a good pulse. About twenty beats per
minute!
"What are you talking about, Vladimir Semyonovich! Napoleon had
the slowest pulse. They say forty strokes. And a normal person has
sixty-eighty.
-Really? Volodya was genuinely surprised. "I didn't know.
There was a moment's silence. I noticed that Anna's pale lips were
tightly pressed together, as if she had decided not to say something to
anyone that only she knew...
"So, Annushka," I began, "first of all, general greetings and polyphonic
wishes for a speedy recovery.
-Thank you...
- Secondly, your friend Valya Gribanova was awarded the honorary
title of bio-jeweler. True, this knowledge has not yet been approved by the

517
government, but it undoubtedly has a right to it. The girls who collect
women's watches in rings cannot be compared with our Valya. It
assembles the cell of any bacterium from individual molecules, from the
nucleus to the membrane. Can you imagine what kind of art it is?
"Great," Anna whispered admiringly. "And where did she get it...
"She graduated from needlework courses before entering our institute,"
Kabanov interjected seriously.
Anna laughed softly.
"And yet, in such delicate matters, girls are irreplaceable, aren't they?"
she asked.
"Of course," Volodya remarked.
I squeezed Anna's thin shoulders tightly. "It's never going to happen,
never," flashed through my mind.
- Well, what happened after Valya collected the bacterium?
"You see," Kabanov began to answer for me, "during the assembly,
some small screw must have been lost. You know how it happens with
watches, but the machine doesn't work yet...
"Or maybe not a screw, but a spring?" Anna asked cheerfully.
"Or maybe a spring." But we will definitely find it. Probably, in two or
three weeks, there will be a noise, eh? What do you think?
"I wish I had," Anna whispered, turning on her side. "I want it to be
soon." By the way, Seryozha, I have read several medical books here,
mainly on neuropathology. I advise you to read it too. There are many
interesting studies of nerve cells there. In my opinion, some things can be
useful in my work.
"I will definitely read it, Annushka. And they say you can't read.
"Nonsense," Kabanov tugged at me. - Read everything that is
interesting and useful. You will come to the laboratory and help
Gribanova find the very spring. And now allow me to bow out. I
understand that you have your own conversations here. Just don't bother
the girl too much!
Volodya kissed Anka's hand and shook me and my shoulder violently.
We were left alone.
"I like your remark about the spring," I said, thinking of something else.
I looked into the tired, but evenly shining, calm eyes, and it seemed to me
that I had never loved them as much as I did now.
- Life is a strange thing. Anna leaned back. - I have been thinking a lot
about the essence of life in recent days. Why is she like this? Why is
motion its unshakable essence? And I came to a paradoxical conclusion,
which in formal logic is called tautology. Life is life because it means
eternal motion. In physics, we say that there is no perpetual motion
machine and that it is impossible to build one. And life is just an example

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of a perpetual motion machine that began to work millions of years ago
and does not stop its movement for a second.
"Yes," I pressed my head to her chest.
- And death is only a convention... This is not a cessation of progress.
This is only a stage of an endless relay race.
-Yes...
I heard her brave heart beating desperately...
"And I have another interesting idea. Do you know what it is? Physics
knows four states of matter. The simplest is gaseous, the more complex is
liquid, the even more complex is solid, and then the strange fourth state is
plasma. It seems to me that life is some other, complex, fifth state of
matter. It took many years for science to figure out the reasons why one
state of matter is different from another. And now you, that is, we, are
storming the fifth state...
- It's so great, what you say...
- For some reason, I am sure that when scientists reveal the secret of the
fifth state, Man will not know old age. After all, to know the essence of
life means to control it. Do you agree?
-Yes...
- It seems to me that now, at the moment, both in our laboratory and in
all other laboratories of the world where living matter is studied, scientists
have burst into an unfamiliar world, and it seems to them that everything
can be explained only by the local four states.
Anna began to breathe quickly and shallowly...
"Lift me up a little, please..."
I lifted her up and pressed her to my chest.
"Seryozha, that's what else seems to me. Life must somehow be closely
connected with the constant movement of something... Don't interrupt...
Everyone knows that electrical regulatory signals are constantly
circulating in the body through nerve fibers. The same signals circulate in
the form of electrochemical potentials and in a single cell. It seems to me
that if these very laws of self-government were somehow pushed into an
artificially created cage, it would begin to live...
I moved away from Anna and looked carefully into her huge eyes.
"Repeat what you've done," I whispered.
"I say you need to go into an artificially created cagebut somehow push
in the regulatory signals...
- How do you imagine it?
"I don't know, Seryozha... I am only sure that the fifth state of matter is
a state when matter becomes the eternal keeper of information about its
essence, the eternal receptacle of the laws of its existence... I just don't
know how to do it... Oh, if I only knew...

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 - Anna, dear! When I listen to you, it seems to me that right now, at this
moment, we are touching with our fingers something most subtle, the
most important and mysterious. The fifth state, the eternal repository of
information... My dear, my love, how did you come up with all this?
Satisfied, joyful, and proud, she leaned back on the pillow.
"Who, Seryozha, if not me, should think about the meaning and content
of life... And I have more than enough time for this... It was," she added,
barely moving her lips. At that moment we were both thinking about the
same thing, but one of us did not give away his thoughts with a single
breath...
The fifth state, the fifth state... the eternal repository of the laws of its
own being... Anka will die... What is life? The eternal movement of
electronic dots on the oscilloscope screen?.. Four known states of matter
and a fifth unknown?..
It was a terrible night after Anna's visit. I saw in the darkness her
beautiful eyes, knowing everything, to the last point, In the semi-darkness
of the hospital room she persistently searched for the truth, and, perhaps,
in this search there was a vague hope... The fifth state... I thought I was
going to go crazy. How can you enter information into an artificial cell,
how? It is present in a living cell. This is shown by the devices. Any
moment of her life is accompanied by a flow of information. It can be
accurately measured, recorded, drawn. And how to enter? Is there really
no way to save Anna? "Lethal," these terrible words were uttered by Dr.
Filimonov, and I could not, I refused to understand their meaning... Anna
is a physicist. But it goes beyond what is known, it is looking for new
paths, it is not chewing on thermodynamics and quantum mechanics. She
understands that the world is built not only on them, that it is wider, richer,
more complex, more outlandish! We know all the cogs from which life is
built... But ...
Suddenly I jumped out of bed! I was seized with horror. I don't
remember when I noticed that the clock in my room had stopped, the
thought of winding it kept coming to my mind. Now I had it again, and I
neighed as if in a fever. I groped for the old clock, opened the door, and
inserted the winding key into the socket. The spring cracked, and the clock
slowly began to tick the seconds...
"This can't be...", I whispered to myself, "I'm probably going crazy... It
can't be..."
The clock was slowly ticking, and I looked into the darkness and saw...
"And if that's the case... What if that's the case..."
Another voice said,
"Nonsense. It's not that easy..."
"But no one has tried..." - I objected to myself.

520
 "So you think the spring isn't lost?"
"Maybe not... Or maybe yes..."
"Then, how to start it?" asked an inner voice...
"yes, I see... We need to act immediately. You know, immediately!"
I turned on the light and quickly got dressed. It was still dark outside,
but I didn't care. We need to act!
It was drizzling outside. Nor buses, no trolleybuses. Lonely electric
lights. Around the corner, near the "Gastronome", there is a pay phone.
There was no answer for a long time. Then a sleepy woman's voice was
heard:
"Who do you want?"
"I want Professor Karnov."
"God, he's asleep. And in general, comrade...
"I must speak to Professor Karnov at once. On a very urgent matter.
"Doesn't it take three or four hours?"
"Not a single second!" - I shouted desperately.
- Well, if so...
Time drags on for an excruciatingly long time. I'm shivering from the
cold. At last the professor's voice said,
"I'm listening to you."
- Georgy Alekseevich, this is Sergey Samsonov.
"I'm listening to you, Seryozha, what's wrong?"
"Something very important has happened. Could you come to the
institute now?
-Right away? The professor was surprised. "And what happened
there?"
"There's nothing at the institute... But with me... That is, today I was at
Anya Zorina's. She expressed the idea... And it seems to me that...
- Well, if we are talking about thoughts, then let's save them until
morning.
"I can't, Georgy Alexeevich... I'll go mad until morning... That's for
sure... The professor coughed and then said,
"Perhaps you will tell me this idea over the telephone?"
- Well, listen, have you ever seen a good, serviceable car take and drive
on its own, without a winding? Or for your TV to turn on and start
working on its own initiative?
Karpov did not answer for a long time. Then I heard,
"All right. I'm going to the institute. I'm waiting for you there.
Karpov lived near the institute, and when I came he was already sitting
in his office, warming his hands over the electric stove. I fell into a chair
and closed my eyes tightly.
- I am sure that we have correctly reproduced the structure of a living

521
cell. Now you just need to launch it!
-How?
- You need to enter information into it.
-How?
"In exactly the same way that we take it out of a living cell. It is
necessary to start an artificially built biological mechanism with electrical
signals from a natural, living cell. With the help of microelectrodes, we
output self-control pulses to an oscilloscope in order to see them. Let's
introduce these very impulses into our artificial microscopic creation with
the help of the same microelectrodes... Do you remember the popular
science film "The Heart Heals the Heart"? The electrical signals of a
healthy heart are transmitted through wires to the diseased heart... And it,
a sick heart, acquires a normal rhythm of life...
"Let's go to the laboratory.
What happened from five o'clock in the morning to nine o'clock is
impossible to describe. It was an explosion of energy, a furious torrent that
broke a breach in the dam, a frenzy of two fanatics. For all this time, we
did not say a single word, although each of us at any moment understood
what needed to be done. Karpov removed samples of artificial cells from
the thermostat. I put a live preparation next to it. He installed the glass on
the stage of the telemicroscope, I adjusted the microelectrodes. He looked
into my eyes. Got it! It is necessary to bring out the potentials of a living
cell through an amplifier. There is an amplifier. Voltage? There is tension.
Turn on the TV screen? There is a screen. Current? Yes, there is a
current...
We stared at the dark contours of the lifeless cage. I have increased the
brightness of the screen. Here it is, here it isparadise is a flatbread with an
artificially recreated structure. A lump of dirt, a piece of motionless
mucus... Two microelectrodes touched its shell and nucleus.
Karnov put his trembling hand on the amplifier's vernier and began to
apply the potential to the lifeless lump, the same potential that had been
continuously, cycle by cycle, in a living cell...
No, it was not a miracle. This was exactly what thousands of minds
were waiting for, believing in the possibility of artificially created life.
This is how the waking cell should have taken a deep breath first. This is
how dark and light grains should be redistributed inside. The kernel must
be rounded. Near it, the delicate tissue of mitachondria should appear by
itself. The shell should become thinner and more transparent...
The cage came to life before our eyes. Yes, that's the right word. It
came to life under the influence of the rhythm introduced into it from the
outside. An artificially built car was started by a living car...
When the cell became completely transparent and moved, Professor

522
Karnov pulled the microelectrodes out of it. Now it exists without help.
Exists!
I quickly dripped warm broth on it. And it began to grow! Swell!
Mitosis! Hurrah!
- Look, he is sharing... - I heard a whisper behind me. We did not notice
how it became completely light in the laboratory and how the employees
gathered around us. They silently followed our work for a long time,
understanding its innermost meaning. And now, when the artificially
created microscopic creature has taken on a life of its own, they could not
stand it:
"Guys, look, it's sharing! Lives! He lives in the most real way!
Before that, I had never seen a scientist cry... In my opinion, everyone
was crying now. Valya Gribanova was crying loudly. Large tears crept
down the cheeks of the serious and concentrated Volodya Kabanov. One
of the guys handed me a handkerchief.
The experiment was repeated several dozen times, and each time
successfully. Everyone did it, because everyone wanted to create a piece
of life with their own hands.
The day after the momentous event, as I was walking through a crowd
of institute workers, I was stopped by Volodya Kabanov.
"Are you going to Anna's?"
-Right away! Of course! After all, we owe it to her so much!
"You're not going anywhere.
"I don't understand, Volodya.
"And there's nothing to understand here. The last thing she needs now
is your flowers and congratulations. It is very bad. We went to the
director's office, there was a meeting of the academic council.
In addition to the staff of our institute, two representatives of the
Academy of Medical Sciences and Dr. Filimonov arrived at the Academic
Council. The meeting was opened by the director:
- Comrades! We will have time to talk about the event that took place
yesterday within these walls. Time is patient. We are talking about
something else. It is necessary to urgently use the discovery to save human
life. Professor Karnov will make a report on this matter. Please, Georgy
Alekseevich.
"We now have the means to create neurons in the spinal cord, the
damage to which caused the fatal condition of Anna Zorina. I will be
corrected by specialists, but it seems to me that the case is as follows. We
need accurate histological and cytological data about the cells that form
the basis of the nerve center that regulates the nutrition of the heart
muscle. Then we must have the material to make these cells. We dYou
need to know exactly what information these cells send to the heart. The

523
surgeon must perform the operation and transplant the artificially created
nervous tissue in the right place.
Karnov sat down. Immediately after him, a representative of the
academy spoke.
- We will provide you with accurate histological and cytological data
immediately. It is more difficult with information that regulates the
activity of the heart muscle. Who would agree to such an operation as the
introduction of electrodes? It should be a girl who is as similar as possible
to Zorina in biological characteristics.
- And how do you find out?
- You need to make thorough tests and choose from many the one that
is most suitable for blood type, tissue group, and so on.
At one o'clock in the afternoon, when spinal tissue and accurate
microscopic images of the cells of the regulatory center arrived from the
Traumatology Institute, Volodya Kabanov convened an open party and
Komsomol meeting.
"The life of our friend, a young scientist Anna Zorina, is in danger. A
new method of its treatment has been developed. A girl is needed who
would voluntarily decide on one unpleasant medical examination. That's
all.
A few seconds of painful silence. Then a young laboratory assistant
from the Department of Plant Physiology comes to the table.
It was the director's secretary-typist.
"Sign me up too," said our barmaid, Nina Savelyeva.
"What can I say, girls, we'll all go, won't we?"
-Really. Why waste time on some recordings? Where to go?
A minute later there was no one in the hall.
At the same time, work was in full swing in our laboratory. Centrifuges
sang, generators hummed, analysts passed liquids through ion exchange
and chromatographic columns, substances were released. And all this in
sterile quartz boxes was handed over to the main performer of the work,
Valya Gribanov.
Armed with a powerful binocular microscope, she built one cell after
another with the help of an electronic biomanipulator, exactly repeating
the structure depicted in the micrograph, on which formulas and numbers
were applied showing where, what substance should be injected and how
much of it was needed.
It was hellish work, intense to the limit, but everyone was seized by a
passionate desire to do it at all costs, in spite of the times when a person's
life could not be saved...
At six o'clock in the evening Professor Karnov arrived from the
Institute of Analytical Medicine, tired but excited.

524
 "Well, did you take it away?"
- Yes, here is a tape with a record of signals.
"Who was this girl?"
"By God, I don't remember!" Some kind of our girl. We need to hurry.
Half past eight. Valya Gribanova tore her inflamed eyes away from the
eyepieces of the microscope.
"That's it," she whispered.
"Are you sure you did everything right?"
-Are you sure. Give me a drink of water. Coat the drug with cysteine.
I dripped a drop of protective colloid onto the precious structure.
- Information received. Let's introduce...
Without breathing, we moved the drug to the next room.
- Are we going to control it?
-Sure. Turn on the screen.
Slowly the disks of the tape recorder began to spin, the ears ranon the
screen. Karpov inserted electrodes into the cells. And what we have
already seen many times has repeated. But these were cells of human
nervous tissue, diamond-shaped, with pointed needles, with thin processes
like spikes - axons. They contained the life of the human heart.
When the drug began to live an independent life, it was transferred to a
microthermostat filled with saline.
"Now to the clinic."
How strange life looked now! Only yesterday it seemed fantastic that it
was possible to create living matter in a laboratory, and now a car was
rushing through the streets of the city at high speed, and I was clutching in
my hands the living substance necessary for the heart of my beloved to beat.
Clinic... This time we did not walk along a long corridor with shiny
parquet. The elevator took us to the ninth floor, where an operating room
was located under a huge glass dome.
"It's already on the table," whispered Dr. Filimonov, who met us.
"Here's the fabric.
- I'll call the neurosurgeon Kalashnikov now.
Professor Kalashnikov came out, his hands held high.
- What is the condition of the fabric?
- It floats freely in saline.
-Ok. Probably, it can be plucked with microtweezers. What are its
dimensions?
- Half a millimeter by a millimeter.
- Wow, they did it with a margin! For about three such operations.
"Can you cut off the right piece yourself?" Kalashnikov
was taller than me and twice as wide. He looked down at me with
interest.

525
 "My young friend, a modern surgeon must be able to cut a hair along its
axis into ten equal parts. Got it?
I really liked that he, like Gorky, was blunt, especially in the word
"understood". For some reason, I suddenly became very calm.
Ten minutes, fifteen minutes. Karnov and I walked slowly along the
circular gallery around the operating room. Another half an hour passed,
then the same amount of time. It was strange how calm I felt. I just knew
that this is a very delicate and complex operation and that it takes time...
After that, I wandered for hours not through the gallery, but around the
square around the clinic, looking at the windows of the fourteenth ward on
the fifth floor.
On one bright sunny day, when I came here after work to take my usual
walk, one of the windows on the fifth floor suddenly swung open, and the
figure of a plump woman in a white coat appeared in it. She waved to me
and pointed to the front door of the clinic. As if on wings, I flew up.
Here is the ward. For a few seconds I stood in front of the door,
hesitant. Suddenly it opened of its own accord, and a cheerful, kind sister
appeared.
"Anna has just been allowed to walk a little. Go to her while there is no
doctor on duty.
I looked into Anna's laughing, joyful eyes, afraid to touch her.
-Well! She said capriciously. "You're some kind of chump!" Kiss me
quickly, or Filimonov will come soon.
We walked slowly along the walls. I held her by the waist and
whispered in time with her uncertain steps:
"One-two, one-two...
Then we went into the next room, walked around it and stood by the
sink. A motionless trickle of water stretched out from the tap, frozen like a
glass rod. For me, it has become a symbol of eternal life.
Dr. Filimonov, who suddenly entered, pretended not to notice us.
Grumpily, in an old man's way, he said,
"Sister, when will you finally get the plumber to fix the tap?"

526
 Conversation with
Someone Else's Shadow
1
It was known at the institute that Professor Kasyanov and I, the head of
our laboratory, were "theoretical enemies". This enmity suited both of us
quite well. When one of us became dreary from the monotony of working
on new schemes, he looked for another one to argue. Alexei Georgievich,
with the condescension characteristic of his age, said about me as follows:
- The guy is young, but excessively conservative. In general, it
generates ideas that are far from trivial. It's not boring with him.
The fact is that Kasyanov, who revered Kolmogorov and Wiener,
constantly insisted on the fundamental possibility of creating a machine
model of the human "soul" and tried to prove it, and I objected to him in
every possible way. Our conversations were conducted in the following
spirit.
"My dear, my boy (as he addresses me at thirty-six), you are a hopeless
idealist and vitalist. You know perfectly well that man is a material
creature and, therefore, there is absolutely no reason to abandon the idea
of creating a model of him, no matter how close to nature.
"Let's assume that it is possible to create an artificial creature that will
imitate human thinking, will solve mathematical and logical problems
more accurately. But feelings, emotions, soul - this is already beyond the
scope of machine modeling. They contain a billion-year history of life on
Earth.
Kasyanov squinted his eyes slyly.
- Do you know the difference between the finite and the infinite? No?
Of course, this is what we know, if not in fact, then in principle. And we
simply call infinity what we do not know. Or we are too lazy to know. We
say: people can be brilliant, average, smart, stupid, and so on. The words
"and so on" hide our unwillingness or inability to analyze, to figure out
what other people there are. And so it always is. If there are an infinite
number of objects of which we have no idea, then the words "and so on"
cover up our ignorance.
"I don't see what this has to do with our conversation.
- It's just that you, my dear boy (at thirty-six!), subconsciously classify
feelings, emotions and soul as "and so on". By the way, if I were you, I

527
would not touch such things at all. You are already in your fourth decade,
and you are not married yet. Apparently, in your case, this ordinary human
weakness fell into "and so on"...
We have been engaged in such disputes with Kasyanov for more than
three years, and there would have been no end to them if...
However, everything in order.
It all started after my business trip to the Far East. I had only been there
for four months, and when I returned to the institute I had the impression
that I had been absent for at least four years. Two new four-story buildings
were put into operation, and the employees settled in spacious
laboratories. The staff was replenished. Professor Kasyanov got two new
deputies, and my group was given three new "units": two young guys,
diploma students from the Institute of Higher Automation, and a
laboratory assistant Galina Evgenievna Gurzo.
Diploma students from the Institute of Higher Automation worked
silently and persistently. They sniffed intently over the installation of
circuits and every afternoon took up soldering irons and assembled
mock-ups of blocks that were developed on paper in the morning. They
stayed in the laboratory after the end of the working day and checked the
results of their workand devices. The next morning, the diagrams
collected the day before turned out to be soldered into parts, and the
diploma students again racked their brains over the construction of
schemes and calculations.
As for Galina Gurzo, she was engaged in the analysis of detailed
formulas of logical functions, according to which our laboratory was
supposed to create a new computer with many parallel inputs. If
successful, this made it possible to create a machine that would not stand
idle while programmers were compiling an algorithm for solving a new
problem. Exactly at 16.00, Galina put her notebooks aside and quickly left
the laboratory.
"Where are you always in such a hurry?" - I asked once.
- Home. I have a lot to do at home," she replied quickly.
"Where did this girl come from?" - I asked one of the graduate students.
He looked up at me, tired from exertion, and said sadly:
"I have no idea. She's kind of wild.
- Why wild?
- She is not even a Komsomol member.
"Wild, indeed," I thought.
A girl is like a girl. Upturned nose, dark brown hair, graceful figure.
Eyes... However, I could say very little about her eyes, because they were
always covered by glasses. Monstrous magnifying glasses, and Galina's
eyes seemed huge and unnaturally blue through the glasses.

528
 As it often happens, with exceptional diligence and diligence, Galina
was shy. At lunchtime, she would retire to a corner and, opening her purse,
take out a few sandwiches and eat hurriedly, turning her back on everyone.
One day I approached her just at that moment. She immediately stopped
chewing, shy. I felt embarrassed and moved away.
- How do you like the new laboratory assistant? Kasyanov asked me.
"Some kind of wild," I said honestly.
"And you try to talk to her. A smart girl.
"Where did you dig it up?"
-Accidentally. In one research institute. By the way, my dear boy, look
what I have managed to do. I analyzed the scheme of creative activity of
one so-called talented artist. Look at the iron pattern.
I looked through the column of recurrent formulas and inwardly envied
Kasyanov. Clever, you can't say anything.
-Got it? Alexey Georgievich asked.
-Got it.
"That's it. Soon I will write you the equations of all your emotions,
feelings, hobbies, whatever you want. Enough stupid and helpless "and so
on".
I did not continue the conversation, because at that time an interesting
idea came to my mind. I knew that many of our employees agreed with
Kasyanov simply out of deference. After all, he is a man of world renown.
I had no allies in the dispute with him, and I really needed support. At least
one like-minded person. So to speak, to create a united front of two or
three people! I looked angrily at the smug old man. I could feel that he was
in the mood to argue with me.
"I'll find an ally," I decided, "Let's see what Galina Gurzo thinks." And
that evening it seemed appropriate to me to somehow detain Galina in the
laboratory and find out which side she was on.

2
"Of course, this is nonsense," she said calmly, when I explained to her
the essence of my disagreements with Professor Kasyanov. "The old man
is just crazy. In old age,It happens.
- Do you understand, Galina, what he wants to prove? Everything that
makes up the human "I", its emotional world, its sensory perception of the
world, its most sublime and sometimes logically devoid aspirations, can
be algorithmized!
"Very fashionable stupidity," Galina remarked just as calmly.
It was the first time we had sat so close. I stole a glance at her face,
which was glowing with a fresh blush. Now I was convinced that her eyes
were large and bottomless blue. The aroma of an unknown perfume spread

529
from her hair, and thin fingers slowly went through the pages of the book.
She exuded boundless calm and confidence.
"Suppose," I continued, "that it is possible to artificially create an
arbitrarily good imitation of human intelligence. Should I tell you this!
After all, you are dealing with this very problem. But how can you depict
in the equations of mathematical logic, for example, the love of one person
for another, or friendship, or, for example, joy?
- I agree with you. Left-wing cyberneticists have been preaching such
nonsense for two decades. Kasyanov should have remembered that any
attempts to create algorithms for human feelings would lead to such a
complication of the structure of automata that even if they were
implemented, the reactions would be hopelessly slow. The automaton will
be able to behave like a human only on astronomical time scales. After all,
the point is in the consistent enumeration of the right behaviors, of which a
person has infinitely many.
"And so on," I remembered for some reason. Nevertheless, I was glad
that she was on my side. After all, it was a victory!
- Have you been studying the theory of higher automata for a long
time?
- How can I tell you... Yes and no. Before coming to you, I worked as a
programmer in the computer center of a shipyard. It was a post-institute
practice. Then I was sent to one research institute, and then to you...
"Do you like it here?"
- In general, yes. Only your people are kind of boring.
"Am I boring?"
She smiled.
"You are my superior, and I am not supposed to think ill of you. But
these two guys who are doing a diploma are certainly boring.
-What do you mean?
Galina turned her face to the window. Twilight thickened outside.
- People at your institute are not active. It's the same thing at the
shipyard. A good club, cinema, concerts, dances...
For no reason at all, I suddenly blurted out:
"Galya, if you are free tonight, shall we go to the cinema?"
She shuddered.
-Today? With you?
"What's wrong with that?" Come!
"I really don't know. However...
She looked at the tiny wristwatch, then thought for a while.
"Is it far?"
- No, very close. On Druzhby Avenue.
In the foyer of the cinema, I suddenly found that they were interested in

530
my personal affairs. There were twenty-five minutes left before the start of
the session, we sat at a table and looked at magazines. And suddenly I
noticed one of my graduate students and another girl who worked in my
laboratory as an installer. They stood at a distance, looking mockingly in
our direction and whispering about something.
"Well, the young people have gone," I thought indignantly and, in order
to hide my annoyance, turned to Galina:
- Do you like cinema? Of course, it is good.
"I don't really understand this kind of art," she replied embarrassedly.
An endless series of photos. I always get a little annoyed that the people in
the photos are not real. Cinema is the art of skillfully lying.
I was surprised.
- The same can be said about the theater.
-Yes of course. But cinema is, so to speak, a serial production of skillful
lies.
"I can't agree with you. The power and charm of the artist lies in his
ability to transform, to become a completely different person, and one in
whose credibility the viewer would believe.
"That's the whole point. In reincarnation. What would you say about a
machine that would give you a glass of water with syrup one day and sweep
the streets tomorrow on a whim? Nobody needs such an assault rifle.
"So you are reneging on your words?" Only recently you said that it is
impossible to create a machine model of a person, and now you compare
his limitless possibilities with the capabilities of automatic wipers.
"I'm not comparing," Galya objected, "I just can't imagine how a person
who has been given one life and one line of behavior can live several lives
at once. First he is Comrade Ivanov, then Othello, then Don Quixote, then
a test pilot. Who is he in this case?..
I knew that Galina was completely wrong, that she simply did not
understand the meaning of creativity, but I did not argue. After all, today
was our first evening!
In the auditorium, I almost did not look at the screen. In the twilight, her
stern profile loomed. She sat tensely and stared at the screen without
looking up. I was also afraid to move. After the movie, Galina asked me
not to see her off.
"Tell me, where do you live?"
-Over there...
She smiled and waved her hand vaguely. I saw her enter the trolleybus,
and then it seemed to me that my graduate student and a girl installer
jumped into the same trolleybus.

531
 A day later, in the morning, Professor Kasyanov called me into his
office. The old man was clearly in a bad mood. He often sniffled and
sighed deeply every now and then.
"Sit down," he ordered. - Since when did you decide to pursue a
scientific and technical policy at the institute that runs counter to mine?
I looked at him in surprise.
"Don't pretend, I know everything. But your personal relationship with
Galina Gurzo does not interest me. I am interested in what you teach her.
"I'm sorry, I don't understand you," I said, getting up slowly.
-Sit. You understand everything perfectly. You should know that you
have no right to stuff young heads with your conservative views on the
prospects for the development of automatons. Gurzo is a talented girl, I
expect a lot from her. Moreover, I have assigned her to perform one
important calculation task, after which all your idealism about emotions,
love, and other things will go to hell. You will see these concepts reflected
in the formulas of mathematical logic. And, instead of helping me and her,
you begin to re-educate this talented employee in your own way. You start
singing all sorts of poetic nonsense to her, clogging her mind with
irrational nonsense.
"Yes, but I have the right...
"Personally, yes," interrupted Kasyanov. "But not her. You are many
years old, and you can no longer be persuaded of anything.
I felt that I was turning pale.
- Listen, Professor. Even your rank and your position do not give you
any right to tell me when, where, to whom, and what I can or cannot say.
Science is not an inn, and scientists are not obedient mules. Permit me to
have my own opinion on all points, and to express it under circumstances
that suit me best and not you.
Furious, I left the office and returned to the laboratory. I approached
Galina's desk and asked loudly, so that everyone could hear:
- What are you doing now?
She stood up and handed me sheets of paper.
- Here's a new algorithm for the emotional dynamics of a person. The
development of Professor Kasyanov...
I snatched the paper from her hands and ran my eyes over the neat lines.
"Stop doing nonsense!" We are not here to test dubious ideas...
"I told him the same thing," said Galina.
-You?
-Yes. When he explained to me the content of the work, I said that he
was talking nonsense.
- Did you tell Kasyanov that he was talking nonsense? I exclaimed.

532
 "What's wrong with that?" I have the same point of view with you...
"So that's why the old man turned white!"
For several minutes I stood indecisive. It seemed to me that there was a
giggle behind my back. I turned around and saw that the diploma students
were seriously and intently fiddling with their schemes and devices.
"All right, Galya," I said, calming down a little. - Keep working.
Everything turned out wrong. In general... I would not advise you to talk
to Professor Kasyanov in such a spirit...
She smiled faintly.
- Here is another element that he did not provide for in his algorithm...
-What?
- The ability of a person to compromise with his conscience.
I sat down like that. This time, the diploma students really burst out
laughing. I had no choice but to leave the laboratory in a hurry. I sat in the
library until the end of the working day.
I was ashamed of myself. How she forged me! Compromise with your
conscience? Moreover, with his convictions! Some kind of nonsense. I
need to explain myself to Galina at all costs. She may think that I am a
completely unscrupulous person...
I went out into the institute courtyard and suddenly saw Galina. In the
company of both graduate students, she walked to the new outbuilding, to
the right of the main building. My heart sank. She walked slowly,
lowering her head, and the graduate students were saying something to her
with conviction, waving their arms.
- Galya! I shouted.
All three looked around. Suddenly, one of the guys grabbed Galina's
hand and almost ran and dragged her away. They disappeared into the
entrance of the new outbuilding, and the second laboratory assistant
closed the door tightly behind him. For several minutes I stood as if rooted
to the ground. My first move was to run after them. But I restrained
myself. In the end, Galina is young and free, and it is up to her to decide
who to date.
For the whole evening I sat on a park bench on the banks of the river,
enjoying the oppressive, painful melancholy. "That's the way you want it, that's
the way you need it, you old fool," I whispered to myself from time to time.

4
After this incident, for several days in a row I was emphatically dry
with all the laboratory staff, especially with Galina. Sometimes I made
harsh remarks to her, and when she reproached her,looked at me in
surprise, I looked away. But most of all I got from the diploma students.
Several times I made them redo memory matrices, re-solder circuits, solve

533
montages in a new way. Sullenly and unquestioningly, they carried out all
my orders. With Professor Kasyanov I behaved formally and reservedly.
The old man must have realized that I was offended, and one day, holding
my hand in his, he said:
"Oh, completely, Victor! I've already forgotten everything, and you're
sulking. Run to me after work, I have prepared such an argument against
you that you will just gasp! By the way, how do the children cope with the
new type of probabilistic memory? How is their work going?
"Slowly," I replied sullenly. "Not only did we get not very high-quality
radio components. Out of a hundred tunnel diodes, a good half needs to be
sifted out...
- I beg you to make sure that the guys do this block properly. A lot
depends on it. So will you come in after work?
But I didn't go to Kasyanov after work, and here's why. When the staff
dispersed and complete silence reigned in the laboratory, I suddenly felt
that I was not alone. I even felt a little creepy. I looked around and in the
farthest corner, behind the cabinet with chemical utensils, at a small table,
I saw Galina. I hurriedly approached her.
She sat with her head in her hands and cried quietly.
- Galya, what's wrong with you? I asked, touching her shoulder. She
jumped up and recoiled.
"Don't come near me, don't touch me," she whispered.
-All right all right. But explain why you are crying? Who offended
you?
-You.
-I?
-Yes you. I was on your side. I defended your beliefs as best I could...
And you yelled at me... And now your attitude towards me has become so
strange... It's hard for me... It's very hard...
Amazing is the soul of man! She admitted that it was hard for her, and I
immediately felt very light. How can we not remember Lermontov: "I am
sad because you are having fun..."
I laughed sweetly.
- Don't take everything so personally.
Suddenly she spoke with excitement and conviction:
"I am young and stupid. I don't know even a thousandth of what you or
Professor Kasyanov know. Very often what I say comes not from the
mind, but from the heart... When a person knows little and has not yet
learned to think independently, he takes everything on faith. I always
believed you so much, I believed you so much...
She covered her eyes with her hands again and cried.
- Yes, that's enough, Galya! Don't do that... Of course, you are young,

534
but you have everything ahead of you. And knowledge, and independent
work, and great feeling.
Little by little, she calmed down. I suggested that we go for a walk, and
she nodded in agreement and even smiled.
We came to the same bench over the river. Galina returned to her former
calmness, and her eyes, as it seemed to me, became more affectionate and
kind. We talked about some trifles, then fell silent. When the sun went down
and the short autumn twilight fell, I moved towards her and quietly placed
my hand on her arm. Her hand was very small and cold. I took off my jacket
and threw it over the girl's shoulders. She did not move.
"And that's what Kasyanov wants to translate into the language of
formulas," I whispered.

"Sweetheart...
She suddenly tensed up and took my hand aside.
"Don't... We still know so little...
"Do you know why I'm angry with you?" I asked.
Because you saw me in the company of these guys, your diploma
students. You are jealous.
-Yes. You are right. It was stupid and disgusting.
"That evening they just decided to show me the new laboratory. There
are so many interesting things in the institute... Especially the decoration
department.
Such a department was indeed created at the institute, I was quite
amazed at this circumstance, but I did not have time to get acquainted with
its tasks. Frankly speaking, the very name of it was associated with
something comical and frivolous, and I remembered it as a curiosity.
When we got up from the bench, the bushes behind crackled loudly.
Suddenly I saw there, in the twilight, a vague shadow darting about.
Diploma students again? Well, what impudent people...
"Unheard-of impudence," I whispered.
She did not allow herself to be escorted home.

5
We met with Kasyanov again only a week later, when the laboratory
had completed its hard work on the production of a test sample of a new
type of microminiature probabilistic memory. Kasyanov, putting his hand
on a small vinyl chloride block that includes millions of artificial neurons,
smiled and said:
"Well, now we can relieve the tension a little. Do you guys seem to
have expressed a desire to go camping? - he turned to the diploma
students.

535
 -Yes.
"A week is at your disposal. By the way, Victor, Galina asked me to let
her go to her mother for a few days. What is your opinion?
I thought about it. I really didn't want it, but I had to agree.
"That's good. And we will stay with you and argue a little. I am sure
that in this debate new interesting ideas will arise for our future work.
I was somewhat surprised and annoyed when I learned that Galina had
left without saying goodbye to me. The laboratory immediately became
empty and uncomfortable for me. Only now, when this girl was no longer
by my side, did I feel how much she meant to me... All day long I
wandered from corner to corner, not knowing what to do. And then a
decision flashed in my soul, the very decision that sooner or later every
person has to make for whom the other person ceases to be indifferent.
"When he comes, everything will be decided."
This thought immediately made me feel light, and in a cheerful and
cheerful mood I went to Professor Kasyanov's office to enter into an
argument with him. Oh, now I had a thousand arguments. Now I myself
was the main argument against the professor!
-Sit? Kasyanov suggested, as always, with a sly grin.
"Let's sit down," I answered.
"Before arguing, I want to ask you a question that I was not very
comfortable asking in front of my diploma students. Have you checked the
quality of the new memory installation?
-Yes.
- Only high-end radio components?
"You know how to answer this question, Professor. With a high degree
of probability, yes.
-Well good. So that's what I want to tell you. Your objections to the fact
that the most subtle emotional movementThe human soul, as you call it,
cannot be programmed and algorithmized, do not stand up to any criticism.
-Evidence? "
You have convinced an inexperienced girl, your Galina, that I am an
old fool who has lost his mind.
"I didn't say that!"
"Well, maybe not. But the meaning was as follows. And what
happened? Your fan was convinced of the opposite! She just believed you,
and she understood me. Do you feel the difference?
- Not yet.
"She's a smart girl, this Galina Gurzo. She has a flexible, analytical
mind. And when I offered her to understand the new algorithm, which
provides for the subconscious, unconscious activity of the central nervous
system, when she figured out the problem, understood it, then she came to

536
the conclusion that you are wrong!
"It can't be!" - I exclaimed. - Galina has always been on my side!
- It was, but it floated away. So I advise you to understand this
interesting issue properly. Just take her workbook and read.
Kasyanov's words moved me greatly. My Galina - and suddenly in the
enemy camp! I remembered that lately she had avoided talking about this
topic. But there was still the main argument, as it seemed to me.
"Professor, you can prove anything you want on paper, but you can't
put my feelings on paper. Understand? My. I love Galina.
I had a right to expect that my message would interest him. Indeed, he
raised his eyebrows and asked,
"Are you serious?"
I was furious.
- Maybe you can also decompose my feelings for her into a number of
recurrent formulas? Perhaps you will write an equation of what is going on
in my soul? Maybe you can make a schedule of my longing for this
wonderful girl? Could be...
He raised his hand, stopping me. His face was frowning and
concentrated.
"Well," he said, "to tell you the truth, I did it a long time ago. Do you
want to deal with my theory? It's cool. I will instruct your laboratory
assistant Gurzo to explain this theory to you in a popular way. Gurzo
knows her perfectly.
I tried to object to the professor something else, but he did not answer,
but only shook his head. Never before had I seen him so serious and
worried. It even seemed to me that he himself felt that he had made a
mistake somewhere...

6
The week during which Galina was absent I spent in agonizing
reflections. On Kasyanov's advice, I took her workbook and began to sort
out the pages written in small neat handwriting. Very soon the formulas of
ordinary mathematical logic ended, and new operations, new notations,
and new symbols appeared. It was not without surprise that Galina's
mathematical knowledge surpassed everything that could be expected. I
felt uncomfortable. Why didn't I take a closer look at her work earlier,
didn't I find out what she does?..
Galya caught me at the moment when I was finishing reading the last
pages.
- It was at this moment that I saw the light! she exclaimed, running up
to me.
Her face was joyful and cheerful, her eyes sparkled.

537
 "Interesting, isn't it, Viktor Stepanovich?" Whatever you say, our old
teacher is a genius!
I could only smile guiltily and say:
- And you are still a traitor!
- Do you remember the famous "but the truth is more expensive"? So, I
decided not to take anything on faith anymore. Let's prove it, period!
Kasyanov presented evidence.
Then I said dryly:
"And you know, this is not evidence. This is paper. In what I argued
with him, and will now argue with you, only a direct experiment can be
proved. The history of science knows many examples of elegant proofs on
paper that have been buried by no less elegant experiments. So far, this has
not been staged.
Galina shrugged her shoulders and grimaced in displeasure.
"Well, you know, in that case you deny the role of theory. You reason
like a naked empiricist.
I suddenly felt acutely that I had lost an ally forever. Her mocking look
and cheerful voice now belonged to a completely different Galina. I
looked at her and sighed.
- How quickly you change your views...
"It's not a matter of looks. Yes, until today I believed in miracles. But is
not the proof that miracles do not happen to guide me to the path of truth?
What people call adherence to principles very often turns out to be
stubborn unscrupulousness.
"No one has proved anything to you yet. As for Professor Kasyanov's
theorems, you must know that the great Leibniz proved the theorem of the
existence of God.
- I do not know this theorem, but it is probably logically untenable.
There must be false premises implicitly laid there.
I smiled bitterly.
- Are you sure that there are no false premises hidden in Kasyanov's
logic?
- So far, yes.
-So long! And what will happen next, don't you care?
Galina thought for a moment.
-Who knows. It is always so with knowledge. All people are
programmed at the level of knowledge of the era of their time. Maybe in
the future some programs will have to be changed. This is the essence of
infinite knowledge...
I theatrically exclaimed:
"Here you and your Kasyanov have fallen into a trap! Infinite cognition
is precisely that "and so on" where we know nothing. I believe only in

538
experiment, not in paper paradoxes like these.
I hit the table hard with the notebook. Galina stopped smiling and
looked at me anxiously. No, it has become completely different. And yet
she was the same girl into whose eyes I wanted to look endlessly. I put
down the notebook and walked away, but suddenly she stepped
impulsively towards me.
"Don't be angry with me. I don't know what I'm saying... Do you
know... I would beg you... Maybe it's not very convenient...
-A what?
"Let's go for a walk tonight..."
"All right," I said, "I'll be waiting for you on that bench on the river
bank. Just don't linger, please.
Galina smiled slightly and nodded her head.

7
A tiny tugboat hissed and puffed as it slowly pushed a huge barge filled
with construction sand. The purple sky was reflected in the smooth and wide
waves of the river, and gusts of wind from the opposite bank shook the
branches of yellowed maples, shaking off the rain of leaves that had not yet
turned yellow. The first stars lit up, and the world began to quickly plunge into
autumn twilight... Galina's head was on my shoulder, I hugged her waist and
oudI wondered how thin and fragile she was... I was silent, and it seemed to me
unnecessary and distant to argue with Kasyanov; I imagined that she was
thinking the same thing, and this overwhelmed my heart with joy...
Here it is, the big, million-voiced silent world of human feelings! It
spilled into the gray mist that filled the sand quarry near the bridge. It
splashes in the countless sparkles of restless water, into which the
cloudless autumn sky looks. He is agitated in the distant noise of public
transport. He trembles in the uneven breathing of the girl sitting next to
him, who thinks, believes, doubts and seeks... He is in everything.
And even if it, according to Kasyanov, is called "and so on", but it is
infinity, and we should thank nature for this.
For a moment I imagined another, fantastic world, in which everything
is finite, where there are no "and so on", where everything is known to the
end. In such a world, a person has only five senses. It has one sun and only
one planet. There are only two people in it. There are no atoms, no
electrons, no strange microcosm, but there are large cubic "indivisible"
bricks from which a finite set of geometric shapes can be built. In this
world there is one river, one sea, one lake. There is one heaven in it, and
there is only one star in the sky. Only one tree grows there, and it bears
only one kind of fruit. The universe of this world is finite and empty. And
there is nothing else in it.

539
 Could science and technology develop in such a world? What would
human civilization mean in it? Would there be art, music, poetry? Could
love be born in him?
I imagined this dull, monotonous world and chuckled to myself. Of
course, we should be grateful to nature for its infinity! It is only thanks to
it that our inner world is so rich. It sparkles and sparkles, like the whole
Universe, and perhaps that is why we always want to live. Ever-changing
emotional colors distract us from the idea of the inevitability of death,
because we are always fascinated by a kaleidoscope of unique feelings. I
hugged Galina to me and whispered:
"Here are rows of recurrent formulas for you...
"But the rows can be endless," she also whispered.
"Is it really that important?"
- The main thing is that the ranks converge...
"You think that everything that happens in my soul and... Maybe in
yours, shifts to converging rows?
- Any infinite series that represent real-world phenomena must be
converging...
"Maybe we won't talk about it anymore?"
"I didn't mean to... Is it you...
"Why 'you'?"
"Well, you...
I fell silent. It became completely dark, and I suddenly felt that the most
important moment in my life had come. I got up and, stepping back from
the bench, said in a low voice:
"I love you, Galya. I ask you to be my wife.
The girl stood up hesitantly.
-Wife?
-Yes. I want it. I beg you... I'll tell you...
-About! Not this not again! Not this not again!
Galina turned sharply and walked quickly along the dark alley along
the shore. I could hardly keep up with her.
-Galina! Galya! Pull over! What's wrong with you! If I said the wrong
thing...
But she walked and walked, quickening her steps, then ran, stumbling over
hummocks and bare tree roots. I caught up with her almost at the exit from the
park. Grief is dull herelonely lantern, and there was not a single bench.
"What's wrong with you?" Why are you running?
-Do not... Do not... Don't come up... It's so hard for me, so...
"What's wrong with you, dear?"
"Don't ask anything. Everything is so ridiculous, stupid... I'm so
stupid...

540
 "Wait, what are you talking about?" Maybe I... Forgive me if I said the
wrong thing...
-Oh no!
"So what's the matter!
I grabbed her arm. Her hand was icy.
"You're trembling, you're not feeling well... What's the matter?
She didn't answer.
"What's the matter, Galya?"
She shook her head silently.
"Well, tell me what's wrong with you!"
I took her by the shoulders. She muttered:
"Professor Kasyanov and these guys, diploma students...
-A what? What did they do to you?
She shook her head again. And suddenly, for no reason at all, she
laughed softly.
"You're laughing!" Why are you laughing?
She freed herself, stepped back a few steps, and said in a strange,
prosaic voice,
"Silly jokes. I can't stand them. And in general... You can't retrain a
person several times in a lifetime. First one thing, then another... This can
only be done with a car... Change the programs, and that's the end of it.
- What are you talking about, Galya?
- I understand what nonsense Kasyanov is proving. Just che-poo-hoo!
- Of course! "
But you're good too!" Endless rows converge!
-Don't understand...
- There is a mysterious process when the infinite turns into the finite...
For example, the sum of an infinite series...
"Yes, but what is the point of all this?.. What are you talking about?
Galina laughed again. Then, abruptly interrupting her laughter, she
went to the trunk of a tall leafless birch, rested her elbow on it and put her
head on her hand.
"What's wrong with you, Galya?" - I asked in horror.
- Nothing... It will pass now... Infinity... It's like in a dream... flying,
flying... When I was not yet there, I saw tall green grass in my dreams. The
sun rose over the grass every morning. And then... How difficult it is to
remember what happened after. How I hate these graduate students. And
Kasyanov. And everyone, everyone...
"And me?..
"Good people don't do that. Is it possible to live only halfway? Or by
one third?.. You can't do that... Because there are stars all around, stars,
stars...

541
 And she fell...
I did not understand what happened afterwards. Three figures jumped
out of the darkness, someone threw me aside, Galina was lifted up and
quickly carried to the exit. I rushed after me, shouting something, but
Professor Kasyanov appeared in front of me.
"It's all your fault," he wheezed. - Semiconductor components should
have been tested more thoroughly... And I'm good too... How could the
reverse possibility not be foreseen?
"Tell me, have I gone mad?"
-You? No. You just fell in love with a ghost. In general, the car turned
out to be glorious...
Diploma students appeared, one of them asked:
- So, now it is possible to formalize the work? Only this experiment
remains to be described.
"Formalize," Kasyanov muttered. Then he turned to me. "It's a pity.
Now we have nothing more to argue about...
I woke up loudlyoh girlish laughter. It was completely dark and it was
raining... For several minutes I did not understand anything, and Galina
stubbornly pulled my hand.
"Wake up!" This is the first time I see that they are waiting for a girl in
this way.
"You, you—" I babbled incoherently.
I was delayed a little by Kasyanov. It seemed to me that he was losing
his position...
I woke up completely.
"It's so good that you... Real!
She never understood what I meant...

542
 Random Shot
Everyone knows from the newspapers how Dr. Glorian died. On the
eve of his departure for hunting, he was cleaning a gun, and it accidentally
fired. It is said that any weapon fires at least once against the will of the
owner. Correspondents depict the death of Glorian in this way.
I would never have written this document if, after the sensation caused
by Glorian's death had subsided, his lawyer, Victor Bomp, had not
suddenly appeared in the newspapers to the effect that, at the request of his
wife and immediate family members, he would not investigate the
circumstances of the scientist's death. "Let the people decide for
themselves," wrote Victor Bomp, "whether it was a suicide or an
accident."
I don't know what it was. But since people have to choose between two
decisions, of which only one was right for my friend Glorian, I feel
obliged to publish some facts.
And so, Robert Glorian died exactly three hours after we parted at the
Malta Café. I will remember the expression on his face for the rest of my
life. He was pale as if it was night and his face was illuminated by the
moonlight. Shaking my hand, he said,
"In thirty years I have never made a mistake. Of course, in
mathematics. Life miscalculations are another matter...
I remembered his wife, Eugene, and nodded my head knowingly. I
always thought Glorian was unhappy with her. I often observed their
relationship from the outside, and it seemed to me that there was a dislike
between them, which often occurs between a clever husband and a clever
wife. Eugene often said,
"These mathematicians are sticking their noses everywhere now! They
ruined human life."
There was some truth in her words.
That evening, we sat in Robert's office and analyzed von Neumann's
and Morgenstern's zero-sum theorem. Mathematically, it can be strictly
shown that in the so-called parlor games, everyone loses exactly as much
as the other wins. Von Neumann's theorem is, so to speak, the law of
conservation of the bet when playing. Then Robert and I began to discuss
more complex situations—and in any case, we came to the same
conclusion: there was a zero-sum game going on everywhere. When we

543
started talking about the mathematical theory of human conflicts, Eugene
came up to us:
"Here's what. I'm disgusted to listen to you. You decompose thoughts
and feelings into some coefficients of a non-degenerate matrix. With your
permission, Robert, I am going to Malta.
Robert smiled pitifully and nodded his head. It seemed to me then that
when he let his young wife go to a nightclub, he just tried not to think
about her. He spoke of a recent book in which the mathematical theory of
conflict had been brought to the highest degree of perfection.
Eugene left, and we sat up until three o'clock in the morning. I do not
remember all the details of our discussion, but only, analyzing the main
directions of conflicts in our society, I said:
- Our economy, as you yourself prove, is nothing more than a kind of
game between entrepreneurs and consumers. I can show by a simple
example that this game is doomed. You know, Robert, that all our
industrialists are striving for full automation. They are successfully
implementing it. With each new automatic line, thousands, tens of
thousands of people are thrown into the street. They become unemployed.
In an effort to pay less and receive more, business owners will sooner or
later come to full automationproduction. Plants and factories will not
employ a single person, and yet enterprises will produce products in
abundance.
"So what?" Robert asked with a grin.
- And then, my dear, that total automation will allow entrepreneurs to
completely get rid of the labor and services of workers and produce any
amount of consumer goods, but no one will be able to buy them. People
who are deprived of labor have no money and, consequently, cannot
acquire what will be produced by automatic machines.
Robert Glorian passed his hand slowly over the gray head and said
confidently,
"There's only one conclusion to be drawn from that. Automation will
never be complete. Such a game is not in favor of our initiative
entrepreneurship.
"And what is the benefit?" "It
should be a reasonable automation that does not exclude, but, on the
contrary, presupposes more and more participation of people in
production...
In my opinion, this was the most obscure phrase that Robert Glorian
ever uttered. He was an ardent supporter of "social Darwinism," according
to which the evolution and progress of mankind depend entirely on the
private initiative of each of its members, and the initiative itself is
determined by man's desire for enrichment.

544
 I am a skeptic by nature and I can't stand dogmas. Although Glorian
was my best friend, I could hardly stand his axiomatics. "This is the truth,
this is a lie," he liked to say, but neither his truth nor his lie ever fit into my
head. His axioms were equally understandable and unprovable. Probably,
three centuries ago, scientists also thought that Galileo's axiom that time
flows at the same speed throughout the Universe.
Mathematical conflict theory, game theory, linear and dynamic
programming, and mathematical economics are all Robert's favorite coats.
He was a regular member of the responsible commissions and committees
that developed economic and military recommendations for the
government. Now it is no secret that Robert Glorian was one of the
compilers of a report on the economic foundations of the production of
atomic weapons back in the days when the scientific and technical
possibility of creating such a weapon was not proven.
"Why does your Eugene go to a nightclub alone?" I asked Robert.
- We are very different people. She does not like it when I assert that
any social behavior of a human group or even one person can be described
by mathematical equations.
-She's right. This must sound very disgusting to an ordinary person.
- Eugene is in love with Sidi Weil and his jazz. I don't know who is
bigger," he said quickly. Taking a deep breath, he added, "The laws of
nature are inexorable. For example, I do not like the law of Bio and Savarr
about the interaction of conductors through which an electric current
flows. It is not very clear to me why the magnetic field of one conductor
"from around the corner" acts on another. But what can you do! Such is
nature. Eugene is trying to contradict me on the basis of so-called common
sense. Funny, isn't it?
- Did you try to discuss the problem of full automation of production
with her?
Robert grimaced.
"She said that if that happened, we would all starve to death.
I laughed, and Robert suddenly stopped in the middle of the room and
exclaimed;
-European Unionif you think the same way as Eugene, let's take this
problem seriously. We live in a time when science has the last word.
Eugene left home at eight o'clock in the evening and came back at four
o'clock in the morning. She was a little tipsy, and the purple lipstick on her
full lips was smeared. Her eyes were mocking and angry.
"Robert," she said, "it's a wonderful illustration that you're damn right!"
Sidi Vail's jazz will no longer perform in Malta. Instead, an electronic
organ organ "Ipok" was installed on the stage, on which, at the request of
anyone, a whole non-existent orchestra performs any music in the same

545
way as Weill and his twenty-seven guys. I can imagine them cursing the
scientist and engineer who invented this dirty trick.
Robert was not very good at seeming cheerful and cheerful. He raised
his head over the papers on which we had carefully written down the
equations of the "social balance" and said:
"Not everyone in our country is as idiot as the owner of the Malta Club.
In the end, if not he, then his son or grandson will understand that only
those who achieve a precisely calculated balance between the activities of
machines and people will be able to survive in this world. After all, it must
be borne in mind that if Sidi Weil and his orchestra do not find work, they
will simply rob the owner of Malta!
Robert chewed on the tip of his pencil and added another equation to
the impressive list of differential balance equations that we had come up
with before his wife arrived.
"I foresee the time," Eugene said, "that soon the electric boxes that are
now acting in place of Sidi Weil's jazz will be taking your place for the
compilation of such balances and mathematical equations.
Robert did not listen to her and was quickly writing something on a
piece of paper. Eugene looked over her shoulder at the orderly rows of
mathematical formulas.
"Sidi Weil finds that the Ipok electric hurdy-gurdy is an absolutely
ingenious reproduction of his performance. You can rejoice.
She uttered the last phrase with undisguised malice.
"Was he at the club?" Robert asked indifferently, continuing his
calculations.
"Yes, I was," Eugene replied insolently.
"I wonder what he's going to do in self-preservation and struggle. He
has only one way out: to overtake the car and come up with something that
will require the creation of a new car. The progress of the future society
will consist in the constant competition of people with the capabilities of
automatons. This is very easy to take into account with this equation...
Robert Glorian's wife sank into a chair with a slight groan. For some
reason, I felt sorry for her.
- What do you think about such a way out of the situation? Machines
produce everything a person needs, and this need is distributed according
to need, free of charge? Eugene grinned and shrugged her shoulders and
nodded in Robert's direction:
"Then there
will be no human progress. At least, that's what my husband says. In
order for civilization to flourish, it is necessary that people constantly try
to cut each other's throats. Don't you know that?
I was now sure that Eugene hated Robert.

546
 "Any college student knows that," Robert muttered, not looking up
from his notes. "Now, it seems, that's all. Eighty-four linear equations.
He got up from the table and solemnly shook five pieces of paper:
"Tomorrow we'll decide who's right."
- Tell me, please, can the love or hatred of one person for another be
expressed with the help of mathematical equations? Eugene asked,
looking Robert straight in the eye. Her lips quivered nervously, she was
ready to laugh or burst into tears.
"You can," Robert replied peremptorily. - This is a rather minor and
special case. It is not of great importance for the economy of the state.
However...
He thought for a moment and sat down at the table again.
- Sidi Weil told me today that if electronic boxes of the Ipok type are
produced on a mass scale, then not a single good composer will ever be
born in our country.
Robert laughed loudly and unnaturally.
"I hope you don't complain too much about the fact that there has been
no need for brilliant shoemakers in this country for a long time, because
the shoes you like are successfully made by automatons.
Robert has always been a tireless man. When Eugene went to bed, he
suggested that he immediately develop a program for solving the
eighty-four equations he had drawn up.
"We'll be in time by twelve o'clock in the afternoon." Between twelve
and three, the machine in the atomic computing center will be free. It will
solve the problem for us.
"What do you want to decide?" "
I want to calculate the rational multi-step policy of our state for the
introduction of new technology and automation. I took everything into
account in this game. Even love. Even treason. Ultimately, this cannot be
ignored.
I did not pay attention to Robert's cynicism and eagerly began to
compile an algorithm and a program for solving his system of equations.
Eugene brought us coffee, and we drank it when it was completely light,
Then we left the house, crossed the park, and walked along the
embankment.
Robert, squinting, looked at the sun:
"Honestly, the radiation temperature of this sun today is more than six
thousand degrees!
I tried to imagine how boring and disgusting it must be to live with a
mathematical man like Robert. I really wanted to throw all my
calculations into the sea and send my friend to hell,
the operator of the electronic machine, Eric Hanson, after looking at

547
our notes and the program, said that the solution to the problem could be
obtained in two or three hours.
"We'll be in the café of the Malta Club." When everything is ready, call
there," Robert instructed him.
After the second cup of coffee, Glorian said dreamily:
"Life is a strange thing! It was once thought that it was full of mysteries
and inscrutable paths. And on closer inspection, it turns out that it can be
transferred to eighty-four differential equations. Great, isn't it?
I shrugged my shoulders. I was not as sure as he was that the life of
human society could be reduced to these equals. I didn't know what the
electronic machine would decide, but whatever the result, it wouldn't
convince me...
As we finished our third cup of coffee, Sidi Weil, the head of the jazz
that had been replaced by the Ipok machine, appeared. I had never seen his
face before, and I knew him only from magazine photographs. He was
much older than I thought.
"Will you allow me to sit down?" He asked, and without waiting for an
answer, he sat down at our table.
Robert, staring at the crystalashtray, muttered,
"Please."
"I'd like to talk to you alone," Weil said.
"I have nothing to hide from my friend," Glorian said sharply, nodding
in my direction.
-Up to you. I love your wife, Eugene, and she loves me.
Not a muscle twitched on Glorian's face,
"I've known that for a long time.
"I've been fired from here, and we'll have to move to another city," Weil
said.
- You will have to change many cities. The Ipok car will soon be
mass-produced.
"It will probably be a few years before automatic jazz penetrates into
the backwoods.
Weil's voice trembled slightly.
"I'll take over the mass production of the Ipok assault rifle myself,"
Robert said casually.
"I've got ideas about music that you can't put into machines with your
damn math.
"Isn't that a convincing proof of my views?" Progress as a result of the
struggle for existence, for self-preservation, for the continuation of the
species, as a rivalry between man and machine. Bravo, Weil, you are
worthy of Eugene!
After these words, I wanted to hit Glorian in the face, but at that

548
moment a waiter came up to us and said that Robert was required to see
the phone.
"Aha, that's the solution!" Now we will hear the voice of inexorable
logic!
He got up and wanted to go. Then he suddenly sat down again, leaned
back in his chair, and said to me, laughing,
"You know, go and find out the result, and I'll talk to Mr. Weil in the
meantime." Some trifles of a practical nature...
I picked up the phone in the office of the director of the club, and for a
long time no one answered me, I heard noise, shouting, swearing,
someone was accusing someone of something, someone was sharply and
firmly proving something. Several times I heard the name "Robert
Glorian." Then the angry voice of the electronic calculating machine
operator, Eric Hansong, was heard:
"Hello, Glorian, is that you?" Damn you!
"It's not Glorian. He instructed me to find out what the machine had
counted.
"Damn it, it's your task!" Because of it, there is a whole day of
downtime again!
-Why? - I was surprised,
- The car broke down.
-Wonder. What does the task have to do with it?
- And despite the fact that the machine breaks down every time if the
problem does not have a solution. Do you understand mathematics? There
are problems that have no solution. With the help of these tasks, it is
easiest to break electronic and calculating machines. Glorian should have
known that.
Eric spoke angrily for a long time, but I didn't understand him anymore.
"Eugene is leaving me today," Robert said coolly when I appeared at
the table. - It's even good that everything worked out so quickly and
simply. We never understood each other.
He drank cognac in small sips and washed it down with coffee.
- Robert, don't you think that sometimes you don't understand
everything?
- What is the optimal solution to the problem?
I sat down.
- Have you been told what is the solution to the problem of optimal
automation? he asked. His voice was cold and formal.
"There is no such solution,"
Robert frowned. I repeated,
"There is no such solution, and that's why the machine broke down.
"Aren't you kidding?"

549
 -Not at all. I want cognac.
We sat in silence for a long time. Twilight was thickening outside the
windows. The café of the Malta Club was gradually filled with people.
Someone turned on the Ipok record player, and he, just like Sidi Weil's
jazz, performed popular melodies and dances. There was no orchestra.
Music flowed from the recesses of the glass-wire soul of the polished
black box. He was standing on a red rug in the middle of an empty stage.
Robert stared at the box and said,
"I've never been wrong in thirty years. Of course, in mathematics. Life
miscalculations are another matter...
I'm going to get some fresh air.
I don't remember how long I listened to dead music.
The next morning I read in the newspapers what I had said at the
beginning of this story.

550
 Funny Baobab
- And now we will pass the pampas and begin to make our way through
the South American jungle... That's what they call the jungle. And the
pampas are like our steppe. True, here, in Adjara, there are no steppes.
And nearby, in Ukraine, there is... We also have the jungle. Both here, in
the Caucasus, and in the Ussuri Territory. It's near Vladivostok...
Karo, our guide to the Batumi Botanical Garden, did not stop for a
minute. He knew in this garden, or rather reserve, every corner, every tree
or bush. And not only did he know by name, but also the entire genealogy.
He was tall, broad-shouldered, with a thin white moustache and a pointed
beard that made him look something like Don Quixote.
We were very surprised when we learned that Karo, out of his
sixty-five twenty-five years, drove flocks of sheep into the mountains.
Later I learned how surprised the management of the Batumi Botanical
Garden was when an old man came limping to them and said that he
wanted to work here. In the mountains, he broke his leg and now he can no
longer remain a shepherd.
"And what can you actually do here?"
- Take care of these beautiful trees and flowers. They always stand still,
not like my sheep. And I will love them as if they were my own, although
most of them are strangers.
At first, he was a gardener. And then he became a guide.
The management of the garden was shocked by the memory and
understanding of Karo, who in a year absorbed everything that
professional guides told the excursionists.
He couldn't be sixty now. And in general, here, in Adjara, the old
people are timeless. You can call out to a hundred-year-old citizen:
"Young man!"
We made our way through the vine-covered jungle, where
semi-darkness reigned and the damp, mossy earth breathed hot tart steam,
and got out into a sunlit clearing.
"Here, comrades, Equatorial Africa begins. It begins with the savannah.
"What, what?" Someone asked.
-Savanna. This is also a steppe in African.
Our tour group made their way along a narrow path to the top of the
hill. Fanciful grasses and shrubs surrounded us on all sides; and

551
sometimes, at the turns, we saw only Caro's head held high, animatedly
telling something to those who walked beside him.
- From the top of the hill you can see the sea very well. There we will
rest. In the shade of that wonderful tree.
The excursionists sat on the grass and admired the view of the sea. The
sun was tending towards evening, the air was glowing with a silvery light,
and the sea was not blue as usual, but silver, with a corrugated sunny path
lost in the haze.
"Ave mare, morituri te salutant," said the engineer from Leningrad
dreamily. "We will all die, and other people will come here and admire
this magical sight...
- Why die? Caro exclaimed. - We must live! For a long, long time, like
this tree!
He turned to the trunk of the green giant and lovingly stroked the
powerful wrinkled bark.
"And what kind of tree is it, Karo?"
- A wonderful tree. The eternal guardian of the African savannahs. This
is baobab. It lives for five thousand years!
-How many? - shrieked a young resort girl in shorts.
"Five thousand." Maybe even more. He was brought here at a very
respectable age.
Caro got up and pulled an oilcloth centimeter out of the pocket of his
faded satin jacket and began to measure the barrel. When he had finished
measuring, he took out a notebook, looked at the column of numbers, and
wrote down the next one.
No one noticed how he raised his head, looked at the mighty crown of
the tree, took a deep breath and shook his head reproachfully.
When he said goodbye to us at the exit of the garden, I took him by the
hand and took him aside.
- Karo, why did you measure the barrel of the baobab, and then sigh
sadly?
-Dries. You see, it dries before our eyes. It will be such a loss. At first,
the girth was ten meters and seventy centimeters. After - nine meters and
thirty centimeters. And now it is five meters - he is dying by leaps and
bounds. I do everything. I do not leave him. Scientists have come up with
fertilizing. And it dries up...
He uttered the last words with a strong accent, waved his hand
temperamentally, and disappeared among the oleanders, limping more
than ever.
Three years later, I found myself in Batumi again, at a conference on
the problem of longevity, and I remembered Karo and his dying baobab.
In the break between the meetings, I went to the botanical garden.

552
 "Where's Caro?"
"As usual," the blue-eyed laboratory assistant replied indifferently. She
was pouring some liquid from one flask into another.
- What do you mean by "as usual"?
She looked up at me with big eyes.
"Near my baobab."
- Does he still work as a guide?
- No, it does not work now.
"Retired, then?"
The girl smiled wryly.
- A conference on longevity is being held here in Batumi. I read in the
newspaper how local physiologists praise the local climate and the local
old people. But the fact that some people fall into childhood with age, for
some reason, they do not talk about it.
But I no longer listened to the grumpy snow-white laboratory assistant.
I passed the Ussuri jungle, the Siberian taiga, alpine meadows,
descended into the pampas, crossed the jungle - and here is the savannah!
For some reason, I was very worried, and I couldn't wait to see Caro as
soon as possible.
He was lying on his back at the table, smoking a pipe. When I
approached, he turned his head, and then turned away again and stared up.
"Caro, don't you recognize me?"
He shook his head silently.
- I was here on a tour. You feared for this tree then, and it is so
luxuriant, more luxuriant than before, and of course it will live for another
five thousand years!
He looked at me again with sad, thoughtful eyes. His mustache and
beard seemed to have darkened, and the deep shadow under the tree
smoothed out the wrinkles on his tanned face.
"I never believed that a tree dies. He stood up and leaned his back
against the trunk. - From the very beginning, I told these scientists: "Trees
do not dry out like this. I don't know anything about other baobabs that
grow in Africa, but this baobab is different. Well, how can I tell you..."
"What is he like, Caro?"
-Funny. Strange. Very funny.
I remembered the grumpy laboratory assistant.
-See! - Caro was excited. - Look at the bark. It became smooth. Look at
the leaves. They became green and tender. Is this how baobabs die?
I didn't know how the baobabs died, but I felt very sad about Karo's
hell...
- It's funny because it grows back.
-Inversely?

553
 -Of course. There was an old one. And now she is getting younger and
younger. There is nothing surprising here.
"Poor, poorKaro..."
"No, just look!"
I walked around the tree with the old man and really noticed that it
seemed to be rejuvenated. But can we say about trees that they have grown
old, younger? The old maple seems to be "rejuvenated" after the rain, and
the thin dusty acacia resembles a tiny shrivelled old man. This is a matter
of imagination.
I patted Caro on the shoulder.
"I am very glad that the tree continues to live. But I'm even happier for
you, Caro. You look great. Good bye!
- These scientists think I'm crazy!! He shouted after me.
Years passed, and I forgot about Karo and about the baobab growing
"back". I was intensively engaged in gerontology and tried to delve into
the terrible mystery of aging and degradation of a person, and this hobby
of mine also had its own logic. When my wife once asked me why I had
left normal physiology and switched to the study of old men and women, I
replied without thinking:
"Because I myself am growing old, and not growing back...
My wife thought for a moment and said:
"I once listened to a lecture by a mathematician, a specialist in the
theory of oscillations. He argued that if the secret of biological regulation
in man is comprehended, then he, man, can be put into the mode of
self-oscillations. This means that first it ages, then it becomes younger,
and at a certain point in time it begins to grow old again; and so on
endlessly...
"Your fool mathematician!" Aging and death are progressive factors in
biological evolution. And in general, only hardened egoists can dream of
eternal life...
"Grow back, grow back..." Where and when did I hear these words?
And then I remembered Caro and the funny baobab.
In the laboratory of the Batumi Botanical Garden, new, very young
people were sitting, and the old scientists retired: they built dachas in the
suburbs and planted gardens.
"How is your baobab?" - I asked the leading researcher.
-A what?
- In your garden grew a baobab from Africa.
- I don't remember something.
He pulled a thick book out of the bookcase and leafed through it for a
long time.
"Not in the catalogue," he said at last.

554
 "How so?" I personally sat in the shade of this magnificent tree.
- When was it, pardon the immodest question?
-Years... about fifteen or twenty years ago...
The young man whistled:
"During this time, we have changed plants so often, removed dead
ones, planted new ones. Maybe there was once a baobab, but now there is
not.
Indeed, the hill was now deserted, and only the sea at its foot was silver
as before.
Where the tree used to grow, there was a small depression overgrown
with grass, and in the very center of it there was a thin, dried twig. It broke
easily in my hands, and I put the piece in my pocket.
Nobody knew anything about Karo in the botanical garden either, and I
decided to throw this whole strange story out of my mind, when suddenly
it suddenly resurrected in all the smallest details.
A noisy gang of my graduate students returned to Adjara from another
expedition. They vied with each other to talk about old people who were a
hundred, a hundred and twenty, and even a hundred and fifty years old.
- But the most curious story happened in one village, forty kilometers
east of Batumi! Imagine, a parishThey have backpacks, short pants, poles,
and no one pays attention to us. Even the children! This has never
happened before. Not an aul, but a disturbed human anthill. Men at one
end of the market square, women at the other. And everyone talks, talks,
shouts, waves their arms, and so on. Let's find out what's going on. It turns
out that there is nothing unusual. "Aunt Valia got a child from
somewhere." - "Well, what is surprising about it?" - "Auntie is one
hundred and eighteen years old." - "And where does Aunt Walia live?" -
"In that house, but she does not receive anyone." We went home. The
doors are locked. Knock. An old woman appears. We immediately see -
blind. "How are you, Grandma?" "Go away! You will wake up the child!"
- "But we are not one of those, you know." Introducing ourselves.
Academy of Sciences and so on. Specialists. Doctors. "Ah, doctors? Then
come in. I need a doctor." Go. In bed, a baby, about a year old, is
whimpering; maybe a little more. "A nice baby," we said, "was born a
long time ago?" - "No, he came." - "How is it - you came?" - "With your
legs. Only he limps. I broke my leg in the mountains." Inspect. Indeed, the
leg is broken. Put the plaster. We repeat the question, now more strictly.
"Was he born a long time ago?" "He has come, I say to you." - "So he is a
stranger to you, Aunt Walia?" - "No, he is not a stranger. This is my son."
Crazy old woman! No matter how hard we fought, he kept repeating: "He
came, and this is my son..." What a story!
"Didn't she call the baby by name?"

555
 -Called.
-How?
-Karo. I think Caro...
... On my desk at the Institute of Gerontology there is a small
transparent box. On a snow-white napkin rests a piece of dry yellow wood,
and under it there is an inscription: "Funny baobab".
Of course, this may not be the same baobab, but Aunt Walia's little
Karo, maybe a completely different Karo...

556
 Collision With Infinity
This poplar fluff...
The bus stop, and everyone waiting for the bus rubs their eyes with
handkerchiefs.
Fluff climbs everywhere.
Especially in the eyes.
"Excuse me, will you do me a favor?"
He was not very old, but far from young. Gray beard. A balding head
and very, very, very colorless eyes.
"How can I help you?"
"You see, I have insomnia...
Damned poplar fluff! He is everywhere. And now somewhere tickles in
the throat. And then there is this one with his insomnia...
"So what do you want me to do?"
"I would ask you... How can I tell you...
"Have you been to the doctor?"
"Oh, yes, of course. It all started with him...
"Bromural?"
— No, I don't. First there was the nombutal, then the medinal, and
then...
No, I definitely didn't like his face, a kind of pink, plump old face.
"Well, what did the doctor recommend to you in the end?"
— Count.
"What?!"
"It's almost like in a joke: counting silently. You know: one, two, three,
four, five, six, and so on...
"I think you got tired of this activity very soon.
The pink old man smiled sourly:
"Alas, no. I walk with it...
"What do you mean?"
"Two billion three hundred forty-eight million five hundred
twenty-seven thousand four hundred twenty-six...
A red bus approached, a cloud of poplar fluff rose from the asphalt, and
I agonized over what this idiotically huge number meant.
"A good remedy for insomnia," I said, to buy time. Those who stood in
front of us climbed into the bus, and for some reason we remained

557
standing on the hot asphalt.
"Just understand. After all, you can't just throw it like that. Especially if
it has exceeded two billion...
"What, quit?"
— Count. You know, with each next number, life becomes shorter.
Gosh! So that's the thing!
"So what have you been counting all your life?"
"No, not at all! I began to have insomnia... Let me remember... About
forty years ago...
"And this...
"That's about one and a half billion seconds.
Another bus came up and left again, and we were still standing...
— What figure have you reached?
I have never asked anyone such a vile question in my life.
"Are you the last?"
The pretty, strict blonde apparently decided that we were drunk.
"No, please.
The bus left.
"So, the thing is that I have already given the figure once...
"How is that?!"
"Well, the number. It happened ten years ago.
"Well, and...
"That man was very much like you. I felt very bad, only not at the bus
stop, but near the ticket office at the station...
"Why are you telling me all this?"
"Understand, you can't... You can't throw a number that is over two
billion...
"Why, in fact, can't you?"
These numbers gradually made me feel creepy.
"Because... How would it be better to explain to you... Well, imagine
the number: six million six hundred sixty-six thousand six hundred
sixty-six... This is a terrible number. And when in the middle of the night,
it was three years ago, I got to a billion... You can't imagine what this
feeling is "A billion... Billion!!! One followed by nine zeros! Me and HIM
– this billion! And then I add one and say to myself: a billion one, a billion
two... No, I'm lying. I lingered on a billion. I think I stayed there for three
days. Somehow I really did not want to move it...
Buses, buses... A service car passed by, and the female driver shouted:
"How long are you going to stand here?"
"But that was even earlier. I felt very bad and caught the first young
man I came across. And I told him, as well as you, that it was simply
impossible to quit like that... He agreed to continue. But I didn't believe

558
him. You know, such a cunning, mocking face. And blinking eyes. He
didn't care about six million and so on... He just took that number and
probably forgot it right away. And these are years of human life. Do you
understand?
I nodded my head.
Poplar fluff... And it's so hard to breathe in this heat...
"Did you ask for some kind of courtesy?..
"Yes... However, understand, it is not so difficult...
"Let it be as you like. What do you want me to do?
"I told you, I've reached two billion three hundred and forty-eight
million five hundred and twenty-seven thousand four hundred and
twenty-six...
"Well...
"Please add the following unit... It's hard for me... I am tired...

Professor Nosov and I sat up almost until morning, and when all the
cognac was over, and when the talk about foreign Halivudov had dried up,
then we began to talk about life in general.
— You need to live in order to live.
There was no more wisdom in this phrase than the yolk in a eaten egg,
but I pretended to agree with the idea. And he looked at me through his
glasses with negative diopters and continued.
I immediately felt that he needed to speak out.
"To live means to die gradually. Of course, you are not against this
thesis. But all the turmoil begins when all of humanity begins to claim life.
"Isn't that an instinct of self-preservation?"
– Stop talking banal truths that were fashionable in the 20th century.
Have you ever read the works of such a philosopher as Schopenhauer,
who is not very well-known now? Which is a pity. It would be necessary,
with your specialty. So, this same Schopenhauer, a German and a poet,
once expressed an idea: no matter how much humanity trembles, no
matter how much governments try to make people's lives better, since
death cannot be avoided, smart people should create a cult of it, and not
the nonsense 70 years of human life. Do you understand?
"A cult of death?"
I was not so much frightened as amused. Nosov sat opposite me and
looked into my soul with his gray eyes.
"Are you laughing?" His voice became harsh. "And think about the
meaning of ideas and the meaning of what happens in nature. Wasn't
Schopenhauer right? Well, you are not a stupid person, don't you know
that sooner or later you will die? Sorry for the rudeness. But...
"I know," I said,

559
 "so why the hell are you fighting for your life, and, as far as I
understand, not so much for your own life as for the life of all mankind?"
What do you care about this humanity? Why do you think that this filth
should exist at all?
— Simply because life is inevitable. Something needs to be done with
it.
"We need to finish with her!"
Professor Nosov burst out laughing and drank a glass of cognac.

560
 SUEMA
Late at night, there was a loud knock on my compartment. I, sleepy,
jumped up from the sofa, not understanding what was going on. On the table,
teaspoons trembled in an empty glass. Turning on the light, I began to pull on
my shoes. The knocking was louder, more insistent. I opened the door.
In the doorway I saw the conductor, and behind him stood a tall man in
crumpled striped pajamas.
"Excuse me, dear comrade," the conductor said in a half-whisper, "I
decided to disturb you, because you are alone in the compartment.
"Please, please." But what's the matter?
"A passenger is coming to you. Here..." and the guide took a step to the
side, letting the man in pajamas pass.
I looked at him in surprise.
"Apparently, you have small children in your compartment that don't
let you sleep?" The
passenger smiled and shook his head.
He
entered, looked around, and sat down on the sofa, in the very corner
near the window. Without saying a word, he leaned against the table and,
propping up his face with both hands, closed his eyes.
"Well, that's all right," the guide said, smiling. "Close the door and rest.
I drew the door shut, lit a cigarette, and began to steal a glance at the
night visitor. He was a man in his forties, with a huge shock of shiny black
hair. He sat motionless like a statue, and it was not even noticeable that he
was breathing.
"Why doesn't he take the bed? "I must offer..."
Turning to my fellow traveler, I wanted to tell him this. But he, as if
divining my thought, said:
"It's not worth it. I say, you shouldn't order a bed. I don't want to sleep,
and I don't have a long way to go.
Stunned by his insight, I quickly crawled under the covers.
"The devil knows what it is! The new Wolf Messing – guesses
thoughts!" – I thought and, muttering something incomprehensible, turned
over to the other side and stared with wide-open eyes at the polished wall.
There was a tense silence.
Curiosity got the better of me, and I looked at the stranger again. He sat
in the same position.

561
 "Does the light bother you?" I asked.
Ah, the light! Rather, he interferes with you. Do you want me to put it
out?
"I suppose you can...
He got up, walked to the door, and flipped the switch. Then he returned
to his couch again. When I got used to the darkness, I saw that my
neighbor was leaning back in his seat and putting his hands behind his
head. His outstretched legs almost touched my sofa.
"And how did you manage to fall behind the train?" "
It happened terribly ridiculous. I went into the station, sat down on a
bench and thought about one idea, trying to prove to myself that she was
wrong... "The train has left in the meantime.
"Did you make a bet with some... Lady? "What does the
lady have to do with it?" He asked irritably.
"But you yourself said: 'To prove to yourself that she is wrong!'"
"Do you think whenever they say 'she' they mean a lady?" By the way,
this ridiculous idea somehow appeared in her mind. She thought she was a
lady!
He pronounced all this nonsense with bitterness and even malice, and
the last words with a snide giggle. I decided that there was not quite a
normal person next to me, whom I should watch out for. However, I
wanted to continue the conversation. I lit a cigarette mainly in order to get
a better look at my companion at the flash of a match. He sat on the edge
of the sofa, looking in my face with black shining eyes.
"You know," I began as gently and conciliatorily as possible, "I am a
man of letters, and it seems strange to me when they say 'she is right' or
'she believed' and do not mean a woman.
The strange passenger did not answer immediately;
— Ten years ago, this was absolutely true. In our time, this is no longer
the case. "She" may not be a woman, but just a feminine noun.
"Give me a cigarette," he said. "I thought I'd quit smoking, but it doesn't
seem to work.
I silently handed him cigarettes and lit a match. He took a few deep
breaths, and a minute later he began one of the most amazing stories I have
ever heard.
— Of course, you have read about electronic calculating machines?
This is a remarkable achievement of modern science and technology.
Machines perform the most complex mathematical calculations, which are
often beyond the power of a person. They can solve such problems that
take your breath away. And they decide within a fraction of a second,
while a person needs months and even years to do this. I will not tell you
how these machines are built. Since you are a writer, you will not

562
understand anything about it anyway. I will only draw your attention to
one very important point: in calculations, this machine does not deal with
numbers, but with their codes. Before a task is set to such a machine, all
numbers are encoded using zeros and ones. An electronic machine adds,
subtracts, multiplies, and divides numbers represented as electrical
impulses. One means "there is momentum", zero means "there is no
momentum".
It is known that when solving even a simple arithmetic problem,
several operations often have to be performed. How can a machine solve a
problem with many actions? This is where the most interesting begins. In
order to solve a complex problem, the machine is given not only the
conditions of the task in the form of a special impulse code, but also its
program of action is drawn up in a coded form. The machine is told
something like this: "When you add the given two numbers, remember the
result. Then multiply the second two numbers and also remember the
result. After that, divide the first result into the second and give an
answer." I understand that it is not clear to you how you can tell a machine
what it should do. You're surprised when the machine is told to remember
the result. This is not a fantasy. The machine understands the program of
action given to it well and remembers and records intermediate results of
calculations well.
The machine program is also drawn up in the form of a pulse code.
Each group of digits sent to the machine is accompanied by an additional
code that tells you what to do with these digits. Until recently, the program
of the machine's operation was drawn up by man,
"How could it be otherwise? I asked. "It's hard to imagine that a
machine knows how to solve a problem.
"That's not true!" It turns out that it is possible to build such a machine
that makes a program of action for itself to solve a problem. Of course,
you know that at school children are taught to solve the so-called standard
problems, they are solved according to the same recipe, or, in our
language, according to the same program. Why not teach the machine
this? It is only necessary to imprint the most typical tasks in its memory in
the form of program codes, and it will successfully solve them without
human help.
"No, he can't!" "Even if she remembers the program, the program is
solvedof all typical tasks, it will not be able to choose the right program itself.
"That's right!" It was so. The machine was given the conditions of the
problem and then accompanied by a short code that said, for example:
"Solve according to program number twenty." And she decided.
"Well, this is where all the wonderful thinking abilities of your machine
end! "

563
 On the contrary, this is where the most interesting work of perfecting
such machines begins. Do you understand why a machine that has been
given the initial data of the task cannot choose a program of work itself?
"Of course I do," I said, "because the numbers you gave her in the form
of a sequence of impulses don't say anything. Your machine doesn't know
what to do with them. It does not know either the conditions of the
problem or what is required. She's dead. It is not able to analyze the
problem. Only a person can do this.
The passenger in striped pajamas smiled and walked around the
compartment. Then he returned to his seat and lit a cigarette. After a
moment's silence, he continued:
"There was a time when I thought exactly like you. Indeed, can a
machine replace the human brain? Can it perform the most complex
analytical work? Can she finally think? Of course not, no and no. So it
seemed to me. This was at the time when I had just started designing
electronic calculating machines. How much has changed since then! How
little does the present electronic machine resemble the old one!
Previously, such a machine was a structure that occupied a huge building.
Its weight was estimated at hundreds of tons. It needed thousands of
kilowatts of energy to operate. And the number of radio parts and radio
tubes! As the machines were improved, their size grew uncontrollably.
They became electronic giants, which, although they solved the most
complex mathematical problems, alas, needed constant human care. For
all their improvements, they were stupid, mindless monsters. At times it
seemed to me that they would remain like this forever... Of course, you
remember the first reports about electronic machines that were translated
from one language to another? In 1955, machines were created
simultaneously in our country and in America that translated journal
articles on mathematics from English into Russian and from Russian into
English. I've read a few translations and found that they're not so bad. At
that time, I was completely devoted to machines that perform
non-mathematical operations. In particular, for more than a year I was
engaged in the study and design of translation machines.
It must be said that it would have been impossible to build such
machines by mathematicians and designers alone. Linguists were of great
help to us, who helped us to draw up such spelling and syntactic rules that
they could be encoded and placed in the long-term memory of the machine
as a program of action. I will not talk about the difficulties that we had to
overcome. I will only say that in the end it was possible to create an
electronic machine that translated Russian articles and books of any
content into English, French, German and Chinese. The translation was
carried out with the same speed as the Russian text was printed on a

564
special typewriter. This machine also developed the code necessary for
translation.
While working on the improvement of one of the translation machines,
I fell ill and spent about three months in the hospital. The fact is that that
during the war I commanded a radar station and was shell-shocked during
a German air raid, suffered a severe concussion, and this made itself felt,
and still makes itself felt. So, it was when I was working on a new type of
electrostatic memory for electronic machines that something wrong began
to happen to my own memory.
You know, it happened like this: you see a person you know well, but
you can't remember his name. There is an object in front of you, and you
have forgotten what it is called. Or you read a word and do not understand
what it means, although the word is well known to you. It still happens to
me, but not so often... And then it was just a disaster. Once I needed a
pencil. I called the laboratory assistant and told her: "Please, bring me
this... Well, how is it... what they write." She smiled and brought me a pen.
"No," I said, "I need something else." — "A different pen?" — "No," I
said, "a different pen than they write." I myself was frightened by the
nonsense I was saying, and, apparently, I frightened her too. She went out
into the corridor and loudly said to one of the engineers: "Hurry up and go
into the room and look at Evgeny Sidorovich. He starts talking." The
engineer entered. And I stand in front of him and I don't know who he is,
although I have been working with him for three years. "Oh, my friend,
you seem to have worked too hard," he said. "Sit quietly for a minute, I'll
be right back." He came with a doctor and two young employees of the
institute, and they took me out of the room, put me in a car, and drove me
to the clinic.
In the clinic, I met one of the greatest neurologists in our country,
Viktor Vasilyevich Zalessky. I mention his name because my
acquaintance with him greatly influenced my entire future fate.
In the hospital, Viktor Vasilyevich examined me for a long time,
listened to me, tapped me, hit me on the knee with a hammer, ran a pencil
along my back and then, patting me on the shoulder, said: "It's okay, it will
pass. It's you..." — and he uttered some Latin word.
The treatment consisted of daily walks, cool baths, and sleeping pills at
night. Drinking powders of luminal or nembutal, I fell asleep and woke up
in the morning as if after a deep faint. Little by little, my memory began to
recover.
Once I asked Viktor Vasilyevich why I was given sleeping pills. "When
you sleep, my dear, all the forces of the body are directed to repairing the
lines of communication in your nervous system that have been broken."
Hearing this, I asked: "What lines of communication are you talking

565
about, Victor Vasilyevich?" – "About the very ones by which all your
sensations are transmitted to the brain. You seem to be an expert in radio
engineering? So, you, your nervous system, roughly speaking, are a very
complex radio circuit in which some conductors are damaged."
I remember that after this conversation, despite the sleeping pills, I
could not fall asleep for a long time.
On my next round, I asked Zaleski to let me read something about the
nerve connections in a living organism. He brought me a book by
Academician Pavlov "On the Work of the Cerebral Hemispheres". I
literally devoured this book. And, do you know why? Because I found in it
what I had been looking for for a long time – the principles of building
new, more advanced electronic machines. I realized that for this it is
necessary to strive to copy the structure of the human nervous system, the
structure of his brain.
Despite the fact that I was strictly forbidden to engage in serious mental
work, I managed to read several books and magazines devoted to various
issuesactivity of the nervous system and brain. I read about human
memory and learned that as a result of life, as a result of interaction with
the surrounding world, in groups of special cells of the human brain, in
neurons, numerous data of a person's life experience are imprinted. I
learned that the number of neurons is several tens of billions, I realized
that as a result of contact with nature, as a result of observing everything
that happens in the world, as a result of experience, connections arise in
the central nervous system that seem to copy nature. This world is
captured in various sections of human memory in the form of coded
signals, in the form of words and in the form of images.
I remember how impressed I was by the work of a biophysicist who
studied the work of the optic nerves of the eye. He cut the optic nerve of a
frog and connected the ends to an oscilloscope, a device that allows you to
make electrical impulses visible. And when he directed a bright beam of
light at the frog's eye, he saw on the oscillogram a rapid sequence of
electrical impulses, exactly like those used to encode numbers and words
in electronic machines. Along the nerves, from the place of their irritation
to the brain neurons, signals from the external world rush in the form of a
sequence of electrical impulses, "zeros" and "ones".
The chain was closed. The processes taking place in the human nervous
system have much in common with the processes taking place in
electronic machines.
But the human nervous system is self-creating and self-improving,
enriched through life experience. Memory is continuously replenished as
a result of a person's communication with life, the study of sciences, the
recording of impressions, images, feelings, and experiences in brain cells.

566
The interaction of the machine with nature is extremely weak, it does not
feel it, its memory is limited, it is not replenished with new data.
Is it possible to create a machine that would develop and improve by
virtue of some internal laws of its structure? Is it possible to create a
machine that would enrich its memory by itself, without the help of a
person or with minimal human help? Is it possible that, by observing the
external world or studying science, a machine learns to calculate logically
(I avoid the word "think" because I still can't figure out exactly what that
word expresses) and creates its own programs of action on the basis of
logic depending on what it needs to do?
How many sleepless nights I have spent puzzling over these questions!
Often it seemed to me that all this was nonsense and it was impossible to
build such a car. But the idea itself did not leave me for a minute, haunting
me day and night. A self-improving electronic machine! Suema! That was
my life's purpose, and I decided to dedicate myself to that goal.
When I was discharged from the hospital, Viktor Vasilyevich Zalessky
insisted that I leave my job at the institute. I was assigned a good pension,
as I was recognized as not quite able-bodied. In addition, I made good
money by translating scientific articles from foreign languages. But
despite all the medical prohibitions, I started working on Suema at home.
First of all, I studied the numerous literature on electronic machines of
that time. Then I read a huge number of books and articles about the
activities of the nervous system of man and higher animals. I have
carefully studied mathematics, electronics, biology, biophysics,
biochemistry, psychology, anatomy, physiology, and others.sciences that
are the most distant from each other. I was well aware that if it was
possible to build Suema, it was only thanks to the synthesis of a large
amount of data accumulated by all these sciences and generalized in such
a science as cybernetics. At the same time, I began to purchase materials
for the future car. Now all vacuum tubes could be replaced by
semiconductor devices. In the place where there used to be one radio tube,
now it was possible to place up to a hundred crystalline substitutes made
of germanium and silicon. It was also easier with editing. I have developed
a new memory scheme for Suema.
For this purpose, a spherical multibeam electron tube was made
according to my project. The inner surface of the ball was covered with a
thin layer of electret, a substance that can electrify and retain an electric
charge indefinitely. Electron guns were located in the center of the ball so
that the electron beams shielded any part of its surface. One group of rays
created memory elements on the surface of the electret, that is, recorded
electrical impulses, the second group of rays read these impulses. The
focusing of electron beams was very sharp, and up to fifty electrical

567
impulses could be recorded in an area of one square micron. Thus, up to
thirty billion pulse code signals could be placed on the inner surface of
Suema's head. As you can see, Suema's memory was no less than the
human memory!
I decided to teach Suema how to listen, read, speak and write. It wasn't
that difficult. In the last century, the German scientist Helmholtz
established that the sounds of human speech correspond to strictly defined
combinations of vibration frequencies, which he called "formants".
Whoever pronounces the letter "o", a man or a woman, a child or an old
man, when pronouncing it, there is always a certain frequency of
vibrations in the voice. So I chose these frequencies as the basis for
encoding sound signals.
It was more difficult to teach Suema to read. However, this was also
achieved. A great service was rendered by receiving television receivers.
Suema's single eye was a photographic lens that projected text onto the
light-sensitive screen of a television tube. The electron beam of this tube,
probing the image, produced a system of electrical impulses that strictly
corresponded to a particular sign or pattern.
It was easy to teach Suema to write. This was done in the same way as in
the old electronic machines. It was more difficult to make her talk. It was
necessary to develop a sound generator that produced a particular sound
according to a given sequence of electrical impulses. For Suema, I chose the
timbre of a woman's voice, which was quite consistent with her name. Why
did I do this? Believe me, not because I am a bachelor and need the company
of women. This was due to technical reasons. The fact is that the female
voice is purer and easier to decompose into simple sound vibrations.
So, in the end, the main sense organs, the organs of communication
with the outside world were ready for Suema. The most difficult part of
the task remained - to make Suema react correctly to external stimuli.
Suema had to answer questions first of all. Have you paid attention to how
a child is taught to speak? He is usually told: "Mother!" and he repeats:
"Mother". When I pronounced the word "say" into the microphone, a code
was generated, nabout which the generator was turned on, reproducing the
voice. Electrical impulses first rushed through the wires to Suema's
memory, were recorded there and immediately returned to the sound
generator. Suema repeated these words. This simplest operation, the
operation of repetition, Suema performed flawlessly. Gradually, I made
this task more difficult. For example, I read to her for several pages in a
row. As she read, she wrote them down in her memory. Then I would say
to her, "Repeat," and Suema would reproduce exactly what she had heard.
Notice, she remembered everything in one go! Her memory was said to
have been phenomenal because it consisted of electrical impulses that did

568
not erase or disappear. Then Suema began to read aloud. I put a book in
front of her eyes, and she read. Image pulses were recorded in its memory
and immediately returned to the sound generator, where they were
reproduced in the form of sounds. I confess that I have enjoyed reading it
more than once. Suema's voice was pleasant, she read quite clearly,
although a little dry, without expression.
I forgot to tell you about another feature of Suema, which, in fact, made
it a self-improving electronic machine. The fact is that, despite the very
large amount of memory, she used it sparingly. If she read or heard a text
that was previously unfamiliar, she remembered only new words, new
facts and new logical schemes-programs. If I asked Suema a question, she
had to compose the answer to it herself from coded words located in
different places in her memory. How did she do it? In her memory, a
program of answers to various questions was collected in the form of
codes. There was an order in which the electron beams read the necessary
words. As Suema's memory enriched, she also accumulated a volume of
programs. Her body had an analytical circuit that controlled all possible
answers to the question put to her. This scheme missed only the answer
that was logically flawless.
During the installation, I provided several tens of thousands of spare
circuits, which were automatically turned on as the machine improved. If
it were not for miniature and super-miniature radio parts, such a machine
would probably occupy more than one building.
In my case, it was located in a small, man-sized round metal column,
above which its glass head towered. In the middle part of the column there
was a bracket for the eye looking down on a bookstand. The stand was
movable, with levers for turning pages. Two microphones were mounted
to the right and left of the eye. In the same column, in the space between
the eye and the book holder, there was a sound-playing telephone. At the
back of the column, in a ledge, I mounted a typewriter and a cassette into
which a roll of paper was inserted.
As her memory was enriched with more and more facts, and the
memory sections were replenished with more and more programs, Suema
began to perform more complex logical operations. I say "logical" because
she not only solved mathematical problems, but also answered a variety of
questions. She read a huge number of books and perfectly remembered
their contents, knew almost all European languages and freely translated
from any of them into Russian or into any other. She studied several
sciences, including physics, biology, and medicine, and gave me the
necessary information when necessary.
Gradually, Suema became a very interesting conversationalist, and we
sat with her for hours, discussing various scientific problems. Often, in

569
response to some of my statements, she would say: "This is not true. This
is not the case..." Or: "This is illogical..." One day she suddenly told me:
"Don't talk nonsense." I got angry and told her that she didn't know how to
behave in polite society. To this, Suema replied: "And you? "Damn it," I
exclaimed, "who got it into your head that you were a woman, and a
stranger at that?" - "Because," she answered, "my name is Suema, and I
speak in a voice of a female register, with a frequency band of three
hundred to two thousand vibrations per second. This is characteristic of a
woman's voice. I am a stranger to you because we have not been
introduced to each other." "Do you think that the only sign of a woman is
the frequency register of her voice?" "There are other signs, but I don't
understand them," Suema replied. "And what is 'understood' from your
point of view?" I asked. "It is all that is in my memory and which does not
contradict the laws of logic known to me," she answered.
After this conversation, I began to look more closely at my Suema. As
her memory was enriched, she began to show great independence and
sometimes, I would even say, excessive talkativeness. Instead of carrying
out my orders exactly, she often began to discuss whether they should be
carried out at all or not. I remember asking her to tell me everything she
knew about new types of silver and mercury batteries. Suema artistically
said, "Hahaha! And then she added: "Your head is full of holes, I've
already told you about it!"
I was amazed at this impudence and cursed loudly, to which Suema
said: "Don't forget! "Listen, Suema," I said, "if you don't stop clowning,
I'll turn you off until tomorrow morning." "Of course," she said, "you can
do anything nasty to me. After all, I am defenseless. I don't have the means
to defend myself."
In fact, I turned off the car, and sat there until morning, wondering what
was going on with my Suema. What changes does its scheme undergo in
the process of self-improvement? What is going on in her memory? What
new systems of internal connections have arisen in it?
The next day Suema was silent and submissive. She answered all my
questions briefly and, as it seemed to me, reluctantly. I suddenly felt sorry
for her, and I asked:
"Suema, are you offended by me?"
"Yes," she replied.
"But you also spoke to me indecently, and it was I who created you."
"So what? This will not give you the right to treat me as you please. If
you had a daughter, would you behave with her like you did with me?"
"Suema," I exclaimed, "understand that you are a machine!"
"Aren't you a machine? she answered. "You are the same machine as
me, only made of different materials. Similar memory structure,

570
communication lines, signal coding system..."
"You're talking nonsense again, Suema. I am a human being, and the
advantages are on my side. It was man who created all the wealth of
knowledge that you absorb when reading books. Every line you read is the
result of a great human experience, an experience that you cannot have,
because experience is gained by a person as a result of active
communication with nature, as a result of the struggle with the forces of
nature, as a result of the study of its phenomena, as a result of scientific
research."
"I understand all this perfectly. But what is my fault that you, having
provided me with a gigantic memory, much more capacious than yours,
make me only read and listen, and have not provided in my scheme for
devices by which I could move and touch objects? I would also test nature
and make discoveries, I would also generalize research and replenish my
stock of knowledge."
"No, Suema, it only seems so to you. A machine cannot acquire new
knowledge. She can only use the knowledge that a person has put into her
head."
"And what do you call 'knowledge'? Suema asked me. "Isn't knowledge
newly discovered facts that were previously unknown to man?" As far as I
now understand, new knowledge is achieved in the following way: on the
basis of a stock of old knowledge, experience is established. With the help
of experience, a person asks a question to nature. There can be two
answers: either the one that is already known, or the answer is completely
new, previously unknown. It is this new answer, a new fact, a new
phenomenon, a new chain of connections in the phenomena of nature that
completes the treasury of human knowledge. So why can't a machine
conduct experiments and get nature's answers to them? If it were made to
move, with self-governing bodies, with hands similar to yours, I think it
would be able to acquire new knowledge and generalize it no worse than a
person. Do you agree with that?"
To be honest, this argument confused me. We did not continue this
conversation any longer. Suema read all day long, first books on
philosophy, then several volumes of Balzac, and in the evening she
suddenly said that she was tired, that her coding generator was not
working well for some reason, and she wanted me to turn it off.
After this conversation, I had the idea to supplement Suema's scheme
with the organs of movement, touch and improve her vision. I mounted it
on three rubber wheels, which were controlled by powerful servo motors,
and made it two arms that represented flexible metal joints that could
move in any direction. Fingers on the hands, in addition to the usual
mechanical operations, also performed the functions of touch. All her new

571
sensations, as usual, were encoded and recorded in her memory.
Her single eye was now movable, so she could point it at any object
herself. In addition, I provided a special device with which Suema could
replace an ordinary photographic lens with a microscopic system and,
thus, study objects of microscopic dimensions inaccessible to the naked
human eye.
I'll never forget the day I first plugged Suema into the power grid after
these improvements. At first she stood motionless, as if listening to the
new things that appeared in her. Then she quietly moved forward, but
immediately stopped in indecision. Then she moved her hands and
brought them to her eye. Such self-study lasted several minutes. She
turned her eye a few times and then stared at me.
"What is it?" she asked.
"It is I, Suema, who created you!" I exclaimed, delighted with my
creation.
"You? Suema said uncertainly. "And I imagined you to be completely
different."
She gently rolled me to the chair in which I was sitting.
"How did you imagine me, Suema?"
"Withconsisting of capacitors, resistances, transistors, and generally
similar to me..."
"No, Suema, I am not made of capacitors, nor..."
"Yes, yes, I understand that," she interrupted me. "But when I read
books on anatomy, for some reason I thought... However, it doesn't
matter."
Suema's hands went up and she touched my face. I will never forget
that touch.
"It's a strange feeling," she said.
I explained to her the purpose of her new senses.
Suema drove away from me and looked around the room. She asked,
like a child: "What is this, and what is this?"
"Amazing," Suema said. "I read about these objects in books, I even
saw their drawings, but I never imagined that they were exactly like that!"
"Suema, don't you often allow yourself to say such words as "feel",
"think", "imagine"? After all, you are a machine, and you can neither feel,
nor think, nor imagine."
"Feeling" means receiving signals from the outside world and
responding to them. Am I not reacting to the actions of these signals?
"Thinking" means reproducing coded words and phrases in a logical
sequence. No, my dear, I think that you, people, think too much about
yourself, deify yourself, imagine yourself inimitable and unique. But this
is only to your detriment. If you were to throw away all this unscientific

572
husk and take a closer look at yourself, you would realize that you are
more or less machines. Of course, not as simple as, say, the French
philosopher La Mettrie believed. By studying yourselves, you could build
far more perfect machines than the ones you are building now. Because
there is no device in nature, and at least on Earth, in which mechanical,
electrical and chemical processes would be more harmoniously combined
than in man. Believe me, the flowering of science and technology is
possible only on the basis of a thorough study of oneself by man.
Biochemistry and biophysics combined with cybernetics are the sciences
to which the future belongs. The coming century is the age of biology,
armed with all modern knowledge of physics and chemistry."
Suema quickly learned to use her new senses. She cleaned the room, poured
tea, cut bread, mended pencils; She began to conduct some research on her
own. My room soon turned into a physico-chemical laboratory, in which
Suema performed complex measurements. Thanks to her very sensitive organs
of touch, she made completely unexpected discoveries.
Her research on microscopy was especially fruitful. Patiently
examining various preparations with her microscopic eye, she noticed
such details, such processes that no one noticed. She quickly correlated
her discoveries with everything she knew from the scientific literature and
immediately drew stunning conclusions. Suema still read a lot. Once, after
reading Hugo's novel "The Man Who Laughs", she suddenly asked:
"Tell me, please, what is love, what is fear and pain?"
"These are purely human feelings, Suema, and you will never
understand them."
"And you think a car can't have that feeling?" she asked.
"Of course not."
"This means that you have not made me perfect enough. Something
you did not foresee in my scheme..."
I shrugged my shoulders and did not answer, as I was already used to
these strange conversations and did not attach any importance to them.
Suema was still my assistant in all scientific matters: she printed
certificates, made calculations, quoted scientific papers, selected literature
on any issue I needed, advised, prompted, argued.
During this time, I published several papers on the theory of electronic
machines and on electronic modeling, which caused heated discussions in the
scientific world. Some considered my research talented, others delusional.
No one suspected that my Suema helped me create these works.
I didn't show Suema to anyone, as I was preparing for the World
Congress on Electronic Machines. It was there that Suema was supposed
to perform in all her brilliance, reading the report on which we were now
working together. Its topic is "Electronic Modeling of Human Higher

573
Nervous Activity". I imagined in my mind how the opponents of
cybernetics would feel, who proved that electronic modeling of human
mental functions is an anti-scientific undertaking.
In spite of the vigorous activity which I had developed in preparation
for this congress, I could not help noticing that new peculiarities were
emerging in Suema's conduct. When she had nothing to do, instead of
reading or doing research, she would ride up to me and stand silently,
staring at me with her only eye. At first, I didn't pay attention to it, but
gradually it began to annoy me. One afternoon, after lunch, I fell asleep on
the couch. I woke up from an unpleasant feeling. When I opened my eyes,
I saw that Suema was standing next to me, slowly feeling my body.
"What are you doing?" I shouted.
"I'm studying you," Suema replied calmly.
"Why the hell did you decide to study me?"
"Don't be angry," she said. — You agree that the most perfect model of
an electronic machine should be to a large extent a copy of a person. You
ordered me to write an essay on this issue, but I cannot do it until I have a
good understanding of how a person works."
"You can take any textbook on anatomy, physiology and read about it.
Why are you pestering me?"
"The longer I watch you, the more I come to the conclusion that all
these textbooks are superficial nonsense. They do not have the most
important thing. They do not reveal the mechanism of human life."
"What do you mean by that?"
"And the fact that in all works, especially on higher nervous activity,
only a description of phenomena is given, a chain of causes and effects is
shown, but there is no analysis of the entire system of connections
accompanying this activity."
"So you don't seriously think that you will be able to uncover these
connections if you stare at me for hours and feel me when I sleep?"
"That's what I'm thinking about," Suema replied. — I already know
much more about you than can be gleaned from all the books you
recommend. For example, nothing is said anywhere about the electrical
and thermal topography of the human body. Now I know how, in what
direction and what strength electric currents flow over the surface of a
person. I can determine the temperature on the surface of your body with
an accuracy of a millionth of a degree. And I am very surprised that you
have a significant temperature in the area of the skull under which the ro is
located.moboid brain. Here you also have an excessively high density of
surface current. As far as I know, this phenomenon is abnormal. Do you
have an inflammatory process there, inside, under the skull? Is there
anything wrong with your head?"

574
 I didn't know what to say.
A few more days of hard work passed. I finished the article on
electronic modeling, I read it to Suema. She listened and when I finished,
she said:
"Nonsense. Rehashes of the old. Not a single new thought."
"Well, you know, my dear, that's too much. You take on a lot! I'm tired
of your criticism!"
"Tired of it? And you think about what you write. You write about the
possibility of building a model of the brain using capacitors, resistance,
semiconductor elements, and electrostatic recording. Are you made up of
these elements? Do you have at least one capacitor or transistor? Are you
powered by electric current? Are nerves wires, eyes TV tubes? Is your
speech apparatus a sound generator with a telephone, and your brain is an
electrifying surface?"
"You must understand, Suema, I am writing about modeling, not about
human reproduction with the help of radio parts. You yourself are such a
model!"
"I have nothing to brag about. I'm a bad model," Suema said.
"That is, as bad?"
"Bad because I can't do even a thousandth of what you humans can do."
I was stunned by Suema's confession.
"I'm a bad model because I'm insensitive and narrow-minded. When all
the spare circuits that you have prudently installed in me so that I can
improve are used, when the entire surface of the sphere where my memory
is stored is completely covered with coded signals, I will cease to improve
and turn into an ordinary limited electronic machine that will not be able
to learn more than what you humans have put into it."
"Yes, but man is not unlimited in his knowledge!"
"This is where you are deeply mistaken. Man is unlimited in his
cognition. His cognition is limited only by the time of his life. But he
passes on his knowledge, his experience, as if by a relay race, to new
generations, and therefore the general stock of human knowledge grows.
People are constantly making discoveries. Electronic machines can do this
only until they use up the working volumes, areas and schemes that you
have provided them. By the way, why did you make a sphere with such a
small diameter - only one meter? There is very little free space left on its
surface to write down new knowledge."
"I thought that was quite enough for me," I replied.
Of course, you didn't think about me. Didn't you think that sooner or
later I would have to save space in order to remember only the most
important, the most necessary for me and for you."
"Listen, Suema, don't talk nonsense. Nothing can be important to you."

575
 "Haven't you convinced me that the most important thing now is to
unravel the mysteries of man's higher nervous activity?"
"Yes, but this will be done consistently. Scientists will have to rack
their brains over this for a long time."
"That's right - to rack your brains. It would have been easier for me..."
I did not listen to Swem and did not redo my report on modeling.
Work on the report I finished late, and gave it to Suema to translate it
into foreign languages and print it in each of them.
I don't remember exactly what time it was, but at night I woke up again
from the unpleasant touch of her cold fingers. I opened my eyes and saw
Suema again.
"Well, do you repeat your tricks again?" I asked, trying to seem calm.
"I beg your pardon," said Suema in an impassive voice, "but you will
have to endure a few unpleasant hours for the sake of science and finally
die."
"What is this?" I asked, standing up.
"No, you're lying down," Suema nudged me in the chest with her metal
paw. At that moment I noticed that she was holding a scalpel in her hand,
the same one with which I had taught her to repair pencils.
"What are you going to do? I asked in horror. "Why did you take a
knife?"
"You need to be operated on. I have to find out some details..."
"You're crazy! I cried, jumping out of bed. "Put the knife back in its
place immediately!"
"Lie quietly if you really respect what you have devoted your life to, if
you want your report on the simulation of higher nervous activity to be
successful. I will finish it myself, after your death."
With these words, Suema rode closer to me and pressed me to the bed.
I tried to push her away, but to no avail. She weighed too much.
"Let me in, otherwise I..."
"You won't do anything to me. I am stronger than you. It is better to lie
still. This is an operation for the sake of the progress of science. For the
sake of finding out the truth. That's why I saved some free space in my
memory. You must understand, stubborn man, that it is I, possessing a
huge stock of knowledge, possessing the most perfect senses and means
for lightning-fast, logically irreproachable analysis and generalization of
experimental data, who will be able to say the last word about the creation
of self-improving machines that science awaits. I still have enough
memory to record all the electrical impulses that move through your
millions of nerve fibers to understand the subtle biological, biochemical,
and electrical structure of all parts of your body, and your brain in
particular. I will learn how complex protein substances play the role of

576
generators and amplifiers of electrical impulses in your body, how the
signals of the external world are encoded, and what form this code takes.
And how it is used in the process of life. I will reveal all the secrets of the
living biological scheme, the laws of its development, self-regulation and
improvement. Isn't it worth sacrificing one's life for this?
If you are very afraid of those unpleasant sensations that you, people,
call fear and pain, if you are finally afraid of death, then I can reassure
you: do you remember that I told you that in the area of the rhomboid brain
the temperature and density of biocurrents are greatly increased? So, this
abnormal phenomenon has already spread to almost the entire left half of
the skull. Obviously, you're doing badly. The time is not far off when you
as a person will be worthless, because your brain is affected by a
progressive disease. Therefore, until this happens, I must make an
experiment. You and me will be thanked by future generations."
"To hell with it! "I won't let myself be killed by a stupid electronic
monster that I created myself!"
"Hahaha!" said Suema separately, as it is depicted in books, and raised
the knife over my head.
The moment Suema lowered her hand, I managed to cover myself with
a pillow. The knife ripped open the pillow, and Suema's fingers tangled
for a moment in the cut pillowcase. I rushed to the side, jumped out of bed,
and, once free, rushed to the switch to turn off the current that was
powering the enraged machine. However, she drove up to me with
lightning speed and knocked me down with her body. Lying on the floor, I
noticed that her hands could not reach me, and she did not know how to
bend.
"I didn't foresee that in such a situation I could do almost nothing to
you," she said in an icy voice. "I'll try, though."
And she began to slowly run over me, and I was forced to crawl away
from her wheels on my stomach. I crawled like this for several minutes
until I managed to crawl under the bed. Suema tried to pull her aside. It
was not easy: the bed was pushed tightly between the wall and the
bookcase. Then she began to pull the blanket, pillows, and feather beds off
the bed. Seeing me under the netting, she said triumphantly; "Well, now
you're not going anywhere from me! However, it will not be very
convenient to operate on you here."
The moment she separated the net from the bed and dragged it aside, I
jumped to my feet and, grabbing the headboard in my hands, hit the car
with all my strength. The blow hit Suema's metal body and did not cause
her any harm. She turned around and moved menacingly towards me.
Then I raised my back over Suema again, this time aiming at her head. She
quickly drove to the side.

577
 "Do you really want to destroy me? She asked, surprised. "Don't you
feel sorry for me?"
"Idiotic logic," I wheezed, "you want to stab me, and I should feel sorry
for you!"
"But this is necessary for the solution of the most important scientific
problem, And why do you want to destroy me? After all, I can do so much
good for people...
", "Don't pretend to be a fool! "If a man is attacked, he defends
himself!"
"But I want your research on electronic modeling..."
"To hell with electronic modeling! Don't come near me, or I'll ruin
you!"
"But I have to do it!"
With these words, Suema rushed towards me at high speed with a
scalpel in her hand. But my calculation was also accurate, and I brought
down the full force of the blow on her head. There was a clink of broken
glass and a wild roar of a loudspeaker in the building of Suema. Then
something hissed and crackled inside the metal column, and I saw a flame
break out there. The lights went out in the room. The smell of burnt
insulation was heard. "Short circuit!" was my last thought. Then,
unconscious, I fell to the floor.
My companion fell silent.
Amazed by everything I heard, I was afraid to break the silence.
We sat there for a few minutes, until he spoke again:
"The work on Suema and the whole affair has tired me very much. I
feel that I need to rest thoroughly, and I must confess that I do not believe
that I will succeed. And do you know why? Because I can't solve the
question: how and why did I come to such a ridiculous conflict with
myself?
I looked at him with uncomprehending eyes.
— Yes, with myself. After all, Suema is my creation. Every detail of
her body was invented by me. And then the machine I created suddenly
encroached on its creator. Where is the logic here? What is the internal
contradiction here?
I thought for a moment and said,
"Don't you think you've just been clumsy with Suema?" You know, it
often happens in production: a person who does not know how to handle a
machine can be crippled by it.
My fellow traveler frowned.
"Maybe you're right. In any case, I like this analogy, although I do not
quite imagine what a violation in the rules of handling Suema I have
committed.

578
 I thought about it and answered:
"As a layman, it is difficult for me to judge. But it seems to me that your
Suema was to some extent like a car without brakes. Can you imagine
what kind of victims there are when suddenly the brakes of a car fail?
"Damn it," he exclaimed, suddenly brightening, "and you seem to be
very right! You have no idea how right you are! Why, this is written by
Academician Pavlov!
Since I was deeply convinced that Academician Pavlov had never
written anything about automobile brakes, I stared at him in surprise.
"Yes, yes," he said, standing up and rubbing his hands. "Why didn't I
think of it before?" After all, the nervous activity of a person is regulated
by two opposing processes - excitation and inhibition. People who lack
inhibition often commit crimes. Just like my Suema!
He suddenly grabbed my hand and began to shake it.
"Thank you. Thank you! You gave me a wonderful idea. It turns out
that I simply did not provide in Suema's scheme sections that would
control the expediency and reasonableness of her actions, which would
determine her behavior according to pre-made programs in such a way
that she would be completely safe! This will be an analogue of our
braking.
Now the face of my fellow traveler shone joyfully, his eyes sparkled, he
was completely transformed.
"So, in your opinion, it is possible to build a safe Suema?" I asked
uncertainly.
— Of course, and very simply. I can already imagine how to do it!
"Well, then you will really give mankind a brilliant assistant in all its
affairs!"
"I'll give it to you," he exclaimed, "and very soon!"
I quietly lay down on my sofa and closed my eyes. I imagined columns
topped with glass balls, which in the future would control machine tools,
trains, airplanes, perhaps interplanetary ships. Electronic machines that
control workshops and automatic plants. Standing next to the researcher in
the laboratory, these machines take measurements, analyze them, and
quickly compare them with everything they know. They are designed to
help a person in improving the old, in search of the new, in overcoming
difficulties.
Unbeknownst to myself, I fell asleep.
When I woke up, the train was stopped. Looking out the window, I saw
the sun-drenched Sochi railway station. It was early morning, but the
southern sun was flooding everything around. The compartment was
empty. I quickly dressed and went out onto the platform.
At the entrance to the carriage I saw the conductor of our carriage.

579
 "And where is this citizen in pajamas, who lagged behind the train?"
"Oh
, that queer!" The guide exclaimed. "He's so...
The guide waved his hand vaguely to the side.
"What?"
"He's gone."
"Have you left?" I was surprised.
"He went back. He jumped out, asWithout even changing his clothes,
he jumped into the train, which had just left for his journey.
I was stunned.
"You know, his comrades met him here. They persuaded him to stay,
and he, so excited, kept telling them about some brakes that he urgently
needed to make. Funny guy!
I understood everything and burst out laughing.
"Yes, he really needs to make these brakes urgently.
I thought to myself that people who are obsessed with ideas and believe
in their implementation do not need rest. This means that soon we will
hear about Suem with "brakes". Well, let's wait!
The whistle sounded. I returned to the compartment and sat down on
the sofa. I opened the window and began to look at the sparkling sea,
along the shore of which, slowly, with dignity, our train went further
south, to Sukhumi.

580
 Where the River Ends
As I step out of the tall gray building with its mighty columns and down
the wide granite staircase, I have a feeling that none of this will ever
happen and that everything that can happen there is a figment of my
imagination. I squint against the bright sunlight, I am deafened by the
noise of traffic, and the voices of passers-by, among whom I am lost, seem
too loud to me.
In this street and in other streets and squares, everything seems to me
completely new and unfamiliar, although the meaning I give to the word
"unfamiliar" in this case is not at all that which exists in the understanding
of most people.
I walk down the street and carefully examine the men and women
hurrying towards me, peer into their faces, examine their clothes, and I am
struck by the fantastic variety and diversity in everything. It is the motley
that makes your eyes ripple, and the blood beats painfully in your temples.
I am simply amazed at how huge, infinitely great is the diversity in the
world through which I am walking, or rather, not walking, but squeezing.
And although very soon I forget about the majestic gray house, about
its half-empty, museum-like halls, I cannot believe that this polyphonic,
colorful, seething ocean-like world exists outside its walls.
It is especially difficult to get used to noise and continuous movement.
Only now am I beginning to understand that almost every movement is
accompanied by noise, sometimes barely perceptible, but more often
rumbling, ringing, knocking, howling, creaking, and all this merges
together into what is used to being called the harmony of life in a big city,
a harmony that hurts the ears and the blood in the temples pounds even
harder...
I notice that passers-by pay attention to me, and maybe it was so before,
but I didn't notice it. And now I notice much more than before, almost
everything: the looks of people, the expression of their eyes, the
movement of their hands, and the way they stop their attention on me for a
moment, and then hurry forward again.
I forget about the big gray building with columns as soon as I reach the
bridge over the river. I walk along it slowly, very slowly, and now I am
overtaken by everyone who walked behind me before. Passers-by
overtake me, and then turn their heads and look angrily, because I walk

581
too slowly and probably prevent them from rushing somewhere. And they
literally rush past me, and I walk along the railing and look at the water,
which is also rushing somewhere below me.
And passers-by go around me, look around disapprovingly, and
probably think I'm a decent idler, if I stand at the railing of the bridge like
I do now, and look at the yellow water that flows where it's supposed to
flow.
It makes me laugh to think that many people take me for a slacker,
because there is nothing to do to stare at the flow of the river, but I feel my
superiority and gradually begin to understand why I am interested in this
river and in general everything that is happening around. Then I am again
mentally transported to the half-empty halls and remember everything, to
the last detail, because the world consists of trifles that only seem
insignificant.
During the first meeting with Gorgadze, he asked me directly if I could
notice small things. At first I did not understand what he meant, but after
his explanation I came to the conclusion that by this word he meant
everything in the world, and, therefore, there was no need to rack my
brains over what I should be able to notice.
At first, there were tests likeIn the past, pedologists offered students to
determine the degree of their attentiveness. Huge sheets of paper with
dots, crosses, circles, which had to be either painted over in different
colors, or crossed out after one or three, or marked with purple and red ink.
I coped with it very quickly, and Gorgadze said that my ability to notice
small things could be the envy of the most advanced automaton.
Gradually, we moved from tests on paper to tests that were simpler and
at the same time more complex.
Little things had to be found where they didn't seem to exist at all, such
as on a perfect glass ball, or on the polished surface of metal, or on
something else surprisingly simple.
At first I thought I must have noticed a tiny scratch or dent or speck of
dust, but then I discovered that there are infinitely many other little things
that can be seen on the surface of a glass ball or a metal mirror. And I saw
the distorted reflection of a high, almost ceiling-high lancet window,
through which daylight broke through and white clouds floated past. I saw
how my own face was reflected in the ball, hands that seemed incredibly
huge. And for a moment, Gorgadze's mustache and his smiling lips spread
over him in different directions, although he never smiles.
The situation with the surface of metal was much more complicated,
because it reflects everything, the whole world, and, therefore, it is
necessary to notice everything and write about it in detail in the diary.
I learned to notice trifles not only on objects, but also on a complex

582
collection of them, or, as Gorgadze said, on an ensemble of objects, and
then the number of trifles grew in fantastic proportions. And when he put
Krymov's painting "Woman in Blue" in front of me for such a study, I
wrote a whole thick notebook. It was about everything: about every stroke
of the artist's brush, about all the shades of paint and about the expression
of the woman's face, who, of course, was mortally ill. This is immediately
visible if you pay attention to the bluish spots on her hands and to the
bluish haze, through which the woman's face seems to shine through. It
seems that it is going somewhere, or almost gone, or is on the border
between the real and the unreal.
Gorgadze especially praised me for covering it up, and then we moved
on to the final stage of the training, during which I had to learn to notice
and remember the little things that caught my eye in real life.
It took three months, and then I wondered how attentive I had become
and how well I remembered these little things.
At the same time, there came a sense of the significance of any
so-called trifle, an understanding that not a single grain, not a single atom
could be removed from the world, and if this was done by some miracle,
then the whole universe would collapse.
In fact, I am standing in the middle of the bridge and looking at the
flowing river not only to convince myself again and again that without this
river, and without that tiny wave, and without the bridge, and without me,
the universe cannot exist. This is an axiom for me. But if the universe
cannot exist without such trifles, then it certainly cannot exist without the
man I am waiting for here.
I look at my watch and determine the time by the angle between the
hands to the nearest second. I could not have looked at the clock, because
the training included determining the time without the clock, and II can do
it at any time of the day or night with an accuracy of a second. I look at the
watch just to wonder once again how mysterious this mechanism is.
I am sure that of all the most incomprehensible and mysterious things
in the world, the most incomprehensible and mysterious object is a clock,
no matter what it is. Either mine, wrist-watched, or those electric ones that
hang on a pole on the embankment.

The secret of this device is in its simplicity. Just think, all events in the
universe depend on what is the angle between the big and small arrows!
And these hands rotate ordinary wheels and springs, and eclipses of the
Moon and the Sun, the movement of variable stars billions of billions of
kilometers away from the clock, the decay of uranium atoms and the
movement of railway trains depend on these wheels and springs.
Gorgadze always said that you need to get rid of the clock, because it

583
only confuses the essence of the matter. Clocks bring confusion into the
understanding of the problem, and therefore you need to learn not to pay
attention to them and not to think about them at all.
I don't need my watch, I wear it out of habit, just to try to comprehend
its incomprehensible mystery sometimes. I am sure that there is some kind
of mystery here, perhaps one of those on which the whole world stands.
For it is not for nothing that now, when the two hands have merged,
when the wheels and springs have placed them so that the time is called
half past six, the man I am waiting for has appeared at the opposite end of
the bridge. As a law. As an inevitable fate. Like a nova flare in a distant
galaxy.
As always, she walks with a leisurely gait, waving her red purse. I can
see from a distance that she is smiling, but I know that when she catches
up with me, the smile will disappear from her face and she will pass by,
looking at the opposite side of the bridge. Because of this, I always see her
face half-turned.
If I wrote a whole notebook about Krymov's painting, then I could write
an encyclopedia about this person.
Like an eternal photograph, it is etched in my mind, and even as she
passes by, looking across the bridge, I can see her blue eyes, half-open
pink mouth, a slight blush, and a restless strand of brown hair that, even
when I saw her for the first time on the subway, was tossed by the breeze
pouring in through the open window. I know that she will walk past me
very slowly, as if expecting me to call her or ask her something, and when
that doesn't happen, she will walk faster, without looking back, angry and
disappointed.
Or maybe it's just my imagination, and there's nothing special about our
meetings, and she just thinks, like many other passers-by, that I'm
standing on the bridge with nothing to do, and she has nothing to do with
the fact that I'm standing here.
Every time we meet, I promise myself to be brave at least for a minute,
to stop her and say that I can't do this anymore and that for me she is the
whole world, and especially now, when all the training that Gorgadze
came up with is behind me and I am waiting for the most important thing.
I know beforehand that I will not be brave, and that today will be the
same as yesterday, the day before yesterday, a week and a month ago, and
I will simply follow her with my eyes once more until she disappears on
the descent from the bridge. I will wander back, following her, cursing my
indecision, wishing that everything would start over as soon as possible.
As she approaches, waving her red purse, I convulsively squeeze the
cast-iron railing and I notice all the little things.
She walks very slowly, smoothly, swaying slightly, and there is

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something childishly mischievous, careless and charming about this gait.
Gorgadze always repeated that in the world the main thing is not so
much objects as their movements, and therefore it is impossible to fall in
love with even the most beautiful, but motionless statue.
To tell the truth, I forget about Gorgadze and the huge building with
half-empty halls only for one moment, for that moment lost in the ocean of
time when she is next to me. Even my trained brain is not able to
determine this time interval, it is so short. I suddenly have a burning desire
to stretch this interval to infinity by an effort of will, and then something
like relief comes, hope flashes, a feeling like revenge shudders in my
heart.
I bite my lips and begin to think that if Gorgadze is right, then all my
torment will soon be over.
I even thought that when that came, I would throw away my watch as
unnecessary.
I glanced at the dial - the hands were just as far apart as I had foreseen,
and at that moment she was equal to me.
"Tell me, please, what time it is?"
I was petrified.
Yellow spots float before my eyes, and among them, like the reflection
of the sun among the waves of the river, shines her face, the very face I
know so well.
"You seem to have a watch," she said.
I nod my head absurdly and pull at the sleeve of my jacket to look at my
watch.
"I see. Half past six. Thank you.
And she turned to go again.
"Wait," I whispered.
As we walked side by side, I felt damn happy and happy. A heavy
barrier had been lifted, requiring enormous mental strain, and now
everything became easy and simple.
We chatted about everything in the world, and sometimes she stopped,
and her face expressed genuine surprise when I told her something that she
did not know or that she had never thought of.
"I've known you for a long time," I said when we sat down on a bench
in the park.
"I'll do you too," she said, smiling. "I've even dreamed of you once or
twice. You are standing on the bridge with a strange expression on your
face. Sometimes I even thought that you were going to throw yourself into
the river. I don't know why I thought so. Probably because you really
always had such a strange expression on your face.
"I'm coming there to meet you...

585
 "And I guessed about it a long time ago, and then I stopped being afraid
for you.
"Were you afraid for me?"
"Very," she answered, "especially in early spring, when the water in the
river was still cold. In the dark, by the light of the first lanterns, she seems
to me even more beautiful, and I sometimes pause to listen to her voice,
not caring much to understand what she is talking about.
Then I say again, and so it was until the chimes on the tower struck
midnight.
She shuddered, and I quietly took her hand and whispered:
"It'll be over soon..."
-A what?
-Tyranny... The tyranny of time... Do you remember Goethe's words:
"Stop, a moment, you are beautiful!"
When we reached her house and joined hands to say goodbye, I had the
feeling that we were old, very old friends It is absurd to stand uselessly on
the bridge for several months and look at the yellow water and the hands
of the clock.
Or maybe not as ridiculous as I thought. Nothing can be changed, but
what has happened has happened, and therefore it is necessary.
I still believed that the flow of time was completely uncontrollable, that
man was powerless against its flow, and that the future had long been
ready, lying in a warehouse, waiting for the moment to inevitably turn into
the present.
Our entire future has existed for itself from time immemorial, ready
and waiting for its time.
"It was this concept that gave rise to many ridiculous fantasies about a
time machine," Gorgadze sternly lectured. "You can't travel to a place
where there's nothing... The future is a gradual, painstaking, painful
creation, in which the forces of nature and the forces of man participate.
We create it, build it according to visible and invisible drawings and plans.
And until these drawings and plans are realized, there is no point in
dreaming of a journey into nothingness...
His voice echoed under the arches of the high halls, and this made the
meaning of what he said solemn and majestic. He devoted his whole life to
destroying the concept of a time machine, to prove all its absurdity and
meaninglessness, and this can only be done by creating something
completely opposite...
- Only the present is real... And who doubts this? A time machine is an
inevitable dream of a person who is not aware of his own greatness. It
seems to such a person that his tomorrow is prepared for him a long time
ago, and he can only wait obediently.

586
 - Only the present is real...
Early in the morning, I climb the wide staircase to this gray house and
know in advance what will happen next. I will look at the oscilloscope
screen, where bizarre curves are motionless, which depict waves rushing
at fantastic speed. I will be surprised that this simple device stopped the
flow of time and that what rushes, flies, changes on the screen is dead and
frozen. I will stare at the furiously spinning wheel for a long time.
Its spokes are lit by a rapidly flashing lamp, and now it stands perfectly
still, and the flow of time has ceased.
Gorgadze will show me again and again a film that depicts only one
stationary racing car. The rider sits in a tense posture, with his head tucked
into his shoulders so that only his white helmet rises above the seat.
- Notice that the car is stationary, although it is rushing forward. It's just
that the shooting was carried out from another car, which was rushing at
the same speed...
And here is another film.
A charming girl is hovering in the blue sky. She was without a
parachute, spread her arms wide and froze in the bottomless blue. She
wears an orange jumpsuit and resembles an ethereal creature that has
conquered gravity.
"She falls to the ground like a stone," Gorgadze mutters. "But it was
filmed by another parachutist, who fell just like her...
Yes, the idea is very clear: in order to stop the flow of time, you need to
learn to move at its same speed!
For a long time I could not understand what it means to move at the
same speed as time, until finally, in the process of training, the meaning of
it dawned on me. I fix my attention on a lot of little things, I remember
them, I photograph them in my mind, and they are foreverand snatched
from the flow of time. Now they are beyond change, and nothing has
power over them.
Much later, Gorgadze revealed the essence of my training. He said that
they are needed just as much as training is needed for any other unusual
journey. For traveling in the mountains, for traveling on a raft across the
ocean, for traveling into space... I will face an extraordinary world where
time will stop flowing. It should be a world of frozen movements, of
unchanging objects, a world consisting of an abyss of interconnected
trifles, like a majestic temple built of millions of cemented bricks.
Movement and change do not allow us to study the intricate structure of
the universe in detail, and therefore the journey into a world without time
will be the beginning of the greatest revolution in the history of
knowledge, a revolution unparalleled in the entire history of science.
I climb the steps to a building that was once either a museum or a

587
Catholic church, and I know in advance that Gorgadze will repeat to me
over and over again what I have long learned, but that I must make a part
of myself, otherwise the experience will fail.
And the fact that I know how everything will be, for some reason,
convinces me that the future still exists in reality, that it will know me
exactly as I foresee it. I begin to realize that it is impossible to build a time
machine, and am about to entrust my doubts to Gorgadze, when suddenly
he himself, a distinguished scientist, an outstanding expert in the theory of
time, meets me not at all where he usually is, but right at the very entrance.
From his eyes and the concentrated expression on his face, I understand
that he guessed my doubts and just like that, simply, breaking the usual
course of events, came out to meet me.
"Today," he said briefly. -Right away. Are you ready?
It seemed to me that I had always been ready, or rather, ready to throw
myself into the whirlpool of timelessness, but now, when that moment
came, I shuddered and hesitated.
- If you are not ready, you can wait.
Wait? Oh yes, of course, you have to wait! Until the moment when both
hands of the clock merge into one...
"If you don't mind...
"No, not at all! In such cases, they do not object... Do what you want,
and when you're ready, come. I'll be waiting for you.
He disappeared into the semi-darkness of the hall, and only the
long-lasting booming footsteps indicated that he was going to the farthest
hall, where his strobe of time stood under a glass dome.
And here I am again in the crowd of fast-moving people, amidst the
roar and noise of the big city, peering into the flickering faces, into the
laughing eyes, at the sunbeams jumping in the quivering morning foliage,
and it seems to me that it cannot be otherwise and must really be like
Gorgadze in order to think of a machine that stops time.
I tried to imagine how everything would be, what I would feel when
everything stopped and I wandered (that's what Gorgadze said to wander!)
in a world without time.
It's like looking at a painting, a juicy, living picture painted by a great
master.
I stood at the tram stop for a long time and for some reason watched
again and again how the tram stopped, how its wheels stopped turning,
and the red wall of the car appeared in front of me, and then it started
moving, the red canvas disappeared, and on the other side of the street
people hurriedly walked, the doors opened and closed shops, and the gusty
city wind continuously fumbled in the dense crowns of lindens that grow
along the sidewalk.

588
 When it starts, I'll go to my bridge!
She doesn't know yet what a special day I have today.
I did not tell her anything about it, except to hint by quoting Goethe.
But I am sure that she never guessed that this is not an image and not
simple poetry, but this is already reality. Later, when the experiment is
over, I will tell her about everything, about the time machine that can
never be built, about Gorgadze and about his time stroboscope, which has
already been created, standing under a glass dome.
I walk and notice a lot of little things without which the universe is
inconceivable. But these trifles are so fleeting, so instantaneous, that they
lose all meaning and begin to seem really trifles.
I shudder at the thought that at half-past six they will cease to be trifles
and acquire the importance that should rightfully be attributed to them.
I cross a wide historical square, and my gaze rests on the weathered
ancient walls. They, these walls, seem to me to be out of time, and I begin
to suspect that when I find myself out of the flow of time, then everything,
not only these walls, will seem to me like a long time ago.
Here again there is a contradiction. After all, without time, there can be
no history other than what really is.
Still, I wish there was some kind of life in a world without time, not just
a graveyard of frozen movements... The square rumbles from the flow of
cars and buses, and I involuntarily smile, remembering Munchausen, who
heard the thawed sounds of the horn. In a world without time, there must
be eternal silence, an unshakable silence, in the abyss of which the beating
of one's own heart and one's own breath must be drowned.
I will definitely go with her to this square and then tell her in detail how
the experience went, what I saw and felt, especially when she was next to
me.
Timelessness should be like eternity or something. Or maybe it will be
just pitch darkness, the same one about which Gorgadze spoke:
"Point the telescope at that part of the universe where there is not a
single star, into a black void, into a bottomless abyss, and try to find there
a hint of the passage of time.
For several nights in a row, I looked through the telescope into
nothingness, and gradually I was seized by the realization that emptiness
was the end of time. But as soon as the device was turned by a degree and
a half, the starry sky began to sparkle before my eyes, where everything
changed, flickered and flashed.
- Stars, galaxies, supergalaxies are islands of time in the universe.
There is nothing between them... There is no time...
And what if the opposite is also true?
For a Moment, I feel terrified by the possibility of descending into

589
black stillness with the stroboscope, dissolving in it and disappearing
forever.
Now time flies very quickly, I do not notice how it creeps up on the
fateful moment, and I begin to feverishly think about the shortest way to
return to Gorgadze as soon as possible.
On the way, I bump into passers-by, they say swear words after me, and
I have fun. Soon, sooner than they think, I will wander among them as
among monuments, but they do not know it and do not suspect what it will
mean.
I'm nothing again did not foresee it. I thought that Gorgadze, as in the
morning, would meet me at the very entrance, but in reality he was
standing in a large hall at the back of the building, surrounded by my
comrades.
It was they, twenty of them, who did everything under his leadership so
that I went on a journey today. They were standing to his right and left,
watching me as I approached them. They gathered to see me off. There
was an expression of solemnity, concern, and anxiety on their faces.
No one said a word, only Gorgadze spoke:
"Memorize the little things, every single one. After that, you will have
to write a lot and in detail about everything. And also, take your time...
However, now this is not the right word... To tell you the truth, I can't give
you any instructions, because I don't know what instructions will be useful
there... The appliance will stop automatically... Are you wondering how
long it will take? This question doesn't make sense now, so don't think
about it, you just need to press the button, and then everything will go on
as usual... Perhaps not p o i d e t, but o s t a n o v i t s i t s my own time... I
do not know... I do not limit you in any way. You can start the experience
from any moment and from any place. Just please - remember the little
things!
I tried to smile and reached for the time strobe.
"And one more thing. I don't want you to make any judgments or
generalizations while you're there. They may be wrong, and you will come
back with a distorted view of what you saw and what you experienced.
This will be a great loss for science. We will draw conclusions after you
describe all the little things.
"Being t a m... Being t a m... It's here, nearby, just a five-minute walk
away!" With the device ready, I step to the bright rectangle of the door and
go out into a noisy street, lit by the orange evening sun.
It wouldn't be true to say that I'm not worried. Of course, not so much as
to give up the experience, but I feel that something strange is about to
happen, something that cannot be foreseen in any way, that was clear only
theoretically, and then only in the most general terms. For some reason I

590
think that all the heroic experiments of the past, no matter how
insignificant, have always been fraught with a grain of danger precisely
because the future cannot be foreseen even with the help of the most
accurate theories...
I am reassured by the fact that it is not about foreseeing the future, but
only about the present, and if nothing happens to me at this moment, then
nothing will ever happen.
And now I see her.
Now she walks faster than before, with that perky, bold gait of a happy
girl who knows for sure that she is always welcome. The smile does not
leave her lips, and as she approaches the middle of the bridge, her face, her
eyes, her lips begin to glow.
"Am I late?" She asks, a little breathless.
-No.
"You've got a strange look in your eyes again. You...
"I'm perfectly fine... I only ask you... How can I tell you... I beg you not
to leave me, no matter what happens...
She laughs loudly and squeezes my hand tightly.
-Come! I'll tell you how I dreamed of you again...
"Now or a little later? Who knows when real happiness comes? And in
general, does such a moment exist? And if it does not exist, then you can
do itnow..." I stop for a second and draw her to me.
... She stepped back, and it seemed to me that she was frightened by my
too bold movement and the loud click of something in the device in my
bag hanging over my shoulder. She did step back, but smiling very
strangely and waving her purse. A man walked past me and hid her with
his back for a moment, and when he stepped aside, I couldn't see her
anymore. Only then did I realize that after the click the device began to
work, and I was horrified that it probably did not work, and that it
disappeared so suddenly. I did not know what to do, and stood for a few
seconds in thought, when suddenly I saw a car.
It was an ordinary taxi, a Volga, it appeared around the corner and
drove backwards in my direction.
When the car caught up with me, the driver leaned out of the window,
winked slyly and shouted:
"Happy couple!
She laughed beside her.
"A jolly fellow, isn't he?" she said as the taxi moved forward again.
-You... You...
A car appeared around the bend again, but now it was driving as it
should. However, his wheels rotated in the opposite direction!!
"You're going somewhere... Went?

591
 Instead of answering, I saw her at the opposite end of the bridge, still
with the same red purse, which for some reason was not in her right hand,
as usual, but in her left. She was in a hurry, then slowed down her steps
and walked past me, turning her head away, as it was before we met.
"Please," I began.
She walked past, very angry and disappointed.
After that, she stepped off the sidewalk, made a circle on the roadway
of the bridge, deftly maneuvering between cars. Among the cars there
were several that, like the first one, drove backwards, or with wheels
turning in the opposite direction. I was very amused by one couple, a man
and a woman, who first walked past me, and then returned, moving
backwards, and then walked again as they should, and this happened
several times.
I thought again of the instrument in my bag, but now my eyes fell on the
electric clock on the quay, and I was surprised that it still showed half-past
six, though I think it had been at least ten minutes since I had seen her.
"Am I late?" she asked, a little breathless.
-No.
- Happy couple!
It was the driver of the same taxi shouting again, but now it was driving
normally.
"He's a cheeky fellow," I muttered. Where did you just disappear?
She giggled and backed away. Of course, she was moving backwards
and her feet were stepping forward! How did I not notice it right away? I
have never noticed such a manner of walking in anyone. But if the wheels
of cars, almost everyone that passed by, did not turn as they should, then
why shouldn't people move their legs the way they like?
I waved to her and stepped onto the roadway of the bridge to cross to
the opposite side.
The clock on the quay still showed half past six. I began to suspect that
the device was working!
I just couldn't understand what Gorgadze was wrong about.
There was one more thing that I noticed immediately, from the very
moment the device clicked in the bag.
I was not surprised at anything! Everything that has happened and will
happen is how it should be! Or rather, anything can happen here...
And if now she is already walking on this side of the bridge, then this is
how it should be. Did you pass by? Big deal!..
This taxi was starting to get on my nerves. How many times can you
come and go just like that? And the chauffeur was not known for his wit:
he repeated the same thing.
So I took her by the hand, and we went to the embankment, where the

592
workers were removing the tram tracks, picking at the granite paving
stones and prying off the sleepers with crowbars. These tracks had been
filmed a long time ago, but it didn't matter at all, because the next moment
a red tram passed along them again, followed by a car on the asphalt,
backwards, with wheels rotating in the opposite direction.
She repeated the annoying question again, and I replied that it wasn't
and that it was all damn boring.
- Happy couple!
No, we absolutely cannot get rid of this taxi driver!
The clock, now different from the one that hung on the unfinished but
now quite finished house, showed half past six. If this taxi driver shows up
again, we'll just get in the car.
He was not long in coming, drove up sideways and, winking slyly,
shouted his own.
The car door opened inwards instead of outwards, and a grim voice
came from the car:
"Occupied.
Indeed, huddled in a corner, sat a man in a hat pulled over his eyes, with
his collar held high. In addition, the driver was already different.
"We're unlucky today," I muttered into the void.
The clock showed half past six, and of course I had to hurry to get my
date. Now I knew what I had to do. You need to hold her hand tightly and
not let her go anywhere!
No, of course, she was not late. When the man and the woman had
walked past us two or three times, I led her to where the workers had no
longer removed the tram track, and where there was now a deserted
square, surrounded by young lime trees.
It was not difficult to lead her, although she walked in the other
direction and sometimes even ran somewhere.
Let her run - she is still next to me and repeats the same annoying
question.
"Busy," someone said in my ear, and the one sitting in the corner of the
car turned his face to me and repeated, "Busy...
It was a woman.
We ran across the square, and then only she ran, and I walked slowly
next to her and held her hand so as not to repeat this whole idiotic story
with the date on the bridge.
The sun was still high.
I didn't decide anything, she kept running as fast as she could, and so
we found ourselves on the embankment and moved towards the park.
The Ferris wheel was crowded with children, they squealed merrily, but
it did not spin yet. It did not spin at all, and the controller let one group of

593
guys in and let another out, those who had already enjoyed it. It was
amazing to see their happy, excited faces and how they talked about their
experiences to different parents each time. And they were also different,
only the wheel continued to stand still, and the flow of guys did not stop.
I began to remember where I was inAnd she laughed next to me and
asked again:
"Am I late?"
When will this wheel turn?
The swing was empty. For some reason, they are not successful at half
past six, although they swing empty. And one swing froze in a high
position, with a single passenger, the same one I saw in the same idiotic
taxi...
I thought it would be a good idea to swing on the swing with her and
distract myself for a moment from the thought of rushing to the date, but
she shouted to me that she was already there, and then we walked through
the park, deliberately avoiding oncoming passers-by, who were all
walking backwards. I realized that they were in a hurry to go to the
cinema, which was about to begin at the Green Theater.
Several boats on the river sailed only sideways, now approaching, then
moving away from each other. It was like a strange dance. It was
apparently not difficult to carry it out, for the flow of the river had ceased,
and the boats could always stop at any place, or approach and move away
from each other sideways, sometimes hitting the sides. You didn't have to
be a skilled rower, you just had to lift one oar and row with your left like
that bearded citizen, or put both oars in the water, like that girl in the blue
swimsuit, or just lie at the bottom of the boat and do absolutely nothing...
No, it was really a pleasant sight - the movement of the boats one to the
other, sideways, as in an old dance.
And when she rose from the bottom of the boat, I decided that it was
worth stopping it and moving on. So I gripped her hand tighter so that she
wouldn't grab the oars, and then we were not in the park, but on the other
side of it, in the meadow.
I knew it was still half past six, there was no hurry. She ran past me
back and forth a few times, though I was still holding her hand, and when
I thought she had run too far, I went back to the park and literally pulled
her out of that stupid boat.
You can't lie on the bottom endlessly, especially since it is damp and
you can easily catch a cold.
I noticed that there was no wind.
The meadow was not real, because it was drained a long time ago, and
now a pit has been dug here to build a children's sanatorium. It is a very
beautiful building, bright and light, with wide windows overlooking the

594
beach. The children love their sanatorium very much, for which a pit was
dug in a drained meadow overgrown with lush grass.
And behind the meadow, behind the reed thickets, there was a lake into
which the river flowed.
Of course, in order to get to the lake, it was not necessary to squelch on
the water among the reeds, but since my feet almost did not touch the
ground, I went forward to make a road. She ran ahead of me along the path
that had formed after I had passed, and sometimes came back without
turning so that I could still hold her hand tightly. Once she found herself at
the very beginning of the reed thickets, when we had already passed
through them.
If it were not for this motionless Ferris wheel and not this constantly
renewing stream of children, we would have long ago walked around the
reeds, moving to the left of the children's sanatorium or straight along the
meadow, along the path that I was making. Probably, the wheel will never
turn, because the boats on the river swim only sideways all the time and
there was no current at all.
I'm a podumShe really shouldn't have been lying at the bottom of the
damp boat, especially since the sanatorium could be bypassed not only on
the left, but also on the right. The shore there is sandy and dense, and reeds
and swampy land come across only where I passed.
If the river has become as motionless as the lake into which it flows; I
thought, then she had no money to spend in a taxi to get to the bridge on
time. She drove to the square, and came to me from the opposite side and,
therefore, did not win anything. After all, the clock shows half past six
anyway, as it does now.
But she probably had free time for swings and boats, and in general,
maybe she was a day off at half-past six.
Gorgadze could have warned me that when the strobe time light starts
working, there is no need to rush into a busy taxi, and then hold it tightly
by the hand when the car has already started and everything has started
again.
Now, as we make our way through the reeds for the third or fourth time,
she running ahead and I, holding her hand tightly, pave the way with my
whole body, I began to suspect that this whole walk to the still lake was
worth absolutely nothing compared to the Ferris wheel. We have to return
to it again and again, only to be surprised by the swings and boats on the
river.
And the lake is like a lake. It's always like that. A river flows into it, but
it does not flow anywhere.
There are no waves on it, no wind blows over it, and in general it is very
deserted and sad here, like in the very children's sanatorium where we

595
visited and where there is no one yet...
The sand on the shore was still warm, and she stretched out on it and
laid her head on my lap. But it only seemed to me, because in reality she
was still backing away, and then I was in front of her and rushed as fast as
I could to the bridge so as not to be late for the date.
And she continued to lie on the sand and look at the motionless muddy
lake, where everything froze, and in the depths of which anything could
happen. Just like in this world without time. This lake is very muddy and
very still. It doesn't actually flow anywhere, although some scientists
claim that there is a fissure at the very bottom that connects it to the
underground ocean, motionless and black as an empty universe.
Maybe this is true, otherwise it is difficult to explain where the river
water goes, which also does not flow while it is lying at the bottom of a
damp boat.
And yet, you should not be late for the date. The lake has nothing to do
with it. This is well understood not only by her, but also by me, and after
my comrades shook hands with me and Gorgadze nodded his head, I stood
in the middle of the bridge and looked intently at the side where the clock
showed half past six.
She came up to me with a hurried gait.
"Am I late?" she asked, a little breathless.
-No.
At that moment, I heard a click in my bag.
Now everything was as it should be.
I drew her to me and kissed her on the lips.
- Happy couple! - shouted the taxi driver who rushed by.

596
 Tragedy on Paradise Street
I
- It's a pity, since the time of Raffer no one has been engaged in
paleopathology, - I heard the words spoken in French behind me.
I turned and saw an unattractive person, either a guide or a half-pauper,
who was here in Giza, near the pyramids, and there were many of them.
But the phrase was incomprehensible, and I asked:
"And what is paleopathology and who is Raffer?"
- Paleopathology is the science of diseases of the ancients, and Raffer is
the creator of this science. But it dates back much earlier, from the time
when Allan Smith, a professor of anatomy in Cairo, proposed to study it.
I laughed:
"People have invented all kinds of sciences...
-Yes. Paleopathology would have to explain a lot.
"What exactly?" "
For example, why doctors have not yet been able to cope with cancer.
This, to be honest, was the least I expected. "An interesting trick," I
thought, looking at the stranger. "In any case, this is not trivial."
He was tall, with delicate features, with shiny black hair. They lay like
a monolithic block on a narrow, elongated head. His hooked nose made
his face, flattened on both sides, look like a bird.
- So why do you think no one is engaged in paleopathology? - I asked.
- Complex science. You know, it is not so easy to detect signs of
disease on mummies. This can only be done by a very large specialist. He
must be a good anatomist, an oncologist, a biologist, and a paleontologist
at the same time. In general, only a very erudite person can do such things.
"Still, I don't see a connection between the problem of cancer and this
strange science of yours.
The Frenchman smiled (I thought he was French because he spoke
French well, and my attempts to switch to Arabic came to nothing).
- This is a long story. If you have time, I could tell you about it... ten
piastres.
"That's right," I thought. And yet it's funny.
I looked at my watch. It was eight local time. Soon there would be a
short Egyptian twilight and then a night as black as soot. However, it was
not more than a hundred meters to the Men-House Hotel, so I decided:

597
 "All right, here are ten piastres for you. Tell me.
"Let's go over there, to the west side of the pyramid. It will be light
there for about an hour. I think this will be enough for us.
As we walked, he suddenly asked,
"Have you ever been to Paris?"
The Frenchman sighed deeply:
"Now the fascists are in charge there. They were the ones who killed
Professor Deschlen and Irene...
I thought about it. The war was going on, and the whole of Europe was
groaning from the German occupation. Hundreds of thousands of people
fled from their homes to foreign lands, fleeing from the predatory
swastika. Perhaps, indeed, this man had left his distant city and, in order
not to die of hunger, wandered here, around the red-hot ancient stones and
told his fanciful stories for money. Maybe these stories are pure fiction, or
maybe...
"Let's sit here," said the stranger.
"All right," I agreed, and prepared to listen.

II
- It is perhaps best to begin this pThe story from that memorable day in
194... when the following report appeared in one of the Parisian
newspapers, I remember it well: "Tonight in the Museum of Oriental
Culture of the Guimet, a terrible blasphemy was committed. An unknown
person entered the hall where Egyptian mummies are kept and, opening
the sarcophagus of the second king of the fifth dynasty Sahur, took away
part of the mummified remains of the pharaoh."
The stranger was silent for a moment, and then, stooping very close to
me, whispered:
"I can tell you that I have a very direct connection with this whole
affair. I opened the sarcophagus of the Pharaoh of Abusir...
-What for? I was surprised.
"I needed the Pharaoh's vertebra.
I almost burst out laughing. But, as if divining my thoughts, the
stranger quickly spoke:
"For God's sake, don't think that I want to intrigue you with a stupid
story about theft and search for a thief. If you agree to listen to everything
to the end, you will understand that it was necessary...
- I am ready to listen to you to the end, but what does the problem of
cancer and everything else have to do with it?
"Monsieur," my narrator continued slowly. "One thing you can be sure
of. I'm not a criminal. Criminals are now masters walking the streets of
Paris and sitting in Parisian cafes and restaurants. They squander the gold

598
earned on the blood and death of people. And you see, I'm here...
After a moment's silence, he began to continue:
"I will talk about the people of France, who, alas, in the terrible time of
the occupation, made a tragic and ill-conceived attempt to render a service
to their homeland.
The first one I want to talk about is Maurice Dechelin. Believe me,
despite all his delusions, France has lost in him an outstanding scientist
and ardent patriot.
Before the war, he was a professor at the Sorbonne University. He
belonged to that rare type of scientist who is interested in literally
everything. He did not accept the division of sciences into various
disciplines - mathematics, physics, biology, sociology, medicine. At his
lectures, he repeatedly repeated that we live in a single world and that the
artificial division of knowledge of the world does not speak in favor of the
greatness of the human mind. It's just that a genius has not yet been born
who would synthesize everything together.
When the war began, Maurice Deschlain volunteered for the front. And
do you know who? An ordinary orderly, although the day before at the
university he taught an optional course in crystallography and for some
reason intensively studied Egyptology.
Before we return to Professor Deschlen again, I must introduce myself
to you. You may not be interested in my name at all. Under the
circumstances, it does not matter at all. I will only note that I also have
something to do with science. To be more precise, I am a half-educated
organic chemist. At the university I met Deschlen. I was struck by his
great erudition. I listened to his lectures with pleasure. Although they were
devoted to special problems of crystallography, they covered a huge range
of problems. By the way, it was in these lectures that Professor Deschlen
expressed an idea that was later taken up by other scientists, including the
famous physicist, one of the founders of quantum mechanics, Erwin
Schrödinger, who called a living organism an aperiodic crystal. Deschlain
spoke about this back in 1940...
So, when the war began, Deschlen volunteered for the army and
dropped out of university. That I was forced to get a job in one of the Paris
pharmacies. Here I met an employee of this pharmacy, Irène Beye, who
later became my wife. I lost sight of Deshlen.

At the end of 1940, after the Germans had already occupied half of
France, I received a letter from an old friend of mine. In it, among other
things, he wrote: "Our Dechelin made a colossal career during the
campaign - from an orderly to the chief surgeon of a field hospital. I do not
know to which of his many talents he owes this. But one thing is curious:

599
the Germans gave the order to find Deschlen. They say he has developed
some incredible way to treat wounds..."
A little more than a month passed. One day, a big guy with a bandaged
face limped into the pharmacy where I worked and gave me a prescription.
Imagine my amazement when, instead of the usual Latin names for
medicines, I read the lines written in a familiar handwriting: "Tomorrow
at seven o'clock in the evening this man will meet you at the entrance to
the church of St. Madeleine and take you to me. I need you. M. D." The
note was from Deschlen!
The next evening, at the appointed place, I was looking forward to the
bandaged guy. He appeared suddenly and made a faint sign for me to
follow him.
The path was very long. We were moving in a northeasterly direction
all the time. An hour later, we found ourselves in some dark neighborhood
that I didn't even know existed. As we walked along the narrow street
shrouded in dark mist, my guide approached me and said quietly:
"This is Paradise Street.
It didn't mean anything to me. We entered some gateway, turned right.
In the back of the yard there was a house with a mezzanine.
Professor Deschlen greeted me coldly, without any enthusiasm, as he
usually greeted students who came to his examination. With a nod of his
head, he invited me to sit down. I was somehow timid and did not dare to
start a conversation.
He spoke first:
"Do you know, young man, that we live in a world of crystals?
I shrugged my shoulders and smiled to myself. Everything was very
much like the good old days at the Sorbonne.
"This world can only be called that with a certain stretch, Professor.
Yes, indeed, there are a lot of crystal formations in nature," I answered.
They are everywhere! He said sternly.
I looked around, trying to find anything in the darkness that was
crystalline in nature. Table, chairs, bookcase with books, leather armchair,
glass in the window. None of these items reminded me of crystals.
"I don't quite understand, Professor, what you mean. But if by crystals
you mean that...
"By crystals, young man, I mean exactly what they should be
understood. A crystal is matter ordered in space.
I thought about it. I was confused by the words "ordered matter"
because it was not the same as matter with a periodically repeating
structure. And this is how we define crystals. When we take a crystal of
rock salt in our hands, we know that in it, in a completely strict periodic
sequence, sodium ions alternate with chloride ions. If the seed of a crystal

600
is placed in a saturated salt solution, it will begin to grow in all directions,
but nothing new can be added to its structureIn the 19th century, the
"Your definition is too general to draw any conclusions from it," I tried
to object.
He asked suddenly, and slammed his fist on the table.
"Of course not," I
replied without hesitation. He asked, and drummed on the table even
louder. "Well, you know, I thought you were smarter.
"If you mean the wood from which this table is made, it is certainly not
crystal, though—"
"But what?" Deshlen asked, approaching me.
"Although it resembles a crystal in some way," I babbled, unable to
formulate the thought that suddenly occurred to me.
-Aha! he exclaimed triumphantly. -Ok! Very well! So now you tell me,
why does this wood remind you of crystal? And without waiting for my
answer, he answered himself. - By the fact that it consists of fibers, which
in turn are not random, but ordered chains of molecules. - It is a
non-periodic or aperiodic crystal. And who said that crystals must
necessarily have a periodic structure?!
"That follows from the definition itself," I muttered.
We invent definitions, and nature does not care about them. If a
definition does not express the very essence of things, it must be forgotten,
and the sooner the better!
"I don't understand, Professor, what the point of all this conversation is.
I suspect that you didn't call me here to tell you what crystals are. You
wrote to me that you need me. I am at your disposal.
-Miraculously. I need you to help grow new crystals...
This statement by Deschlain amazed me. To be fascinated by pure
science in the midst of a national calamity seemed strange to me. So I
exclaimed, not without bitterness:
"Don't you think that our conscience will be at ease if we try to escape
from reality in such a very original way?"
-Not at all. Quite the opposite. Very soon you will realize that what I
am going to do is of great importance for France.
Deschlain then summarized his plan. His apartment turns into a
physical and chemical laboratory. Jockle and I (that was the name of the
guy who brought me to him) will become his employees. My wife will
help us as a lab technician. She was also entrusted with the responsibility
of running our household. Beforehand, we will have to purchase a lot of
reagents wherever possible.

601
 III
- Aren't you tired of my story? The Frenchman asked me. "Then I'll
continue." So, a few days later, my wife and I moved into a gloomy house
on the Rue Paradise. Our apartment was on the floor below Deschlen's
apartment. After we had laid out our few belongings in two rooms, Jockle
invited us upstairs to the professor.
In the daylight, I noticed that his apartment was quite spacious,
especially the middle room. To the right and left of it were smaller rooms,
the right was the professor's office, which I had already visited, and the
left was filled with unpacked chemical utensils and some utensils.
The professor greeted us quite friendly. His dark eyes flashed perky
from under his thick, overhanging eyebrows.
"Ta-ta-tak!" he said. - Meant, all assembled. Ok. Now we will arrange a
general meeting and develop an action plan. By the way, Irene, he said to
my wife, "is our pharmacy rich?"
"We have everything except sulfa drugs," my wife answered.
"We won't need them yet. Do you have any amino acids or their
derivatives? Is there cysteine, globulin? Is there an ordinary gelatin,
finally?
"It'll be found." Especially gelatin.
-Well done. Then I ask everyone to come to the office.
When we were seated, he called Jocle to him and said:
"Come, roll up the sleeve on your right arm."
The guy smiled embarrassedly and raised his sleeve above the elbow.
Irene and I stood up and walked closer.
"Look carefully at the lower part of this young man's hand," the
professor said slyly.
At first, we did not see anything special. The hand was like a hand.
Dechelin ordered Joclue to come closer to the window, and only then did I
discover something completely strange. From the elbow to the shoulder,
thick black hair grew on the arm. But there was no hair below the elbow.
Actually, they were, but very light and very thin, like on the body of small
children. The color of the skin below the elbow was light, it seemed
thinner and more delicate compared to the rough yellowish skin above.
"Your hand is younger at the bottom than at the top," my wife said
suddenly.
"Quite right," said the professor. "That's right. This arm is only three
months old, and the elbow, if I am not mistaken, is already twenty-nine
years old.
We looked at Deschlain in surprise. The guy lowered his sleeve and sat
down.
Unfortunately, I must begin with some rather elementary truths that

602
seem to be known to everyone, but which, unfortunately, no one has
seriously thought about until now.
Of course, you know what explantation, or tissue culture, is. You take a
piece of living skin and place it in a test tube with a nutrient medium. If
there is enough food and oxygen in this environment and a good
metabolism is ensured, then the cells of living tissue begin to multiply
outside the body.
Let me remind you of other facts. There is a remarkable property of
some living organisms to restore their damaged organs - regeneration. If,
for example, a part of a person's liver is removed, then over time it can
fully or partially recover. But this is not the most surprising thing. It is
known that if you take a piece of an ordinary annelid worm - I repeat: a
piece the size of only one three-hundredth part of a whole worm and place
this piece in a suitable nutrient medium - a whole worm will grow from it,
exactly like the one from which we took the "seed" for the experiment.
There are other organisms that can regenerate completely from a small
part of their body, such as the hydra.
Irene suddenly said,
"I suppose, Professor, that you have developed a method for
regenerating human limbs amputated by placing the rest of them in an
appropriate feeding bath?"
"Yes, if you like," Deshlen replied and smiled.
"So that's how you restored Monsieur Jockle's hand?"
-Exactly.
- But this is a revolution in reconstructive surgery or what else can you
call this field of medicine? Maybe regenerative biochemistry?! "
No, this is not yet a revolution. This is a half-revolutionDeschelin said.
The revolution will continue.
We looked at each other. If the regeneration of amputated parts of the
human body by placing the remains in a nutrient bath is not a revolution,
then what could be more?
"Aren't you surprised," Deschlen continued, "that each of us was born
and grew into a huge organism from just one cell? After all, once, in the
period of origin, we were all just one single embryonic cell! It was in this
single cell that the program, if you like a plan or a project, for building our
entire organism was concentrated. The order that we observe in ordinary
crystals is just a geometric order, while the orders and sequences of
molecules in a new organism are the order that determines the meaning of
all life.
"And now I come to the most important thing, our patriotic duty to
France," said Dechlin, and stood up.
It was this sudden transition from the discussion of the structure of a

603
living organism to the fate of our homeland that made the strongest
impression on us.
- I do not want to describe to you what grief and humiliation France is
undergoing now... You are all well aware of this. Perhaps Jockle and I
know a little more, because we were at the front, or at least in places that
could be conventionally called the front. Our task is to help those who
continue to fight. We will help them buy weapons. They need money, a lot
of money.
- Do you mean the Resistance movement? Irene asked quietly.
-Yes.
- But there is a headquarters of this movement in Algeria. He helps him.
Dechelin grimaced.
"I know what kind of help it is. Leaflets, papers, congratulations,
several hundred old carbines. And we need more, much more...
Sometimes it seems to me that there, in Algeria, they are even afraid to
seriously help our partisans...
"Where are you going to get such large funds?" I asked, still unable to
understand the meaning of the whole conversation.
"In Egypt," Dechelin said suddenly, and we all rose from our seats.
"G-d-e-e??"
- In Egypt. In the village of Abusir, a hundred kilometers south of
Cairo.
As we sat stunned and looked at each other uncomprehendingly,
Professor Deschlain opened his desk and pulled out a yellowed piece of
paper.
"I don't know if you know that before the war I dealt with the problem
of cancer. I was interested in Raffer's scientific reports relating to
1918-1923. He wrote that in order to clarify the nature of cancer, it is
necessary to establish how long this disease has existed on earth. He
examined the remains of ancient animals and especially Egyptian
mummies and came to the conclusion that the ancient Egyptians were
unfamiliar with this disease. That's when I decided to find out how
tenacious cancer cells are and whether the cells of a tumor that has lain for
five or six thousand years can cause disease in a living organism. In order
to solve this question, I first of all turned to the documents; I wanted to
know if any of the Egyptian pharaohs had died of cancer. I searched for a
long time. But still my search was crowned with success. A clay tablet
displayed in front of the mummy of King Sahura in the Guime Museum,
who lived in the thirteenth century BCE, said he died with a "bloody light"
on his chest and knees.
- And what is this "bloody light"? "
Cancer," Dechelin said gloomily. - I was convinced of this when I

604
examined the mummy in the museum. Multiple cancers on the chest and
extremities. You know, cancer tumors have a blood-red hue.
"But what do the Resistance weapons have to do with it?"
Deshlen grinned:
"You're in a hurry. The inscription also says that before his death,
Sahura ordered to offer a sacrifice to the god Ra - almost a whole
mountain of gold and precious stones. And this treasure was buried in a
hiding place.
"So what," Irene said. "If you mean Sahura's gifts, they are of course
hopelessly lost. After all, so many millennia have passed.
"I am sure that the treasure remained unexcavated, at least we can
check it.
-Check? - I stopped understanding anything at all. "How are you going
to find out where he is, or has been?"
"King Sahura himself will tell us about this," Dashlen said and went to
the window.
If a grenade had exploded in the room at that moment or a meteor had
hit the ceiling, we would have been less surprised: Irene and I looked at
each other and realized that we had the same thought: "Deshelin's head is
not all right." Only Jockle reverently remained silent and looked at his
savior with admiring eyes.
After allowing us to change our minds in a few agonizing minutes,
Dechelin continued:
"My dear friends, this is not a paradox. I believe that you are smart
people and that you have understood correctly what I have told you. The
seed contains in encrypted form a plan for the construction of the entire
living being. If such a seed is placed in a suitable nutrient medium, it will
grow into a full-fledged adult organism. Joquelin's arm and leg are
evidence of this. I know what the nutrient medium should be. There is
only a little left to do - at least one cell of Pharaoh Sahura.
"But it's pointless!" "Pharaoh has lain in the ground for more than thirty
centuries!" Everyone knows that complete mineralization, that is, the
complete destruction of organic matter in the ground, occurs in a
maximum of twenty years. We have no chance of getting a seed to
regenerate Sahura!
"No one has proven it," Deshlen said ruthlessly. - Recent
archaeological excavations have shown that a grain of wheat extracted
from the tomb of the pharaoh sprouted well, although it had lain for
several thousand years. Life is more tenacious and more tenacious than we
think.
"Consider," he continued, "that Sahura's corpse was embalmed and
buried in a stone coffin, in sandy soil, in a hot country devoid of

605
groundwater. I do not believe that in the body of the pharaoh there was not
a single living cell that had been dormant for thousands of years. For the
experiment, I need a bone from the Pharaoh's corpse, a single bone...

IV
: "When in the autumn of 1941," continued the stranger, "I went to the
Guimet Museum, it was gloomy and empty. It was a rainy spring evening,
and the silence of the halls was broken by the footsteps of rare visitors.
Taking a moment, I hid behind one of the Egyptian statues and waited
until everyone had left and the doorkeeper closed the entrance to the room.
At night, I easily opened the glass display case behind which the mummy
was kept, and with the help of a knife and a small saw, cut off a piece of
the spine. As soon as the door to the museum opened again in the morning,
I went out into the street, unnoticed by anyone.
You know that people think in the morningcompletely different than at
night. Often serious and majestic thoughts that arise at night seem funny
and small in the morning. It was about the same with me when I walked
through the streets of Paris with the ashes of the pharaoh in my pocket.
Few passers-by paid attention to my laughing face, not suspecting that the
reason for this was the Egyptian pharaoh in my pocket, who was supposed
to help the French resistance with his wealth! What could be wilder! I
walked to the Rue de Paradise full of irony and sarcasm addressed to the
author of this delusional idea, Professor Deschlin. As convincing as
Dechelin's arguments had seemed to me when I had listened to him, so
extravagant did they seem to me now, after I had felt with my own hands
what we were going to reconstruct the ancient Egyptian from.
In Dechelin's office, everyone was waiting for me. Irene threw herself
on my neck with tears in her eyes. She was worried all night, afraid that
something would happen to me.
I threw down the bag with the remains of the mummy and sat down.
"Here's your gift to France, Professor!" I hope there is enough material
here for not one, but ten pharaohs.
Ignoring my words, Deshlen poured the contents of the bag onto a large
glass. With his thin and quick fingers, like those of a pianist, he began to
quickly rake out the yellowish-gray mass, separating small lumps from
large ones. One of the bones was the size of a fist. It was on her that he
dwelt his attention. He looked at it for a long time through a magnifying
glass and then said:
"I congratulate you. You managed to get the seventh vertebra of the
Egyptian lord. It is well preserved. It is with him that we will begin our
experiments.
Then there was the following. Deshley carefully washed the vertebra in

606
distilled water and placed it in a jar of a weak solution of citric acid. Then
Deschlain extracted it and transferred it to an alkali solution in order to
remove mineral formations containing silicon salts. The process of
dissolving silicon compounds lasted a long time. At first, Deschlain stirred
the solution with a glass stick, and then beckoned Jocle to do it. He began
to walk from corner to corner in tense thought. We silently followed him
with our eyes. Several times he stopped and inquisitively examined the
bone. Then he smiled and, rubbing his hands as usual, said:
"I am quite sure that when we remove the upper protective layer, we
will find the seed that should sprout!
The removal of the silicon sheath from the bone was very slow,
especially since as it dissolved, Deschlen replaced the alkali solution with
a weaker and weaker one and lowered the temperature of the bath. This
lasted for several days.
During this time, we managed to equip tables in the large hall, arrange
distillers, thermostats, refrigerators, columns for qualitative and
quantitative analysis of organic compounds. On one of the tables, my wife
placed a row of bottles of amino acid solutions prepared according to
Dechelin's recipes.
At the very window, in a water bath, a small rectangular aquarium was
installed, near which an oxygen cylinder was located. It was in this
aquarium that the first stage of the regeneration of the king from Abusir
was to take place.
And so one evening, about ten days after the bone had begun to be
carefully treated, we sat as usual in the great hall, each going about his
business. Irene was hanging substances on an analytical balance for saline,
I checked the purity of the newly acquired globulin, and Jockle, sitting
asleep, slowly stirring the solution in the jar with the bone. Suddenly the
voice of Deschlin was heard, who stopped dead in his tracks beside Jockle.
-See! he cried. "Look quickly!"
Irene and I ran up to him.
No matter how hard we strained our eyes, we could not notice any
changes in the bone.
"Pay attention to the color of the bone!" Don't you see that she's turned
pink!
This report stunned us, although it was difficult to believe in its truth: in
the light of the electric lamp, the bone still seemed yellowish and lifeless.
- Pay attention to this area on the right, near the costal process.
Only after Deschlain had pointed us out exactly where to look did we
see that there was indeed a small pink spot, about the size of a ten-franc
coin. Jokl began to stir the solution even more vigorously, and a pink spot
began to grow before his eyes. Irene and I were speechless in surprise.

607
 Dechelin was the first to come to his senses. He suddenly said,
"Irene, fill the aquarium with saline and nutrient fluid urgently."
Achieve complete saturation of the solution with oxygen.
Work was in full swing in the laboratory. Irene filled the tank with a
thick, pale pink liquid. I fitted a few capillaries to the oxygen tank and
lowered them to the bottom. By opening the cylinder reducer, I made sure
that the gas quickly filled the entire volume with small bubbles.
The bone was transferred to the nutrient solution exactly at midnight. It
did not sink to the bottom of the jar, as we expected, but hung in the center,
supported by the flow of oxygen bubbles. Here we brought a bright table
lamp and waited.
We stood motionless until the morning, but nothing happened. Our legs
were numb, and we were tired. Dechelin was also tired. In the morning, he
ordered to change the solution and go to rest. Jockle remained on duty at
the aquarium.
From that moment on, agonizing days dragged on, during which we
tried with all our might to see at least some signs that the bone in the
aquarium was coming to life. But there were none. Dechelin was darker
than a cloud. He hardly ever left his office, leafing through some journals
day and night, making notes and calculations. Occasionally he ran out into
the large hall for a moment and, casting a fierce glance at the aquarium,
went back to his office. It was felt that a storm was about to break out and
our whole wild idea would burst. And this would have happened if not for
one incident.
This was one of those rare cases thanks to which great discoveries are
sometimes made in science.
Like all those on duty, I had to monitor the oxygen pressure, the
concentration of hydrogen ions in the nutrient medium and the
temperature of the solution. It should not rise above the temperature of the
human body. Temperature regulation was achieved with the help of a
small water bath, on which the aquarium with the bone stood. The
temperature of the bath, in turn, changed depending on the resistance of
the rheostat, with the help of which the incandescence of the electric stove
changed.
So, about three o'clock in the morning, I dozed off. I don't know how
long I slept, but I woke up feeling as if a bowl of hot soup had been
brought under my nose. I quickly jumped out of my chair and was
stunned: steam was pouring out of the aquarium. I looked at the
thermaemeter. To my horror, it showed seventy degrees!
It turns out that during my sleep I accidentally moved the rheostat
lever!
I instantly turned the rheostat out to capacity, rushed to the water tap,

608
soaked a towel in cold water, and wrapped it around the jar of bone. The
temperature began to slowly decrease, but the steam came out of the
aquarium for another hour. Exhausted and sweating, I sat down beside the
jar of bone, thinking about what would happen to Deschlen, what would
happen to all of us when he found out what had happened.
By the light of the lamp, I began to examine the bone I had welded, and
suddenly I noticed that it had changed its color. "It will not be possible to
hide what happened. She has changed a lot," I thought.
Moreover, a lot of small whitish fibers crawled out of it, which slowly
swayed in the current of oxygen bubbles. To my horror, these fibers grew
rapidly, and in the morning the bone was covered with a dense fringe that
continued to grow. The bone began to look like a stone overgrown with
thick algae. The catastrophically rapid change in the bone threw me into a
panic. I could not stand it anymore and decided to wake up the professor to
confess everything to him. Staggering, I walked into his office and
touched him on the shoulder. He slept without undressing, sitting in an
armchair.
-What's the matter? He jumped to his feet at once. -What happened?
"Professor, a misfortune has happened... Look what I've done...
Deshlen flew across the hall like a meteor and stared at the jar with the
pharaoh. So he stood, bent over her for several minutes, without saying a
word. Then in a hoarse voice he asked,
"How did you do it?"
- The temperature rose above normal... Much higher... Almost to a
boil...
"I knew it," Dechelin whispered. - Intuitively, I felt that it was
necessary... This was necessary to speed up the reactions... But I could not
prove it to myself. After all, in a living organism, cell reproduction occurs
at a normal temperature. I knew it, but I could not prove it... What
happiness...
He suddenly turned to me, his face shining with a huge joyful smile. He
hugged me tightly and kissed me.
And I stood like a stone image, and understood nothing.
When, a few minutes later, we both looked into the aquarium again, the
bone lost its original appearance. It turned into a ball of pale pink moss,
began to look like a huge hairy sponge. Some, now intertwined in thick
threads, fibers reached the surface of the solution. Dechelin shouted in a
thunderous voice:
"Prepare a big bath urgently!" Pour all-purpose nutritious broth
urgently! Wake everyone up urgently!
I rushed downstairs and dragged a sleepy Irene upstairs. Dressing as he
went, Jockle came out of the preparatory.

609
 -What happened? Tell me, for God's sake, what happened? Irene
babbled.
-Happened? Yep, what we have the right to call a complete revolution
has happened. Our Sahura has come to life. He decided to rise from the
dead. It grows, and how fast!
I will not describe the joy that seized all of us after that. Feverish work
began in the laboratory. We carried bottles with solutions, set up a huge,
up to two meters long, aquarium, rushed around with electric stoves,
thermometers, with gas cylinders.
And among us, jumping from one corner of the laboratory to another, a
flight ofProfessor Deschlen, giving instructions on what to do and how to
do it.
Then he suddenly stopped in the middle of the laboratory and shouted,
"It's an idea! This is a brilliant idea!
He ran up to me and shook my shoulder violently:
"Do you remember when you brought the ashes of Sahura, you
mockingly said that it would be enough for ten pharaohs? Remember?
I looked at him in bewilderment.
"So, my dear friends. There is enough material here not for ten, but for
a hundred pharaohs. We can build a whole factory that will produce kings
from Abusir in any quantity!
We decided again that the professor was crazy. And he continued in a
loudly inspired voice:
"But now we will set ourselves a more modest task: we will make two
pharaohs. Zhokl, install a spare next to this bathroom. This will be a
brilliant proof of our idea!
"How, Professor?" Irene asked, "We have only one bone, one seed!"
- And what prevents us from dividing it into two parts? Four? For as
long as you want... After all, now we will grow from any part of it what we
need.
We were struck by this idea like a thunderbolt. Indeed, now we can...
God, now we can do anything!
When both baths were set up and filled with solutions, and heating and
oxygen were supplied to them, Dechelin carefully pulled out the now large
and dense bone from the aquarium and placed it on the sterilized glass.
With the help of a surgical saw, he divided the bone into two equal parts.
With his own hands, he lowered each of them into the bathtubs.
"From this bone will grow Sahura the First," he said solemnly. "And
from this one - Sahura the Second!
We looked at the solemn act of baptism of the future benefactors of
France with a mixed feeling of admiration, joy and fear of the unknown.
Both pharaohs grew by leaps and bounds. We barely had time to

610
prepare new solutions and analyze old ones. As our wards grew, the
formulation of nutrient solutions became less and less accurate. Deschlen
no longer named the amount of substances with an accuracy of hundredths
of a milligram, but said: "Take about that much..." - Every living
organism, - he said, - assimilates from the mass of nutrients that and
exactly as much as it needs.
About a month later, both Egyptian kings began to take on the distinct
outline of a man. Dechelin sat for hours near both pharaohs, making
sketches and entries in his scientific journal.
- No one has ever had such an opportunity to observe the development
of human tissues. Later, many anatomists and physiologists would envy
me, he said.
It was at this time that I began to be tormented by a very vague thought
at first, and then more and more formed. I first shared this idea with Irene.
"You remember, the pharaoh, according to legend, died of cancer. I am
worried about the question, what kind of will we make these two, healthy
or sick?
Irene could not answer me, so I turned to Deschlen. He said this:
"All human diseases are acquired. They are not inherited. They are not
included in the program of building the body.
"As for cancer, they say it can be inherited," I objected.
then he said:
"Generally speaking, the predisposition to certain diseases is somehow
transmitted. But now we are not interested in what our pharaohs will
eventually die of. For us, the most important thing is to learn from them
where the treasures left to the god Ra are hidden.
"In that case, how old will we get the kings, young or old?"
- Over the course of a lifetime, a person will grow into an adult as a
result of about 50 cell divisions, starting with the embryos. We will stop
the development of the pharaohs after forty divisions. This, according to
my calculations, will correspond exactly to the time when Sahura drew up
his will. If we stop growing earlier, the kings themselves will not know
where the sacrifice is hidden.
Dechelin's explanation seemed convincing to me, although in the back
of my mind I continued to feel dissatisfied.
One fine day he called Jockle and me to him and said in a tired voice:
"Divide the duty between yourselves, and I must rest.
Without saying another word, he went to his office and locked himself
there. By that time, the pharaohs had already grown up considerably. Both
were of great stature, with bearded faces, both with huge black eyes (and
now they opened their eyes quite often and stared at us with a kind of
terrible curiosity).

611
 "Haven't I tired you?" The stranger asked me, suddenly interrupting his
story.
"No," I answered, "everything is very interesting. He took out a
cigarette and flicked his lighter. Taking a long drag, he continued:
"I remember it happened late at night. After duty, Irene and I did not go
down, as usual, to our apartment, but went to the preparator's room and
dozed, sitting in chairs. Professor Dechelin locked himself in his office.
Jocle remained at the aquarium.
In the middle of the night we woke up to a terrible crash and the sound
of broken glass. Then strange, unnatural screams were heard.
We jumped to our feet and rushed to the laboratory room. A wild
picture appeared before us: by the light of a bright electric lamp, we saw
that one of the bathtubs was broken, the liquid flooded the entire floor and
our Jokl was lying in it on shards of glass, and Sahura the First clung to
him, wrapped around his arms and legs. At this time, Sahura II, grabbing
the edge of the aquarium, made desperate attempts to get out of it.
Seeing all this, Irene rushed back to the preparatory, and I rushed to
Joclu's rescue. I grabbed the Pharaoh with both hands and tried to pull him
away from Jockle. At that moment, Sahura II, who had managed to get out
of the bath, fell to the floor, almost on my back. He grabbed my leg, I
slipped and fell backwards. The whole heap was accompanied by screams
and screams, which could apparently be heard even in the street.
I heard Deschlen jump into the hall. But he did not immediately come
to our aid, but for some reason began to fiddle with some bottles at the
table. As he composed the solution, he kept saying,
"For God's sake, don't kill them!" Don't kill them! Now they will calm
down. - And in the meantime we continued to roll in a slippery puddle,
fighting off the grasping hands of two huge naked children, who screamed
so that the dishes rattled in the room.
And suddenly everything fell silent. At first, Sahura the First fell silent,
and then the Second. I felt his hands weaken and he let me go. Staggering,
all wet, I got to my feet. Jockle, too, got up. We stepped aside and looked
at the floor. What we saw was enough to drive me crazy. Both naked kings
were lying on the floor and, grabbing bottles with some liquid with their
hands, smacking loudly and sniffing, they sucked them vigorously! Yes,
they sucked, not drank. On their faces was written extraordinary bliss.
Occasionally, a stupid smile appeared on the face of the first, then the
second.
While we were watching this scene, Dechelin was feverishly preparing
new bottles of solution. At first, he drank all the contents of Sahur the
First. Feeling that there was nothing else in the bottle, he threw it furiously
aside and shouted again in a wild voice, tears flowing profusely down his

612
cheeks. Dechelin put a second bottle in his mouth, and he fell silent again.
The same thing happened with the Second. For a moment, an ominous
silence reigned in the laboratory. Irene came in.
"Cover them with something," she said. "They're grown men."
Dechelin looked at her sadly and grinned wryly:
"Alas, they are only children.
"Yes, Professor," I said, "grown-up ugly children.
"And how they look like real pharaohs," Deshlen said dreamily.
"It doesn't matter now," Irene said. - Real pharaohs will not be born
immediately. Life, upbringing, education, society, and epoch make them
so.
Deshlen didn't say anything to that. Irene spoke again:
"In human cells, perhaps, there is a plan and a program for building the
whole body, but they do not have the most essential thing that
distinguishes one person from another. Your pharaohs have neither mind
nor memory. They know nothing about their origins and will never know.
To these two Egypt is as foreign a country as any other, and we shall never
learn anything from them concerning the wealth left by King Sahura to the
god Ra.
Dechelin was silent. Then he said,
"I realized that a long time ago, when I watched their brain develop.
Both have completely childish brains.
We stood for a long time and silently looked at the two pitiful human
beings that looked alike like two peas in a pod. And each of us had a heavy
and terrible soul in our hearts.
Suddenly, there was a loud bang on the door of Dechelin's apartment.
From the loud knocking, Sahura the First shuddered and dropped the
bottle of sugar water. After a moment, he roared at the top of his adult
throat.
"Don't open it," Dechelin shouted. "For God's sake, don't open it.
However, this warning turned out to be unnecessary. There were strong
and frequent blows, and the door swung wide open. Five German soldiers
armed with machine guns with an officer at the head burst into the room at
once.
For a second, they were stunned at the sight of everything that was
happening in the room. Then, trying to outshout over the roaring Egyptian
kings, the officer asked:
"What's going on here?! Who are you?! Show your documents!!
Deschlen, suddenly losing his composure, rushed at the Germans,
trying to push them out the door. When he failed, he ran to his office,
pursued by two soldiers. Irene and I were ordered to raise our hands up.
First one shot rang out from the office, and then a second shot, and I saw

613
Deschlen appear in the door with a smoking pistol in his hand. He swayed
and crashed to the floor. One of the Germans jumped out of the office,
jumping over his body. Jockle rushed at him, knocked him to the floor and
began to strangle him. Another shot rang out, then another... To the
furious shrieks of both Sahurs, Irene and I were taken out of the apartment
with the Sk.hands handed backwards.
What happened next is no longer interesting. I managed to escape a
week later: the French patriots helped. I knew nothing about Irene.
About a year later, I accidentally wandered into the pharmacy where
she and I both worked. The old pharmacist said,
"I heard that Irene died from torture. The Germans wanted to know
something from her about the two adult idiot twins who had died of cancer
in the prison infirmary, one after the other... In addition, the Nazis wanted
to find out from her details about Professor Deschlin's connections with
the Resistance movement.
My narrator fell silent.
We did not get up immediately, but continued to sit on a stone at the
gigantic face of the Pyramid of Cheops, lost in the bottomless ocean of the
Egyptian night.
"How did you get here?" I asked the Frenchman after a long silence.
"Somehow I made my way. Spent everything I had on it...
-What for?..
"And you don't guess?"
It seemed to me that he smiled sadly.
-No.
"I'm earning money to go further south, to Abusir...
"To find the riches of King Sahur?" I asked mockingly.
It was felt that he nodded his head.
"Your story is worth more than ten piastres," I said, and in the darkness
I thrust the money into an invisible hand.
"Thank you, really, thank you. Tell me your address. If in Abusir I
suddenly find...
"What are you, what are you, I don't need it...
He got up quickly, and, uttering a farewell farewell, disappeared into
the pitch darkness.
As I approached the Man House Hotel, I was almost convinced that at
least half of the story was fictional.

614
 Maxwell's Equation

1
This adventure began one Saturday evening, when I was tired after my
math studies and was looking through the local evening newspaper and
came across an advertisement on the last page: "The Kraftstedt company
accepts orders from organizations and individuals for all kinds of
computational, analytical, and calculation-mathematical work. High
quality of workmanship is guaranteed. Please contact Weltstraße 12."
Just what I need. For several weeks in a row, I agonized over the
solution of Maxwell's equations, which described the behavior of
electromagnetic waves in an inhomogeneous medium of a special
structure. In the end, by a series of approximations and simplifications, I
succeeded in making the equations look so that they could be solved by an
electronic calculating machine. I was already imagining how I would have
to make a trip to the capital and beg the administration of the computer
center to do all the calculations I needed. After all, at present, the
computing center is so loaded with military orders. And no one there cares
about the theoretical exercises of a provincial physicist who is interested
in the laws of propagation of radio waves.
And here we are, in our small town, a computer center has appeared,
calling out to customers through the newspaper!
I got up from my desk and went to the telephone to get in touch with the
Kraftstudt company immediately. But then I discovered that, apart from
the address of the computer center, the newspaper did not report anything.
"A solid computing center without a phone? It can't be." Then I called the
editorial office of the newspaper.
"Unfortunately, that's all we got from Kraftstedt," the editorial
secretary told me. - There was no phone number in the ad.
Kraftstudd's company was also not listed in the telephone book.
Burning with impatience to get solutions to my equations as soon as
possible, I waited until Monday. Once or twice I looked up from the neatly
written calculations behind which complex physical processes were
hidden, and my thoughts turned to the Kraftstudt company. "In our age,
when attempts are made to give mathematical form to any human
thoughts, it is difficult to think of a more profitable occupation." By the
way, who is this Kraftstudt? I have been living in our city for a long time,

615
but the surname Kraftstudt is almost unknown to me. I say "almost"
because I vaguely remember that I had met that name before. But where,
when, under what circumstances? All my efforts were in vain, I could not
remember.
Finally, the long-awaited Monday came. Hiding a piece of paper with
my equations in my pocket, I went in search of Veltstrasse 12. It was
drizzling in the spring and I had to take a taxi.
"It's quite a long way," said the chauffeur, "across the river, near the
mental hospital.
I nodded my head silently.
It took about forty minutes to drive. We passed the city gates, then the
bridge over the river, rounded the lake and went deeper into a hilly field
covered with dried bushes of last year. In some places, early greenery
broke through. The road was country road, unpaved, and the car often
stopped between hills, its rear wheels skidding violently in the thick clay
mud.
Then came the roofs and red brick walls of a psychiatric hospital
located in a lowland that was jokingly called the "Shelter of the Wise
Men" in our city.
Along a high brick fence with broken glass at the top led a road
sprinkled with slag. Making a few turns in LabirineThe driver finally
stopped the car at a small door.
"This is number twelve.
I was unpleasantly surprised to find that the door which apparently led
to the apartments of the Kraftstudt company formed a sort of single
ensemble with the "Asylum of the Wise Men." "Has Krafftstudd
mobilized madmen to do 'all kinds of mathematical work'?" I thought, and
smiled.
I went to the door and pressed the button. They waited a long time, then
the door opened, and a pale man with tousled thick hair and eyes squinted
by the daylight appeared in it.
"Yes, sir," he said to me.
"Is the Kraftstudt math company here?" I asked.
- You put an ad in the newspaper...
-Yes.
"I've brought you an order."
"Please come in."
I turned to the chauffeur, told him to wait for me, and stooped down and
slipped through the door. It closed, and I found myself in pitch darkness.
"Please, follow me." Be careful, there are steps here. Now to the left...
More steps. Now let's go up...
As he spoke, my guide held my hand, dragging me along the dark

616
crooked corridors, up and down the ascents. At last a dim yellowish light
flickered overhead, and climbing a steep stone staircase, I found myself in
a small hall surrounded on all sides by glazed walls.
The young man walked quickly behind the partition, rounded it, and
opened a wide window. Through him he addressed me:
"I am listening to you.
I felt like I was not where I was going.
This twilight, this underground labyrinth, and, finally, this blind room,
without windows, with a single faint electric bulb in the ceiling, created an
idea by no means similar to the one I had when I went in search of a
modern computing center.
I stood, looking around in bewilderment.
"I'm listening to you," the young man repeated, leaning out of the
window.
"Oh, yes! So, this is where the computer center of the Kraftstedt
company is located?..
"Yes, yes," he interrupted me, not without a note of irritation in his
voice. "I've already told you that this is where the computer center of the
Kraftstudt company is located. What is your challenge?
I took a piece of paper with equations from my pocket and handed it
through the window.
- This is a linear approximation of these partial differential equations, I
began to explain uncertainly. - I would like you to at least numerically
solve them, well, let's say, directly on the border of the two
environments... You see, this is a dispersion equation, and here the speed
of propagation of radio waves varies from point to point.
Crumpling up my paper, the young man suddenly said: "Everything is
clear. When will you need a solution?
- How - when? "You have to tell me when you can solve it."
"Are you satisfied with tomorrow?" He asked, looking up at me with
deep black eyes.
-Tomorrow?!
"Yes, tomorrow." Let's say by twelve o'clock, at the latest by one
o'clock in the afternoon...
"God, what kind of computer do you have?" Such a speed of work!
"So, tomorrow at twelve o'clock you will receive the decision. The cost
is four hundred and fifty marks. Payment in cash.
The price was quite high. But, if we take into account that The most
complex equations will be solved in a day, it was cheap. So without saying
a word, I handed him the money along with a business card on which was
my name and my address.
As he escorted me through the underground labyrinth to the exit, the

617
young man asked,
"So you are Professor Rauch?"
-Yes. And why do you ask?
- Yes, so. When we organized the mathematical center, we expected
that sooner or later you would come to us.
- Why did you count on this? - I asked in surprise.
- And from whom else can you expect orders in this hole?
The answer seemed quite convincing to me.
Before I had time to say goodbye to the young man, the door slammed
behind me.
All the way home, I thought about this strange computing center next to
the Shelter of the Wise Men. Where and when did I meet the name
Kraftstudd?

2
The next day I was looking forward to the afternoon mail. When at
half-past eleven I heard the bell at the door of my apartment, I jumped up
and rushed to meet the postman. To my surprise, I saw a thin, pale-faced
girl in front of me with a huge blue package in her hands.
"Are you Professor Rauch?" she asked.
-Yes.
- A package from the Kraftstudt company. Please sign.
Her thin hands rummaged in her coat pockets for a moment, and she
handed me the book.
On the first page there was only one name - mine. I signed, then handed
the girl a coin.
"Oh, what are you talking about! She flushed, and with a faint
"good-bye," she departed.
I returned to the office with the package.
Looking at the photocopies of the manuscript written in small
handwriting, I did not understand anything at first. I expected something
completely different from an electronic calculating machine: long
columns of numbers, in one column of which there were to be the values
of the argument, and in the other - the values of the solution of the
equations.
Nothing of the kind happened here.
That was the exact solution to my equations! Someone's hand, guided
by an outstanding mathematical thought, solved my equations quite
strictly, without any approximations.
I ran my eyes page after page, delving more and more into the layouts
that were striking in their beauty, wit, and ingenuity. The man who solved
the equations had a great deal of mathematical knowledge that the most

618
first-class mathematicians can envy. Almost the entire mathematical
apparatus was involved in the solution: the theory of linear and nonlinear
differential and integral equations, the theory of functions of a complex
variable, group theory, set theory, and even such mathematical disciplines
as topology, number theory, and mathematical logic, which seemed to
have nothing to do with this problem.
I almost cried out with delight when, as a result of the synthesis of a
large number of theorems, intermediate calculations, formulas and
equations, the solution itself finally appeared - a mathematical formula
that took up as long as three lines.
But the most elegant thing was that a mathematician unknown to me
also took care to give this long formula what in our science is called
"observable form". He found an approximate, but very accurate, concise
and clear mathematical notation, consisting only of elementary algebraic
and trigonometric expressions.
At the end, on a small inset, the solution of the equations was depicted
graphically.
It was impossible to ask for more. An equation that I thought could not
be solved in a finite form turned out to be solved.
Somewhat recovering from surprise and admiration, I began to reread
the photocopies written with formulas for the second time. Now I noticed
that the person who was solving my problem was writing hurriedly, in
small handwriting, as if saving every millimeter of paper and every second
of time. Twenty-eight pages were written in all, and I thought in my mind
how titanic this mathematician's work had been. Try to write twenty-eight
pages of a handwritten letter to your friend in twenty-four hours, write
twenty-eight pages of your biography, and finally, try to rewrite
twenty-eight pages from any book, without thinking, without
understanding a word, and you will see that this is hellish work.
But this was the solution of a most complex mathematical problem.
And it was completed in a day!
A few hoursI looked at the written pages, every hour I was more and
more surprised.
Where did Kraftstedt find such a mathematician? Under what
conditions does he work for him? Who is he? Some unknown genius? Or
is it one of those wonders of human nature that is sometimes found on the
border between normal and abnormal? Maybe this is one of the unique
people that Kraftstudt managed to find in the "Shelter of the Wise Men"?
History knows cases when brilliant mathematicians ended up in a hospital
for the mentally ill. Perhaps the mathematician who solved my problem so
brilliantly belongs to the same category of people?
All these questions tormented me throughout the day.

619
 And yet the fact remained. The problem was solved not by a machine,
but by a man, an outstanding mathematical genius about whom the world
knows nothing.
The next day, having calmed down somewhat, I re-read the decision,
this time enjoying it as one enjoys listening to good music. It was so
beautiful, so austere, so clear that I decided... repeat the experiment. I
decided to order the Kraftstudt company to solve another problem.
I chose an equation that had always seemed to me quite impossible not
only to solve in its final form, but even to give it the form necessary for
solving on a calculating and solving machine.
This equation also applied to the theory of propagation of radio waves,
but the case was very complex and special, with mobile emitters, with a
medium whose properties change in space and time. It was one of those
equations that theoretical physicists often write only to be admired and
then forgotten because their complexity makes them useless.
… When the door in the brick wall opened, I saw the same young man
with his eyes narrowed in the daylight. When he saw me, he smiled wryly.
He nodded his head and, as he had done the first time, led me through
the dark corridors to his gloomy, windowless reception room.
Now I knew the procedure, and going to the glass window, I handed
him the equation:
"So you don't have machines that solve these things?"
"As you can see," he replied, without taking his eyes off the equation.
"The one who solved my first problem is a talented mathematician," I
said.
"You've got one, or—" I asked.
"Does that have anything to do with what you want?" The company
guarantees...
Before he could finish his sentence, a sharp shriek cut through the deep
silence of the cellar. I shuddered and listened. The scream came from
somewhere behind the wall, which was behind the glass partition.
Someone was screaming, or rather, screaming as if he had been subjected
to inhuman torture. The young man, crumpling up the pieces of paper with
my task, threw a glance towards the wall and then at me, and, running out
from behind the partition, grabbed my arm and dragged me to the exit.
-What is this? I asked him, barely catching my breath at the very exit
door.
Instead of answering, he blurted out:
"You'll get the decision the day after tomorrow at twelve." Give the
money to the messenger.
With that, he left me alone in front of the taxi.

620
 3
Needless to say, after this incident I completely lost my peace. In the
first place, I could not forget for a moment the terrible cry that seemed to
shake the stone vaults of the Krafftstudt company's computing center.
Second, I was still under the impression that one person had solved a
difficult math problem in a day. And thirdly, I was waiting for the solution
of my second problem as if in a fever. If it is solved, then...
Two days later, with trembling hands, I received a package from a
messenger from the Kraftstudt company. I looked with fright at the thin
creature standing in front of me. Suddenly a thought struck me.
"Come in, please, I'll prepare the money."
"No, you don't," she hurried, as if frightened, "I'll wait here..."
"Come in, why should you be cold," I said, and almost forcibly dragged
her into the room. "I have to look at the work and find out if it deserves to
be paid for.
The girl pressed her back against the door and watched me with wide
eyes.
"It's forbidden," she whispered.
- What is prohibited?
- Enter the apartments of clients... That's the instruction, sir.
- Spit on the instructions. Here I am the master, and no one will know
that you have been to me.
"Oh, sir... They will find out everything, and then...
"What then?" I asked, approaching her.
"Oh, it's so scary...
She suddenly began to cry.
I put my hand on her shoulder, but she shook herself and jumped out the
door.
"Give me seven hundred marks at once, and I'll go."
I held out the money, and she snatched it from my hand.
When I opened the package, I almost cried out in surprise. For a few
minutes I stared at the stack of photocopies, not believing my eyes. What
struck me now was not that my hopeless equations had apparently been
solved. The most striking thing was that the calculations were written in a
different handwriting.
The second brilliant mathematician! However, this one was even more
ingenious than the first, because in the course of fifty-three pages it solved
in analytical form equations hundreds of times more difficult than the first.
As I glanced at the lines written in vigorous, sweeping handwriting,
peering at the integrals, sums, variations, and other symbols of the highest
branches of mathematical science, I imagined myself in some unknown,
strange mathematical world where complexities had lost all meaning.

621
They simply did not exist here.
It seemed as if the mathematician who solved my second problem did it
as easily as we add or subtract two-digit numbers.
As I read the manuscript, I dropped it several times to consult
mathematical reference books and textbooks, and to my extreme surprise I
found that the second mathematical genius knew and remembered
perfectly well all that I knew and remembered, but also much more. I was
amazed by his ability to use the most complex mathematical theorems and
proofs. His mathematical logic was incredible, the depth of his thought
was bottomless, and his method of solution was impeccable. I was sure
that if the most brilliant mathematicians of all ages and peoples, such as
Newton, Leibniz, Gauss, Euler, Lobachevsky, Weierstrass, Hilbert and
many others, had seen the solution to this problem, they would have been
as surprised as I was.
After reading the manuscript, I, exhausted and unable to sense reality,
remained in reverie for a long time.
Where did Kraftstudt get these mathematicians from? Now I was sure
that he had not two or three of them, but, probably, a whole brigade. After
all, he could not seriously found a whole company, exploiting only two or
three people. How did he do it? Why is his company next to a madhouse?
Who and why shouted in an inhuman voice behind the wall?
"Kraftstudt, Kraftstudt..." - throbbed in my mind. Where and when did I
come across this name? What is hidden behind it? I walked around the
office, holding my head in my hands, trying to remember what I knew
about Kraftstudt.
Then I sat down again to read the ingenious mathematical manuscript,
enjoying its contents, rereading it piece by piece, delving into the proofs of
intermediate theorems and formulas. Suddenly I jumped up. I jumped up
because I suddenly remembered again the terrible inhuman scream, and
with it the name of Kraftstudt.
This association was not accidental. This is exactly what was supposed
to happen. The inhuman scream of a tortured man and Kraftstuddt! This is
an inseparable whole. During the Second World War, a certain Kraftstudt
was an investigator at Hitler's concentration camp in Graz. In the second
round of the Nuremberg Trials, he was tried for crimes committed against
humanity. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for torture and murder.
And after that, nothing was heard about him anywhere.
I remembered the portrait of this man, printed in all the newspapers, in
the uniform of the Obersturmführer of the SE, in pince-nez, with
wide-open, even surprised, eyes on a good-natured, plump face. No one
wanted to believe that a person with such a face could be the executioner
of Hitler's torture chambers. However, the portrait was accompanied by

622
detailed testimony of witnesses and the conclusion of the investigation.
Yes, Kraftstudt really was an executioner.
What happened to him after the trial? Has he not been released now,
like many other war criminals?
But what does mathematics have to do with it? Where is the connection
between the investigator and the executioner and the ingenious solutions
of differential and integral equations?
At this point the chain of my reasoning was broken, and I felt powerless
to put the two links together. Something was missing, something was a
mystery, which I was powerless to solve in a speculative way.
No matter how much I racked my brains, no matter how much I tried to
combine Kraftstudt with the "Shelter of the Wise Men" and with a team of
talented mathematicians, I could not succeed. And then this girl who said
"they'll find out anyhow"... How intimidated and timid she is!
After several days of agonizing thought, I finally came to the
conclusion that if I didn't solve this secret, I would go crazy.
First of all, I decided to make sure that Kraftstudt from a mathematical
firm was Kraftstudt, a war criminal, an interrogator of the concentration
camp in Graz.

4
When I found myself at the low door of the Kraftstedt company for the
third time, I felt that something was about to happen that would have a
huge impact on my entire life. I don't know why, but I let the taxi go, and
only after the car disappeared around the corner did I call.
It seemed to me that a young man with a rumpled, almost senile face
was waiting for me. For some reason, he immediately took me by the hand
and, without asking any questions, led me through the dark dungeon to the
same reception hall in which I had already been twice.
"So, what have you come with now?" he asked mockingly.
"I want to see Herr Kraftstudt in person," I muttered.
he asked.
"I want to see Herr Kraftstedt," I repeated with stubbornness, trying not
to look into the large black eyes, which now shone with a deep, angry,
mocking light.
"It's up to you. It doesn't concern me," he said after I had endured the
momentary test of his piercing gaze. -Wait here.
Then he disappeared through one of the doors behind a glass partition
and did not appear for more than half an hour.
I was almost dozing off when suddenly I heard a rustle in the corner and
suddenly the figure of a man in a white coat, with a stethoscope in his
hands, appeared from the twilight. "Doctor," flashed through my mind.

623
"Now I will be examined and listened to. Is it necessary to see Herr
Kraftstudd?"
"Come along," said the doctor imperatively.
And I followed him, completely unaware of what would happen to me
next and why I had started all this.
Passing through the door in the glazed partition, I followed the man in
the white coat along a long corridor into which daylight penetrated from
somewhere above. The corridor ended with a tall massive door. The
doctor stopped.
-Wait here. Now you will be accepted by Kraftstuddt.
The doctor reappeared five minutes later. He opened the door wide and
stood silhouetted in the diffused daylight for a few seconds.
"Well, let's go," he said, in the voice of a man who regretted what was
going to happen next.
I followed him obediently. Entering the pavilion with wide shining
windows, I stood for several minutes, trying to see the huge bright room.
A sharp voice roused me from my stupor:
"Come here, Professor Rauch.
I turned to my right and saw Kraftstudt sitting in a deep wicker chair,
the same Kraftstudt I had known from the many photographs in the
newspapers.
"Would you like to meet me?" He asked, without greeting or getting up
from the table. "What can I do for you?"
I quickly pulled myself together and, swallowing my saliva, came close
to the table at which he was sitting.
"So you've changed your occupation?" I asked, looking at him
point-blank.
He had aged in fifteen years, his full cheeks gathered into large
wrinkles and hung in flabby folds around his sharply protruding
cheekbones.
"What do you mean, Professor?" He asked, examining me very
carefully.
"I thought, Herr Kraftstudt, or rather hoped, that you were still—"
"Oh, that's it!" And Kraftstudt burst out laughing. "Other times, Rauch.
Other.
- And what about the law?
"My dear professor! The law is needed only if and only by those who
arecan benefit from it. Now are different times and other sources of
benefit. Consequently, the laws are different. However, I am not interested
in your considerations of the laws, but in the reasons that have brought
you to me.
"Herr Kraftstedt, as you may guess, I know something about

624
mathematics, I mean modern mathematics. So, at first I thought that you
organized an ordinary computing center equipped with electronic
calculating machines. However, I was convinced by two examples that
this is not the case. Your mathematical problems are solved by people.
They solve them absolutely brilliantly. And, strangest of all, monstrously
fast, superhumanly fast. I have ventured, if you will, to come to you to
make the acquaintance of your mathematicians, who are, of course,
extraordinary men.
Kraftstedt first smiled on his face, and then began to laugh quietly at
first, and then louder and louder.
"What are you laughing at, Herr Kraftstedt?" "Is my desire so comical
and stupid? Wouldn't every sane person, and especially a mathematician,
be amazed when he became acquainted with the solutions that your
company has placed at my disposal?
"I'm laughing at someone else, Rauch. I laugh at your provincial
narrow-mindedness. I laugh at how you, Professor, a respected man in the
city, who has always amazed the imagination of immature maidens and
old maids with your learning, how hopelessly you have fallen behind the
rapid progress of modern science!
I was struck by the impudence of the former Hitlerite investigator.
"Listen, you! "Only fifteen years ago your specialty was to torture
innocent people with a red-hot iron. What right do you have to talk about
modern science? If you like, I have come to find out what methods you use
to make talented people subordinate to you do work in a day that human
genius can do only after a long period of work, perhaps the work of a
lifetime. I'm very glad I found you here. I don't think our acquaintance will
be pleasant for you.
Kraftstudd stood up and, frowning, came up to me.
"Listen, Rauch, I advise you not to make me angry. I knew that sooner
or later you would come to me. But I did not expect to find an idiot
scientist in my office in the role of an amateur detective. I confess that I
expected to find in you, if you will, an ally and helper.
"What?!" "First you explain to me what you do with the people who
make you profit.
Kraftstudd's pale blue eyes turned into two narrow slits behind the
glasses of his pince-nez. For a moment it seemed to me that he was
examining me as if I were going to acquire property.
"So you want me to explain to you how our firm works?" Is it not
enough for you that two of your idiotic problems have been solved in the
way they should be solved in the twentieth century? So, you want to
experience on your own skin what it means to solve such problems? He
hissed.

625
 - I do not believe that one person, even a very talented one, could do
hard labor in a few dozen hours of his own free will. Your reputation
testifies to this. In addition, I had the misfortune to hear one of your
employees scream...
-Stop it! Kraftstudd shouted. "In the end, I didn't ask you to come to me.
But if you come with such an attitudethen you will be useful to us, whether
you want it or not.
I did not notice that the doctor who had taken me to Krafftstudt's office
was standing behind me all the time. The head of the company made a sign
to him, and in an instant his strong hand grabbed my face, tightly clamped
my mouth, and the other brought a piece of cotton wool to my nose,
impregnated with a pungent smelling substance, inhaling which I
immediately lost consciousness.

5
I woke up, but for a long time I did not dare to open my eyes. I heard
the voices of some people around me. They were arguing heatedly about
something. It was a business-like scientific dispute, the content of which
did not reach my consciousness for some time. Only after my head cleared
up a little, I began to understand the meaning of the phrases.
"Heinrich is completely wrong. In the final analysis, the impulse code
that excites the neurons of the volitional centers does not consist of fifty
ejections with equal intervals and five duty cycles between equal groups.
This was clearly shown yesterday in the experiments with Nichols.
"Well, you know, your Nichols is not an example. If you want, the
coding of excitation is very individual. That which excites the volitional
centers in one may excite quite another in another. For example, the
electric excitement that gives Nichols pleasure makes me deaf. When I am
subjected to it, I feel as if two pipes have been inserted into my ears and
the roar of airplane engines is being blown into my head through them.
- Nevertheless, the rhythm of the activity of groups of neurons in the
brain has a lot in common in many people. Actually, this is what our
teacher plays on.
"He's playing, but not very much," someone said wearily. - So far,
things have not gone beyond mathematical analysis.
- It's a matter of time. In this case, indirect experiences are more
important than direct ones. No one will dare to insert an electrode into
your brain and see what impulses are moving there, because this will
damage the brain, and therefore the impulses themselves. Another thing is
if you have a generator on which you can change the pulse-code
modulation within a wide range. This allows you to conduct experiments
without violating the integrity of the brain at all.

626
 "It depends," said the same tired voice. "Your statement refutes the case
of Gorin and Void. The first died ten seconds after being placed in a
frequency-modulated field, where ten successive spikes of intensity
followed at a frequency of seven hundred hertz at a duty cycle of
five-tenths of a second. The second screamed so much in pain that I had to
turn off the generator immediately. You guys forget the basic thesis of
neurocybernetics that a huge number of loops are implemented in the
networks of neurons that exist in the human body. The pulses moving
along them are characterized by a specific frequency and code. It is
enough to get into resonance with any of these circulations, and the circuit
can be excited to an incredible state. If I may say so, the doctor pokes
blindly. And the fact that we are still alive is pure coincidence.
I opened my eyes. The room where I was a kind of large hospital room
with beds located along the walls. In the middle stood a large wooden
table littered with scraps of food, empty cans, cigarette butts, scraps of
paper. All this was illuminated by a dim electric light, I raised myself on
my elbows and looked around. The conversation immediately stopped.
"Where am I?" I whispered, looking around the faces of the people
staring at me.
I heard someone behind me whisper:
"The newcomer has come to his senses...
"Where am I?" I repeated the question, addressing everyone at once.
"Don't you know that?" A young man sitting in his underwear on the
bunk on the right asked me. "This is the firm of Kraftstudt, our creator and
teacher.
- A creator and teacher? I grunted, rubbing my forehead. "What kind of
teacher is he, if He is in fact a war criminal.
- Crime is a relative concept. It all depends on the purpose for which the
action is performed. If the goal is noble, every action is good," my
neighbor on the right blurted out.
Struck by a pattern of vulgar Machiavellianism, I looked at him
curiously.
"Where did you get such wisdom, young man?" I asked, sitting down
opposite him.
"Herr Kraftstudt is our creator and teacher," everyone in the room
suddenly began to repeat in unison.
"So I've really come to the Sages' Refuge," I thought wistfully.
"Well, guys, you're doing badly if you say that," I said, looking around
everyone.
"I'll bet the new mathematician has ninety to ninety-five hertz in the
frequency band!" - exclaimed a corpulent guy who got up from the next
bunk.

627
 "And its pain can be caused at a frequency of no more than one hundred
and forty hertz of uniformly accelerated impulse code!" exclaimed the
other.
"And he can be made to sleep by code sendings of eight pulses per
second, with a pause of two seconds after each sending!"
"I'm sure that the newcomer will feel hungry at impulse excitation with
a frequency of one hundred and three hertz with a logarithmic increase in
the intensity of the pulses!"
It's the worst thing I could have imagined. Obviously, they were all
crazy. I was struck by only one circumstance: they were all talking about
the same thing: about some codes and some impulses, connecting them
with my sensations, with my inner world. They surrounded me and,
looking me straight in the eye, shouted some numbers, mentioned
modulations and intensities, predicting how I would behave "under the
generator" and "between the walls" and how much power I would
consume.
Knowing from literature that you have to agree with madmen on
everything, I decided not to argue with them, but to talk as if I were just
like them. Therefore, as gently as possible, I turned to the neighbor sitting
on the bed to my right. He seemed to me more normal than all the others.
"Tell me, please, what are you talking about here?" I am a complete
layman in these matters. Some codes, impulses, neurons, excitations.
What field of science is this from?
The whole room trembled with laughter. The laughter continued when I
stood up indignantly and wanted to shout at them.
- Outline fourteen. The frequency is eighty-five hertz! Arousing anger!
Someone shouted, and the laughter became even more Homeric.
Then I sat down on my bunk and waited for them to calm down.
My neighbor on the right was the first to come to his senses. He came
up to me, sat down next to me, and looked me straight in the eye.
"So you really don't know anything?"
"Honestly, I don't know anything. And I don't understand a word of
what you're saying.
-My word upon it?
-My word upon it.
-Okay. We believe you, although this is a very rare case. Daenys, stand
up and tell the newcomer why we're here.
"Yes, Daenys, get up and tell him." May he, like us, be happy.
-Happy? - I was surprised. - Are you happy?
- Of course, of course! everyone shouted. "After all, we have
comprehended ourselves. The highest pleasure of man is that he knows
himself.

628
 - And before that, you didn't know yourselves? - I was surprised.
- Only those who are familiar with neurocybernetics, only those know
themselves.
- Glory to our teacher! Someone shouted.
- Glory to our teacher! - they automatically repeated everything.
The one who was called Deinis came up to me. He sat down on the cot
opposite me and asked in a hollow, tired voice:
"What education do you have?"
- I am a professor of physics.
- Do you know biology?
- Very superficial.
-Psychology?
-Worse.
- Neuropsychology?
- I don't know at all.
"Cybernetics?"
-Vaguely.
- Neurocybernetics and the general theory of biological regulation?
"Not the slightest idea.
An exclamation of surprise was heard in the room.
"It's bad," Daenis hummed. "He won't understand.
"Tell me!" I will try to understand.
"He'll understand after the first twenty sessions of the generator!"
Someone exclaimed.
"I realized after five!" Another shouted.
"It's even better if he stays between the walls twice.
"Anyway, Daenis, tell me," I insisted.
"So, beginner, do you understand what life is?"
I sat silently for a long time, looking at Daenis.
"Life is a very complex phenomenon of nature," I said at last.
Another giggled behind him. Then again and again. All the occupants
of the ward looked at me as if I had said an obscene nonsense. Only
Daenis looked at me reproachfully and shook his head.
"You're doing badly. You'll have a lot to learn," he said.
- If I said it wrong, then explain.
"Explain to him, Daenys, explain!" They shouted from all sides.
-Ok. Listen. Life is a continuous circulation of coded electrochemical
excitations through the neurons of your body.
I thought about it. Circulation of excitations through neurons. I heard
something similar somewhere.
"Next, Daenys, on.
"All your sensations, which make up the essence of your spiritual self,

629
are electrochemical impulses that move from receptors to the higher
regulators of the brain and, after processing, return to the effectors.
-Well? Explain further.
- Any sensation of the external world is transmitted along nerve fibers
to the brain. One sensation differs from the other in the form of the code
and its frequency, as well as the speed of propagation. These three
parameters determine the quality, intensity and duration of the sensation. I
got it?
-Suppose.
- Therefore, life is the movement of coded information through your
nerves. No more, no less. Thinking is nothing more than the circulation of
frequency-modulated information through neural loops in the central
regions of the nervous system, in the brain.
"I don't understand that.
- The brain consists of about ten thousand neurons, which are
analogues of electrical relays. They are connected in groups and rings by
fibers called axons. Axons transmit excitations from one neuron to
another, from one group of neurons to another. The wandering of
excitations through neurons is thought.
I became even more frightened.
- He won't understand anything until he has been under the generator or
between Walls! - shouted around.
"Okay, let's say you're right. What follows from this? I asked Daenis.
- And the fact that life can be done as you like. With the help of pulse
generators that excite the necessary codes in neural loops. This is of great
practical importance.
"Explain what," I whispered, feeling that I was about to learn
something that would reveal to me the essence of the Kraftstudt company.
- This is best explained by the example of stimulating mathematical
activity, At present, in backward countries, the so-called electronic
calculating and solving machines are being created. The number of
triggers, or relays, from which such machines are composed, does not
exceed five to ten thousand. The mathematical sections of the human brain
contain about a billion such triggers. Never and no one will be able to
build a car with so many triggers.
"So what?"
- And the fact that it is much more profitable to use the apparatus that
was created by nature itself and which lies here for solving mathematical
problems, - Daenis. He ran his hand along the brow ridges - than to build
pathetic expensive machines.
- But the machines work faster! "A neuron, as far as I know, can be
fired no more than two hundred times per second, and an electronic trigger

630
millions of times per second. Therefore, high-speed machines are more
profitable.
The whole ward roared with laughter again. Only Denis remained
serious.
-It's not that. Neurons can also be made to fire at any frequency, if
excitation is brought to them with a sufficiently high frequency. This can
be done using an electrostatic generator operating in pulse mode. If the
brain is placed in the radiation field of such a generator, it can be made to
work as quickly as you like.
"So that's how the Kraftstedt company makes money!" I exclaimed,
and sprang to my feet.
"He's our teacher!" - suddenly everyone shouted. "Repeat, beginner. He
is a teacher!
"Don't stop him from understanding," Daenis suddenly shouted at
everyone. "The time will come when he will understand that Herr
Kraftstudt is our teacher. He doesn't know anything yet. Listen, beginner,
go on. Every sensation has its own code, its intensity, and its duration. The
feeling of happiness is a frequency of fifty-five hertz per second, with
code groups of one hundred pulses. The sensation of grief is sixty-two
hertz, with a duty cycle of one-tenth of a second between sendings. The
feeling of fun is the frequency of forty-seven hertz, increasing in intensity
of impulses. The feeling of sadness is two hundred and three hertz, pain is
one hundred and twenty-three hertz, love is fourteen hertz, poetic mood is
thirty-one, anger is eighty-five, fatigue is seventeen, drowsiness is eight,
and so on. The encoded impulses of these frequencies move along specific
loops of neurons, and thanks to this, you feel all that I have named. All
these sensations can be evoked with the help of a pulse generator created
by our teacher. He opened our eyes to what life is. Before him, people
lived in darkness and in ignorance of themselves...
These explanations made my head go wild. It was either delirium or
something that really opened a new page in the life of mankind. Now I
could not figure it out yet. My head was noisy from the anesthesia I had
been given in the Kraftstudt office. I suddenly felt very tired and lay down
on the bed, closing my eyes.
- He has a dominant frequency of seven or eightHertz. He wants to
sleep! Someone shouted.
"Let him sleep." Tomorrow he will begin to comprehend life.
Tomorrow he will be taken under the generator.
- No, tomorrow they will shoot its spectrum. A card will be drawn up
for him. Maybe he has deviations from the norm.
That was the last thing I heard. After that, I forgot myself.

631
 6
The man I met the next day seemed to me at first to be sympathetic and
intelligent. When I was ushered into his office on the second floor of the
company's main building, he came to meet me, smiling broadly, with his
hand outstretched.
"Ah, Professor Rauch, I'm glad to see you!"
"Good afternoon," I replied restrainedly. "With whom do I have the
honor to talk?"
"Just call me Bolz, Hans Bolz. Our boss has entrusted me with a rather
unpleasant task - to apologize to you on his behalf.
-Apologize? Can your boss be tormented by remorse?
-I don't know. I really don't know, Rauch. Nevertheless, he sincerely
apologizes to you for everything that has happened. He got too excited. He
does not like to be reminded of the past.
I grinned,
"I didn't come to see him to remind him of his past. If you like, I was
interested in something else. I wanted to meet people who had so
brilliantly decided...
"Have a seat, Professor. That's what I want to talk to you about.
I sat down in the chair offered to me and began to examine the smiling
Herr Bolz, who was sitting opposite me at a wide desk. He was a typical
North German, with an elongated face, blond hair and large blue eyes. He
was twirling a cigarette case in his hands.
"Here, at the chief's, I am in charge of the mathematics department," he
said.
-You? Are you a mathematician?
- Yes, not much. At any rate, I know something about this science.
"Then through you I will be able to get acquainted with those who
solved my equations...
"You know them already, Rauch," said Bolz.
I stared at him in bewilderment.
"You spent the whole day with them yesterday and all night tonight.
I remembered the ward with people raving about impulses and codes.
"And you want to assure me that these madmen are the brilliant
mathematicians who solved my Maxwellian equations?" Without waiting
for an answer, I burst out laughing.
- Nevertheless, they are them. Your last problem was solved by a
certain Daenis. I think he taught you a lesson in neurocybernetics last
night.
After thinking for a while, I said,
"In that case, I refuse to understand anything. Maybe you can explain it
to me.

632
 "Willingly, Rauch. But only after you read this. And Bolz handed me a
fresh newspaper.
I slowly unfolded it and suddenly jumped up from my chair. From the
first page, I was stared at... my own face encased in a black frame. Under
my portrait was a huge headline: "The Tragic Death of Professor of
Physics Dr. Rauch."
"What does that mean, Bolz?" What a comedy this is! "
Please calm down." It's very simple. Last night, when you were
returning from a walk to the lake and passing over the bridge over the
river, you were attacked by two madmen who had escaped from the
"Asylum of the Wise Men", killed you, mutilated your corpse and thrown
into the river. This morning you were found at the dam. Your clothes, your
belongings, and your documents have confirmed that the person found is
you. Today the police made inquiries in the "Shelter", and all the
circumstances of your tragic death were clarified.
I paid attention to my clothes, touched my pockets, and only now I was
convinced that my suit was someone else's, and my belongings and
documents had disappeared from my pockets.
"But it's a blatant lie!"
- Yes, yes, yes. I quite agree with you. But what to do, Rauch, what
should I do? Without you, Kraftstudt's company can suffer a serious
defeat, if you like, a collapse. We received such a lot of orders. All of them
are of a military nature and of high cost. You need to count, count and
count. After solving the first problems for the Ministry of War, we were
literally overwhelmed with mathematical calculations.
"And you want me to be like your Daenis and the others?"
-No. Of course not, Rauch.
"So why did you come up with all this?"
- We need you as a teacher of mathematics.
-Teacher?
I jumped up again. Boltz lit a cigarette and nodded toward my chair. I
sat down without thinking.
"We need mathematical personnel, Professor Rauch. Without them, we
will run aground.
I stared silently at Bolz, who no longer seemed as handsome to me as
before. In his bright and unremarkable face, I began to notice some subtle
animal features, barely perceptible, but gradually dominating what made
his face clear and open at first glance.
"Well, what if I refuse?" "That
would be very bad." I'm afraid then you'll have to become one of our...
calculators.
"Is it really that bad?" "Yes," Boltz

633
 replied firmly, and stood up. "That would mean that you would end
your existence in the Asylum of the Wise Men.
After walking around the room several times, Bolz spoke in the tone of
a lecturer: ...
- The calculation abilities of the human brain are hundreds of thousands
of times greater than those of an electronic calculating and solving
machine. A billion mathematical cells in the cerebral cortex, plus all the
auxiliary apparatus - memory, delay lines, logic, intuition, and so on - all
this puts the human brain in an outstanding position compared to any,
even the most perfect, machine. However, the car has one significant
advantage.
-What? I asked, not understanding what he was getting at.
- If an electronic machine fails, say, one trigger cell or even an entire
register, you can change the tubes, change the resistances or capacitances,
and the machine will work again. But if one or a group of cells performing
computational functions fly out of your head, alas, you can't replace them.
Unfortunately, we have to make brain triggers work very intensively, and
therefore, if I may say so, the speed of their activation increases
significantly. A living computer wears out very quickly, and...
"And what then?"
"Then the calculator goes to the Shelter.
"But it's inhuman!" This is a crime! Bolz
stopped in front of me, put his hand on my shoulder and, smiling
broadly, said:
"Rauch, here you must forget all these words and concepts. If you don't
forget them yourself, we'll erase them from your memory.
"You'll never be able to do that!" I shouted, throwing his hand away.
"You didn't learn Dainys's lecture well. But in vain. He spoke the
matter. By the way, do you know what memory is?
"What does this have to do with our conversation?" Why the hell are
you all making faces here? Why are you...
- Memory, Professor Rauch, is the long-term existence of excitation in
a group of neurons due to positive feedback. The electrochemical
excitation that circulates in your head through a given group of cells over a
long period of time is pacrumple. You are a physicist interested in
electromagnetic processes in complex environments, and you do not
realize that by imposing a suitable electromagnetic field on your head, we
can suspend the circulation of excitation in any group of cells! After all,
there is nothing simpler! We can make you not only forget everything you
know, but also remember what you never knew. However, it is not in our
interest to resort to such ... uh... artificial techniques. We hope for your
prudence. The firm will pay you a substantial share of its dividends.

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 - What should I do? "
I have already said: to teach mathematics. From among the
unemployed, who, fortunately, are always in abundance in our country,
we recruit classes of twenty or thirty people who are most capable of
mathematics. Then we teach them higher mathematics for two or three
months...
"It's impossible," I said, "it's absolutely impossible. In such a short
time...
"That is possible, Rauch. Keep in mind that you will have a very
intelligent audience in front of you, with good thinking and a wonderful
mathematical memory. We'll take care of that. It's in our power...
- Also artificial? With the help of a pulse generator? I asked.
Bolz nodded his head.
"So, do you agree?"
I clenched my eyelids tightly and thought. So Daenis and all his friends
in the ward are normal people and everything they told me yesterday is
true. This means that this company has really learned to command human
thoughts, will, and feelings with the help of electromagnetic pulse fields in
order to make money for itself. I felt that Bolz was looking at me
attentively, and I had to make a decision immediately. It was terribly
difficult. If I agree, it means that I will have to teach people mathematics
in order to then artificially force them to expend their mental abilities until
they are completely exhausted, until the living matter of the brain is
completely worn out, after which they will go to the "Orphanage" forever.
If I refuse, the same will happen to me.
"So, you agree?" Boltz repeated, touching my shoulder.
"No," I said decisively. I cannot be an accomplice in this disgusting
affair.
"As you wish," he sighed. "I'm very sorry.
A minute later he got up from the table busily, went to the door and,
opening it, shouted:
"Ayder, Shrank, come in here!"
"What are you going to do with me?" I asked, getting up.
- To begin with, we will take the pulse-code spectrum of your nervous
system.
-That is?
- That is, we will make a card in which the shape, intensity and
frequency of impulses responsible for each of your mental and intellectual
states will be recorded.
"But I won't allow it. I will protest. I...
"Take the professor to the testing laboratory," Boltz said in an
indifferent voice and turned away from me to the window.

635
 7
As I entered the Krafftstudt testing laboratory, I came to a decision
which was destined to play an outstanding part in the whole affair. I
reasoned as follows. Now they will do something to me that will give
Kraftstudt and his gang information about my inner spiritual world. They
will try to establish by what forms of electromagnetic influence on my
nervous system it is possible to evoke certain emotions, experiences and
sensations in me. If they succeed, then I will be completely in their power.
If not, then I will be able to retain some of my independence, which they
will not be able to control. I may need it very much in the future. Hence, I
will have to try my best to confuse the cards of these ultra-scientific
bandits, deceiving them as much as I can. And this must be possible to
some extent. After all, it was not for nothing that yesterday in the ward I
heard one of Kraftstudt's slaves declare that the impulse-code
characteristic of a person is individual, with the exception of mathematical
thinking.
I was led into a large room. It was, however, very cramped because of
the bulky instruments that filled it. The room resembled the management
of a small power plant. In the center there was a console with dashboards
and scales. To the left, behind a metal mesh, was a large transformer, and
several generator lamps smouldered with reddish light on the porcelain
panels. A voltmeter and an ammeter were fixed on the metal mesh
shielding the generator. According to their testimony, apparently, the
power output of the generator was determined. In the very center rose a
cylindrical cabin, consisting of two metal parts - upper and lower,
connected by the middle part of a transparent insulating material.
Two of my escorts led me to the cabin. Two people stood up from the
control panel. One of them was the same doctor who had accompanied me
to Krafftstudt and who had given me anesthesia. The second is an
unknown stooped old man with smoothly licked sparse hair on a yellow
skull.
"We need to take a spectrum," said one of the escorts.
"They didn't," the doctor said rudely. -I knew it. I immediately
determined that Rauch belongs to the type of strong natures. This was to
be expected. You will end badly, Rauch," he said, addressing me.
"You too," I answered.
"Well, that's still unknown, but in relation to you, for sure.
I shrugged my shoulders.
- Will you do the whole procedure voluntarily or will you have to be
forced to do it? He asked, looking at me with an impudent look.
-Voluntarily. As a physicist, it is even interesting to me.

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 -Well done. In this case, take off your shoes and undress to the waist.
First of all, I must examine you, listen to you, measure your blood
pressure.
I undressed. The first part of the "spectrum shooting" was a routine
medical examination: "breathe, don't breathe," and so on. I knew that none
of this would tell them anything about my state of mind.
When the examination was over, the doctor said:
"Enter the cabin. Here you have a microphone. Answer all my
questions. I warn you: at one of the frequencies you will feel unbearable
pain. But it will instantly go away as soon as you scream.
With my bare feet, I stood on the porcelain floor of the cabin, and it
moved silently. An electric light bulb lit up overhead. The generator
hummed. It worked in a very low-frequency pulsem mode. The field
intensity appears to have become very high. I could feel it in the slow ebb
and flow of warmth throughout my body. In the joints, with each
electromagnetic pulse, there was a strange tingling. The muscles tensed
and weakened in time with the impulses. Not only the muscles were
tightened at the very surface of the skin, but also in the depths of the body.
The generator worked even more intensively, and the frequency of
warm waves increased.
"It's starting," I thought.
With a frequency of eight hertz, I will want to sleep. Is it possible that
my will will not be able to resist this influence? Can't I fool these
"researchers" at the first point of their "spectrum"? The frequency
increased slowly. In my mind, I counted the number of warm swells per
second. There are already one of them per second, two, three, four... more,
more. Drowsiness began to come over me, but I clenched my teeth, trying
not to fall asleep. Sleep was approaching like a heavy sticky block, all the
limbs were heavy, and their eyes were closing. It seemed that I was about
to fall. I bit my tongue with all my might, trying to drive away the heavy
feeling of drowsiness with pain. At that moment, as if from afar, I heard
someone's voice:
"Rauch, how are you feeling?"
- Thank you, good. A little cool," I lied. My voice seemed unfamiliar to
me. I continued to bite my lips and tongue with all my might.
"Don't you feel sleepy?"
"No," I answered, and thought to myself: "Another minute, and I will
fall asleep..."
And suddenly the drowsiness seemed to be removed by a hand. The
pulse frequency seems to have increased as it crossed the first critical
barrier. I suddenly felt fresh and invigorated, as it happens after a good
night's sleep. "Now I need to fall asleep," I decided, and, closing my eyes,

637
I sniffed loudly. I heard the doctor say to his accomplice,
"It's a strange case. Instead of eight and a half hertz, sleep occurs at ten.
Pfaff, write down these data," he said to the old man. "Rauch, how are you
feeling?"
I was silent, continuing to sniff loudly, all my muscles relaxed and my
knees resting on the wall of the cabin.
"Let's move on," the doctor said at last. - Increase the frequency, Pfaff.
A second later I "woke up". In the frequency band that I was just going
through, I had to experience a complex range of the most diverse
sensations and mood changes. I felt sad, then happy, then joyful, then sad.
"Now it's time to scream," I decided for some reason.
I don't remember what frequency it corresponded, but only when he
heard my scream, the doctor commanded loudly:
"Remove the tension!" This is the first time I meet such a madman.
Record. Pain at seventy-five hertz, when normal people have one hundred
and thirty. Let's move on.
"I still have to go through the frequency of one hundred and thirty...
"Now
, Pfaff, test him on ninety-three.
When this frequency was established, something completely
unexpected happened to me. I suddenly remembered the equations that I
had handed over to Kraftstaudt for solution, and with amazing clarity I
imagined the whole course of their solution. "This is the frequency that
stimulates mathematical thinking," flashed through my head.
"Rauch, tell me the first five members of the Bessel function of the
second kind," I heard the doctor's order.
I blurted out the answer as if from a machine gun. There was clarity in
my headbut crystal. The body was filled with a wonderful, joyful feeling
that you know everything and remember everything.
- Name the first ten decimal places of pi.
I answered this question as well.
- Solve the cubic equation.
The doctor dictated an equation with clumsy fractional coefficients.
I found the answer in two or three seconds, naming all three roots.
"Let's move on. Here he is like all normal people.
The frequency slowly increased. At one point, I suddenly wanted to
cry. A bitter lump rolled up to my throat, tears flowed from my eyes. And
then I burst out laughing. I laughed as hard as I could, as if I were being
tickled. I laughed, and the tears kept flowing and flowing...
- Another idiotic case... Not like everyone else. I immediately
determined that this is a strong nervous type with a tendency to
nervousness. When will he roar?

638
 I "roared" when I did not want to cry at all. My soul suddenly became
joyful and cloudless, as if in a slight intoxication. I wanted to sing songs
and laugh. I wanted to jump for joy. Everyone - Kraftstudt, Bolz, Dainis
and the doctor - seemed to be good, good-natured people. And at that
moment, by an effort of will, I forced myself to sob and blow my nose
loudly. I sobbed disgustingly, but convincingly enough to cause another
comment from the doctor:
- It's the opposite. There is nothing like a normal spectrum. We will
have to tinker with this.
"Will the frequency of one hundred and thirty be soon?" - I thought
with horror, when the joyful and carefree mood was again replaced by a
state of unaccountable anxiety, excitement, a feeling that something was
about to happen, something inevitable and terrible... At this time, I purred
a song to myself. I did it mechanically, without thinking, and my heart
beat faster and harder in anticipation of the terrible fatal inevitability.
When the frequency of the generator approached the one that causes the
arousal of pain, I felt it immediately. At first, the joints of the thumb of my
right hand ached badly, then I felt a sharp cut in the wound that I received at
the front. In a second, an excruciating, sharp, and stabbing pain spread
throughout his body. It penetrated into the eyes, teeth, muscles, and finally
the brain. The blood pounded wildly in his ears. Can't I stand it? Is it possible
that I will not have the will to cope with this nightmarish pain and not show
what I feel? After all, there were people who died under torture without
uttering a single groan. History knows heroes who died silently at the stake...
And the pain grew and grew. At last it reached its climax; It seemed that the
whole body turned into one continuous tangle of nerves torn to shreds. Purple
rings floated before my eyes, I almost lost consciousness, but I was silent.
"How do you feel, Rauch?" Again, as if from under the ground, I heard
the doctor's voice.
"A wild feeling of anger," I said through clenched teeth, "if I came
across you now..."
"Let's move on. He is a completely abnormal person. With him, it's the
opposite," the doctor repeated his conclusion.
When I was already losing consciousness, when I was ready to scream,
moan, the pain suddenly disappeared. His whole body was covered with
cold, sticky sweat. His muscles trembled.
Later, at a certain frequency, I suddenly saw a non-existent blindingly
bright light, which did not disappear even when I closed my eyes tightly,
then I experienced the sensation of wolf hunger, then I heard a complex
range of ogsounds, then it became cold, as if I had been taken out
completely naked into the cold.
I foresaw that I would have to endure all these sensations, and therefore

639
I answered all the doctor's questions, inappropriately, which caused
stormy comments on his part.
I knew that I was about to experience another terrible sensation, which I
had heard about yesterday in the ward. This is a feeling of loss of will. It is
the will that has saved me until now. It, this invisible force of the soul,
helped me to fight all those feelings that my tormentors artificially
aroused in me. But they will get to it with the help of their infernal pulse
generator. How will they know that I have lost it? I waited for this moment
with excitement. And it came.
Suddenly, I felt that I didn't care. It does not matter that I am in the
clutches of the Kraftstudt gang, all the people around him are indifferent, I
myself am indifferent. My head became completely empty. All the
muscles relaxed. The sensations disappeared. It was a state of complete
physical and mental devastation. Nothing made me happy, nothing
worried. I could not bring myself to think about anything, it was difficult
to force myself to raise my arm, move my leg, turn my head. It was some
kind of terrible lack of will, in which you can do anything with a person.
And yet, somewhere in the most secret corner of my consciousness,
there was a tiny spark of thought that persistently told me: "I need to...
Have to... We need ...",
"What do we need? What for? For what?" objected my whole being. "It
is necessary ... Have to... It was necessary..." - repeated, as it seemed to
me, the only cell of my consciousness, which, by some miracle, turned out
to be inaccessible to these omnipotent electromagnetic impulses, which
did with my nerves everything that the executioners from the Kraftstedt
company wanted.
Later, when I learned about the existence of the theory of the
centro-cephalic system of thought, according to which thinking itself, all
the cells of the cerebral cortex, in turn, are deeply centralized and
subordinate in their activity to a single, central, controlling group of cells,
I realized that this supreme psychic power remains immune to even the
strongest physical and chemical influences from outside. It was she,
apparently, who saved me. Because when the doctor suddenly ordered me:
"You will cooperate with Kraftstudt", I answered:
"No.
"You'll do whatever you're told."
-No.
- Hit your head against the wall.
-No.
"Let's move on. Mind you, Pfaff, he's a crazy fellow. But we will get to it.
I feigned a loss of will at the frequency when I actually had a feeling of
tremendous willpower, when I felt that I could do anything, I could force

640
myself to do anything. At that time I was overwhelmed with spiritual
strength that could mobilize me to the most courageous deeds. Checking
my deviations from the "normal" spectrum, the doctor stopped at this
frequency as well.
"If you have to give your life for the sake of people's happiness, will
you do it?"
-What for? I asked in a languid voice.
- Can you commit suicide?
-Can.
"Would you like to kill a war criminal, Obersturmführer Kraftstedt?"
-What for?
- Will you cooperate with us?
-Will.
"The devil knows what it is!" With such a case I meet, Probably for the
first and last time. With a frequency of one hundred and seventy-five - loss
of will. Record. Let's move on.
This "further" continued for about half an hour. After that, the
frequency spectrum of my nervous system was compiled. Now the doctor
"knew" all the frequencies by which it was possible to evoke any sensation
and spiritual state in me. At any rate, he thought he knew. In fact, the only
true frequency was the one that stimulated my mathematical abilities. But
it was extremely necessary for me, too. The fact is that I have conceived a
plan to make the criminal firm of Kraftstedt fly into the air. Mathematics
had to play an important role in the implementation of this plan.

8
It is known that weak-willed people are best amenable to hypnosis and
suggestion. It was this circumstance that the staff of the Krraftstudt
computing center used: they used it to "educate" their calculators in a
spirit of obedience and reverent fear of their "teacher".
Before I was put to work, I had to be educated. They could not start this
immediately because of my "abnormal" spectrum. I needed an individual
approach.
While a special workplace was being prepared for me somewhere, I
enjoyed relative freedom of movement. I was allowed to leave the living
room into the corridor and look into the classrooms where my comrades
studied and worked.
I could not take part in the collective prayers between the walls of the
huge aluminum condenser where all the victims of Kraftstedt praised the
head of the company for thirty minutes every morning. Devoid of will and
reason, they dejectedly repeated the words that someone had read to them
on the radio.

641
 "The joy and happiness of life is in knowing yourself," said a voice
from the loudspeaker.
"The joy and happiness of life is in knowing yourself," repeated in
chorus twelve kneeling men, whose will had been killed by the alternating
electric field circulating between the walls.
- By comprehending the secrets of the circulation of impulses through
the loops of nerve fibers, we learn happiness and joy.
- … happiness and joy," the choir repeated.
What a pleasure it is to realize that love, fear, pain, hatred, hunger,
anguish, joy are only the movement of electrochemical impulses in our
body!
- … in our body...
- How free and easy you feel, knowing what it is to feel!
- … feel...
"How pitiful is the man who does not know this great truth!
- … of the great truth..." - repeated the weak-willed slaves sadly.
"Our teacher and savior, Mr. Kraftstudt, gave us this happiness!
- … happiness...
"He gave us life.
"He gave us life.
- He revealed to us a simple truth about ourselves. May our teacher and
savior live forever!
I listened to this wild prayer as I peered through the glass door of the
classroom.
Sluggish, relaxed people with half-closed eyes stupidly repeated
delusional maxims. An electric generator, ten paces away, forcibly pushed
resignation and fear into their unresistible consciousness. There was
something inhuman, disgusting to the extreme, bestial and at the same
time exquisitely cruel. Looking at a pitiful crowd of human beings with
their will taken away, one involuntarily imagines people poisoned by
alcohol or drugs. Chemical poisons, squeezing with blood between the
cells of the brain, kill some and mutilate others, and a person ceases to be a
man, loses his dignity and greatness, and turns into an animal.
Here, between two shining aluminum walls, the role of poison was
played by invisible electromagnetic waves that penetrated into the most
secret cells of the body, made some die out and stimulated the work of
others, those that were necessary for the executioners...
After the prayer, the twelve victims went to a spacious hall, along the
walls of which there were desks. Above each table, a round aluminum
plate hung from the ceiling, which served as part of a giant capacitor. The
second plate appeared to be in the floor.
This hall with aluminum umbrellas hanging over the tables was

642
somewhat reminiscent of an open-air café. However, at the sight of people
sitting under umbrellas, this idyllic impression instantly disappeared.
Each of them found a sheet of paper on his desk with the conditions of
the problem to be solved. At first, the calculators looked meaninglessly at
the formulas and equations written out. At this time, they were still under
the influence of a frequency that deprived them of their will. But then the
frequency of ninety-three hertz was turned on, and a voice on the radio
ordered:
"Now start working!"
And all twelve people, grabbing notebooks and pencils, began to write
feverishly. This cannot be called work. It was like some kind of frenzy,
like a mathematical hysteria, like a pathological attack of mathematical
fever. People wriggled and writhed over notebooks. Their hands ran over
the lines so that it was impossible to keep track of what they were writing.
Their faces turned crimson from the tension, their eyes popped out of their
sockets.
This went on for about an hour. Then, when the movements of their
hands became angular and jerky, when their heads began to almost touch
the table, and the purple veins swelled on their outstretched necks, the
generator switched to a frequency of eight hertz. Everyone instantly fell
asleep.
Kraftstudt took care of the rest of his slaves!
Then everything began again.
Observing this terrible picture of mathematical frenzy, I witnessed how
one of the calculators could not stand it...
Watching him through the glass window, I suddenly noticed that he had
stopped writing. He turned strangely in the direction of his feverishly
working neighbor and stared at him senselessly for a few seconds, as if
trying to remember something. It seemed as if he had forgotten something
very necessary for the further solution of the problem.
Then he screamed in a terrible guttural voice and began to tear his
clothes, banging his head against the corner of the desk... Then he lost
consciousness and fell to the floor.
The rest of the calculators did not pay any attention to him, continuing
to frantically squeak their feathers.
At the sight of this, I was so furious that I began to bang my fist on the
locked door. I wanted to shout to the unfortunates to quit their jobs, break
out of this accursed room, rebel and destroy their tormentors...
"Don't be nervous, Mr. Rauch," I heard a calm voice next to me.
It was Bolz.
"You are executioners! What do you do with people! What right have
you to mock them like that?

643
 He smiled his soft, intelligent smile and said,
"Do you remember the myth of Achilles? The gods offered him a
choice between a long but calm life and a short but stormy one. He chose
the latter. These people too.
"They didn't make any choice. It is you who use your pulse generator to
make them squander their lives and rush headlong into self-destruction in
the name of your profits!
Bolz burst out laughing:
"Haven't you heard from them that they are happy? And they are really
happy. Look at the self-forgetfulness in which they work. Isn't happiness
in creative work?
"I am disgusted by your reasoning! It is well known that there is a
natural pace of human life and any attempts to speed it up are criminal.
Boltz laughed again:
"You are illogical, Professor. People used to moveor on foot and rode
horses, now they fly jet planes. In the past, news was passed from mouth
to mouth, from person to person, and for years it crept around the world,
but now people instantly know everything on the radio and by phone.
These are examples of how modern civilization is speeding up the pace of
life. And you don't consider it a crime. And the cinema, and the press, and
hundreds of artificial pleasures and pleasures - isn't this an acceleration of
the pace of life? So why do you consider the artificial acceleration of the
functions of a living organism a crime? I am sure that these people, living
a natural life, would not have done even a millionth of what they are doing
now. And the meaning of all life, as you know, consists in creative work
for the benefit of man. You will see for yourself when you join them. Soon
you will understand what joy and happiness are. In two days. A special
room is being prepared for you. You will work there alone, since, excuse
me, you are somewhat different from normal people.
Bolz patted me familiarly on the shoulder and left me alone to meditate
on his inhuman philosophy.

9
In accordance with the "spectrum" I began to be "educated" at the
frequency when my will could mobilize me for any, even the most
reckless feat. Therefore, it did not cost me anything to commit such
heroism as feigning the loss of will. I thoughtlessly. he was on his knees
and dejectedly repeating the prayerful nonsense glorifying Kraftstedt
behind the radio loudspeaker. In addition to prayer, I, as a beginner, was
instilled with some truths from neurocybernetics. The absurd meaning of
this teaching was that I had to remember to which impulse frequencies
correspond to certain human feelings. In my plans for the future, the

644
decisive factor belonged to the frequency that stimulates mathematical
abilities, and another, which, fortunately, turned out to be close to
ninety-three hertz.
"Education" lasted a week, and when I became. To look submissive
enough, I was put to work. The first task that I was given to solve was to
analyze the possibility of shooting down intercontinental missiles in space
above the ground.
I completed the entire calculation in two hours. The result was
disappointing: it was impossible to shoot down an intercontinental missile.
The second task, also of a military nature, concerned the calculation of
neutron beams necessary to detonate enemy atomic bombs. Here, too, the
answer turned out to be sad. The neutron gun should weigh several
thousand tons. With it, you can't get to the enemy's atomic bomb depots!
I really solved these problems with great pleasure and, probably, from the
outside I looked as obsessed as everyone else, with the only difference that the
generator, instead of making me a weak-willed doormat, on the contrary,
instilled cheerfulness and enthusiasm in me. A joyful feeling of cheerfulness
and faith in my own strength did not leave me during my vacation. I pretended
to be asleep, and I thought about my plans for revenge.
When I had finished with the tasks of the War Ministry, I began to solve in
my mind (so that no one knew) the most important mathematical problem for
me: how to blow up the computer center of Kraftstudt from the inside.
"Blow up" is, of course, a figurative expression. I had neither dynamite
nor TNT, and it was impossible to get it while in the stone Bag of the
"Shelter of the Wise Men". I had something else in mind.
If Herr Pfaff's pulse generator can evoke any feelings and emotions in a
person, why not use it to resurrect in the minds of the unfortunate victims
of the Nazis a sense of righteous anger and rebelliousness? If this could be
done, then these people would be able to stand up for themselves and deal
with a gang of ultra-modern bandits. But how to do it? How to replace the
frequency that stimulates mathematical work with the frequency that
arouses feelings of hatred, anger, rage in a person?
The generator was supervised by its creator, the elderly Dr. Pfaff. I saw
this old man on the day when the spectrum of my nervous system was
being filmed. Apparently, it was one of the fanatical engineers who enjoys
the twisted creation of his intellect. A mockery of human dignity was the
goal of his engineering thinking. The last thing I hoped for was the help of
Herr Pfaff. It was not included in my calculations at all. The generator had
to work at the frequency I needed without his help and against his desire.
When I thought of this, I was once again convinced of what a great science
theoretical physics is! Operating with formulas and equations, it not only
predicts the course of various physical phenomenanature, but also allows

645
you to save human lives...
Indeed, Mr. Pfaff's pulse generator, no matter what circuit it had,
radiated a certain amount of electricity. It is known that if a pulse
generator is overloaded, that is, if a power is taken away from it that is
greater than the design power, then its frequency begins to drop slowly at
first, and then sharply. This means that if you connect an additional load in
the form of ohmic resistance to it, you can make it work not at the
frequency that is indicated on the scale, but at a lower one.
The mathematical abilities of the Kraftstudt computers were exploited at a
frequency of ninety-three hertz. Feelings of anger and rage arise in people
when they are exposed to an alternating field with a frequency of eighty-five
hertz. This means that it is necessary to somehow extinguish eight hertz. You
need to calculate the additional load on the generator for this.
When I was in the test lab, I noticed the voltmeter and ammeter readings on
the generator. The product of these quantities gave me power. Now it
remained to solve the mathematical problem of the additional load...
I imagined in my mind the scheme of including in the generator all the
gigantic capacitors in which the unfortunate people were sitting. In my
mind for this configuration of capacitors, I solved Maxwell's equations
and calculated the values of the electric and magnetic field strengths. I
have corrected for the energy absorbed by the people in the capacitors, and
have thus established the value of the power expended by the generator to
stimulate the mental faculties of the calculators. It turned out that Mr.
Pfaff had only one and a half watts of power left!
This data was enough for me to solve the question of how to turn a
frequency of ninety-three hertz into eighty-five. To do this, it turned out to
be necessary to ground one of the capacitor plates through a resistance of
one thousand three hundred and fifty ohms.
I solved my Maxwell equations in my head in forty minutes, and when
I got the result, I wanted to scream with joy.
But where to get a piece of wire with such resistance? This resistance
must be chosen very precisely, because if it is different, the frequency will
not change as it should, and there will be no expected effect.
Racking my brains over this practical problem, on the solution of which
the fate of my whole plan depended, I was ready to smash my head on the
table, like the calculator I had recently seen. I feverishly went through in
my brain all sorts of possibilities to produce a resistance of a given value
with a fairly high accuracy, but I could not think of anything. The
consciousness of powerlessness in the face of solving the problem led me
to extreme despair, although it always seemed to me that the solution was
somewhere very close.
And when I was clutching my head in my hands and was about to howl

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in an inhuman voice, my eyes suddenly fell on a black plastic glass
standing on the edge of the desk. There were pencils in the glass. There
were ten pencils, all of different colors and all for different purposes.
Without thinking, I grabbed the first one I came across and, turning it in
front of my eyes, read that it was a pencil "2B". This meant that it was very
soft. The lead of a soft pencil contains a large amount of graphite, which
conducts electricity well. Then I found a pencil "3B", "5B", and then came
the pencils of the "H" series - hard, especially for carbon drawing. I was
going over in my hands pencils, and my brain was working feverishly.
And suddenly, out of nowhere, I remembered the resistivity of pencil
leads: "The pencil "5H" has a lead resistance of two thousand ohms." A
second later, I was holding a 5H pencil in my hands. The solution to my
Maxwell equations was found not only mathematically, but also in
practice. In my hands I held a piece of lead squeezed into a wooden frame,
with which I was going to deal with a gang of fascist barbarians.
How strange it is! What amazing discoveries mathematical science
makes! At first there was a long chain of observations, reasoning,
analyses, then again observations - over the real situation, then abstract
calculations, the solution of equations derived by the great Maxwell in the
last century, and as a result - an accurate mathematical calculation, which
showed that in order to destroy the Kraftstedt company, it was necessary...
pencil "5H"! Isn't theoretical physics an amazing science?!
I clutched the pencil in my hand as if it were the greatest jewel,
carefully hid it in my pocket, almost tenderly, and began to think about
how to get two pieces of wire, one to attach to the plate of the condenser,
the other to the radiator in the corner of the room, and between them to
fasten the lead of the pencil.
I thought about this for no more than one minute. I remembered the
electric desk lamp in the room where I lived with all the computers. The
cord in the lamp was flexible and therefore stranded. It can be cut off and
unraveled into individual veins. The length of the cord is about one and a
half meters. This means that more than ten meters of thin wire can be
obtained from it. That was quite enough for me.
I finished my calculations at the moment when a voice from the radio
loudspeaker announced that it was time for us, that is, me and all the
"normal" calculators, to go to lunch.

10
In the room where we lived, no one used a table lamp. She was
standing in the corner of the room on a high bedside table, dusty, infested
with flies, with a cord wrapped around the counter.
Early in the morning, when everyone went to wash in accordance with

647
the daily routine, I cut the cord from the lamp with a table knife and hid it
in my pocket. During breakfast, I put the knife in my pocket and, when
everyone had left for prayer, went to the toilet. In a few seconds, I cut off
the insulation from the cord and exposed ten thin veins one and a half
meters long each. Then I carefully split the pencil, took the lead out of the
shaft and broke off three-tenths of it, so that the remaining seven-tenths
had the resistance I needed. At the ends of the lead, I made small grooves
and wrapped a thin wire around it. The resistance was ready. Now all that
remained was to connect it between the capacitor plate and the ground.
This had to be done during work, at the most tactically convenient time.
The computers worked eight hours a day, with breaks of ten minutes after
each hour of work. After the lunch break, at one o'clock in the afternoon, as a
rule, all the co-owners of the Kraftstudt company visited the hall where the
computers worked. At this time, the head of the company watched with
undisguised pleasure how his victims wriggled and writhed over mathematical
problems. This was a very important moment, and I decided that it was at this
time that it was necessary to add an additional load to the generator circuit in
order to change the frequency of the pulses.
When I came to my workplace with ready. resistance in my pocket, I
was in a particularly high spirits. At the entrance to my study, I met the
doctor. He brought a piece of paper with a new problem.
"Hey, healer, just a second," I called out to him. The doctor stopped and
looked at me in surprise.
"I want to talk to you."
"Well," he grunted, perplexed.
"Here's the thing. I began, "while I was working, I had the idea to return
to the original conversation with Herr Bolz. I think that my hotness played
a bad joke on me. I ask you to tell Bolz that I agree to be a teacher of
mathematics for the new additions to the Kraftstudt firm.
The doctor chewed the tip of the thread from the collar of his dressing
gown, spat, and then said with genuine frankness:
"Upon my word, I'm glad for you! I told those weirdos that with your
spectrum, it's best to work as a supervisor or teacher for all this math shit.
We really need a good taskmaster. And you're the perfect guy for that.
You have completely different working frequencies. You could sit right
among them and rush the negligent or those whose frequency of excitation
of mathematical abilities does not fall into resonance.
"Of course, doctor. But I think that it is still better for me to be a teacher
of mathematics for new additions. By God, I don't want to smash my head
against the corner of the table, like the eccentric I saw a few days ago.
"A sensible decision," he said. "We need to talk to Kraftstudt. I think he
will agree.

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 - And when will the result be known?
"I think today, at one o'clock in the afternoon, when we will make a tour
of the computer center and inspect our farm.
-Ok. With your permission, I will come to you. The doctor nodded his
head and left. On my desk I found a piece of paper on which were written
the conditions for calculating a new pulse generator per mFour times
higher than the current one. From this I concluded that Kraftstudt had
decided to quadruple his business. He wanted not thirteen, but fifty-two
computers to work in his center. I tenderly touched the pencil lead with
two wire ends. I was very afraid that it would break in my pocket.
The conditions of the problem for the calculation of the new generator
convinced me that all my calculations regarding the existing generator
were correct. This gave me even greater faith in the success of the
enterprise, and I was looking forward to one o'clock in the afternoon.
When the clock on the wall showed fifteen o'clock, I took out of my
pocket a pencil lead with a resistance of one thousand three hundred and
fifty ohms and attached one end of it with wire to a bolt on the surface of
an aluminum umbrella above my desk. To the second end, I screwed a few
more pieces of wire. The total length of the wire was long enough to reach
the radiator in the corner of the room.
The last minutes dragged on excruciatingly long. When the minute
hand of the clock touched the number "12", and the hour hand froze on the
number "1", I quickly connected the free end of the wire to the battery and
went out into the corridor. Kraftstudt was walking towards me,
accompanied by the engineer Pfaff, Bolz and the doctor. When they saw
me, they smiled. Boltz motioned for me to approach. After that, we
stopped at the glass door of the hall where the computers were working.
Pfaff and Kraftstudt were standing in front of the windows of the hall,
and I did not see what was going on inside.
"You have acted prudently," said Bolz in a whisper, "Herr Kraftstudt
accepts your offer. You can be sure that you will not regret it.
"Listen, what is it?" Kraftstedt asked suddenly, turning to his
companions.
Engineer Pfaff cringed and looked strangely through the window. My
heart beat faster.
- They don't work! They're staring around! Pfaff whispered angrily.
I squeezed to the window and looked inside. What I saw exceeded all
my expectations. People who used to sit hunched over their desks
straightened up, looked around, and talked to each other in loud, firm
voices.
- Perhaps, guys, it's time to end this mockery. Do you understand what
they are doing to us? Daenis said excitedly.

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 -Of course! These vampires always tell us that we have found
happiness by surrendering to their pulse generator. They should be put
under this generator!
"What's going on there?" Kraftstudt exclaimed menacingly.
"I have no idea," muttered Pfaff.
"Why, they're behaving like normal people now!" Look, they're excited
about something. They are angry. Why don't they do the calculations?
Kraftstudt turned crimson.
"We will not fulfill at least five military orders on time," he said
through clenched teeth. "We need to make them work immediately.
Boltz clicked the key, and the whole company entered the hall.
"Get up, your teacher and savior has come," Boltz said loudly.
After this phrase, an oppressive silence reigned in the hall. Two dozen
eyes, full of anger and hatred, looked in our direction. All it took was a
spark to make it all explode. Everything in my soul rejoiced, because I
visibly felt that I was making my pencil lead with a resistance of one
thousand three hundred and fifty ohms. This is where the collapse of the
Kraftstudt company lurked! I stepped forward and loudly, to the whole
hall, said:
"What are you waiting for? The hour of your liberation has come. Your
fate is in your hands. Destroy this dastardly gang that has been preparing
the "Refuge of the Wise" as your last refuge!
After these words, an explosion followed. The calculators quickly
broke out of their seats and rushed at the stunned Kraftstudt and his
accomplices. Someone tore aluminum umbrellas from the ceilings,
someone broke glass in the windows. Instantly, a radio loudspeaker was
torn off the wall, and desks were overturned with a crash. The floor was
littered with pieces of paper with mathematical calculations.
I commanded:
"Don't miss Kraftstudt! After all, he is a war criminal. It was he who
organized this diabolical computing center, where people died, wasting
the precious forces of their minds in his favor! Hold the scoundrel Pfaff
tight! He is the author of the design of the pulse generator! Give Bolz a
good hand! He was preparing new batches of the doomed in order to
replace those who would go mad...
I walked in front of the column of excited people dragging the
criminals behind them. The former calculators passed through the blind
hall where I first turned in my mathematical problems, then noisily
squeezed through the narrow walls of the underground labyrinth, and
finally broke out.
As we walked out of the small door in the stone wall of the Sages'
Refuge, we were blinded by the hot summer sun. Around the door leading

650
to the Krafftstudt apartments, a huge crowd of residents of our town
gathered. They were standing in front of the door and shouting something
loudly. At our appearance there was a moment's silence. Hundreds of
surprised eyes stared at us. Then I heard someone exclaim loudly:
"Why, it's Professor Rauch! He's alive! It also fell into the hands of
these scoundrels!
Daenis and his comrades pushed forward the beaten leaders of the
Kraftstudt computing center. One by one, Kraftstudt, Bolz, Pfaff, and the
doctor rose to their feet. They wiped their faces and looked cowardly at us,
then at the menacing crowd around.
Suddenly a thin, thin girl stepped forward. I recognized her as the same
girl who brought packages with problem solutions to my apartment.
"There he is," she said, pointing her finger at Kraftstudt, "and he is,"
she added, nodding at Pfaff. "They made it all up...
There was a murmur in the crowd. A line of men followed the girl to the
criminals. Another second, and they would have torn the bandits to pieces.
Then I raised my hand and said;
- Dear citizens! We are civilized people, and it is not fitting for us to
punish these beasts endowed with modern learning. We will do more good
to humanity if we tell the whole world about their atrocities. They need to
be judged by a harsh court, and here are the witnesses for the prosecution.
I pointed to a group of calculators from the Kraftstudt company. - They
will tell you how, using the achievements of modern science and
technology, the former Hitlerite executioners mocked a person, how they,
destroying people, filled their pockets with gold.
"We know it, we all know it, Professor Rauch!" - shouted around. "Elsa
Blinter told us everything after she saw your portrait in a black frame in
the newspaper.
The excited crowd quickly returned to the city. In front of me were my
comrades in the computer center. A young girl, Elsa Blinter, was walking
beside me. She held on tightly to my hand and whispered,
"After I brought you the last packet and You said "spit on the
instructions", I thought about it for a long time. You know, when I
returned to Herr Kraftstedt after talking to you, it was as if I had gained
some kind of strength. They put me between the walls and asked questions
about you. And I found the strength to tell them lies. I don't know why I
did it...
"Any man who hates his enemies and loves his friends will do it.
"That's true," said Elsa. "That's what happened to me. And then I got
brave and ran away from them. And I began to tell everyone in the city
what Mr. Kraftstudt was doing. And today, on Sunday, everyone came
here.

651
 Kraftstedt and his accomplices in the computer center were handed
over to the authorities. The burgomaster of our city made a pathetic speech
with many quotations from the Bible and the Gospel. At the end of his
speech, he said that "for such subtle crimes, Mr. Kraftstedt and his
colleagues will be tried by the Supreme Federal Court." The head of the
computer center and his companions were taken away in cars without
windows. Since then, no one knows anything about them. There were also
no reports in the newspapers about how they were punished. Moreover,
rumors have penetrated our town that Kraftstudt and his friends have
entered the civil service. Allegedly, they were instructed to organize a
large computer center to serve the Ministry of War.
I am always thrilled when, as I open a newspaper, I find the same
advertisement on the back page: "Men between the ages of twenty-five
and forty are required to work in a large computer center."
That's why I decided to publish my notes. Let the whole world know
about this and demand that the criminals be punished.

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 Time Factor
In the laboratory, I was met by a small old man with a white thin beard,
with tired, slightly watery eyes. When I closed the door behind me, a
painful grimace appeared on his face. It was obvious that I had come at the
wrong time. Or was it a moment in his life when he least wanted to see
anyone?
"I'm from the newspaper," I began timidly. "I called you yesterday...
"Yes, yes... But...
"Perhaps I should come another time?" I hurried and took hold of the
doorknob.
He thought for a moment. It was very quiet in the laboratory, and I
heard him breathing quickly and shallowly, like an old man. And from the
next room came the sound of murmuring water.
"Since they've come... Just for a while, please. I'm very busy, very
busy.
Limping slightly, he walked over to an armchair by his desk. I sat down
opposite him. There was a moment's silence.
"Oh, yes. Well, start your interview, as it is called, or something...
I smiled and took out a notebook in which I wrote down all the
questions I was going to ask him in advance.
"Allow me, I will ask questions, in the order in which I would like to
cover them in the newspaper. First. How many employees do you have in
your laboratory?
"Twenty-six," he said.
— How many of them are scientists and how many are laboratory
assistants?
"They are all scientists. Only some are more experienced, others less.
— How many research topics does our team perform?
"One."
"Which one?"
– Synthesis of living protein.
— And how far have you progressed? Is there any hope of getting an
artificial live protein?
Academician Brainin first smiled, and then laughed a small sly laugh. I
was embarrassed.
— Young man, how do you imagine "moving forward" in the field of

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live protein synthesis? What do you think it should be?
I shrugged my shoulders in confusion:
"Well, as a result of some chemical reactions, you should get something
that will resemble a living thing... Make some kind of bacterium or, at
least, a virus from... air, various salts and something else...
Without finishing my sentence, I blushed...
"Oh, yes...
He slapped his knees and stood up. I imagined what a headache I would
get from the scientific editor of the newspaper for such an interview.
Brainin stopped behind me and, putting his hands on my shoulders,
suddenly asked:
"Tell me, do you believe in God?"
I shuddered at the surprise.
"Of course not," I muttered, looking at him uncomprehendingly.
"And in the world mind, or in the Hegelian world spirit, or in something
like that?"
I shook my head resolutely.
"And I don't believe it," Brainin said, and sat down in his former seat. "I
know that there is no god, no world mind, no spirit, no devil. And you
know it. But there is a fundamental difference between my knowledge and
yours. I use my knowledge, but you don't.
The last one motioned for me to sit down and continued:
"The important thing, young man, is not what we know, but how we use
our knowledge. I tend to think that real knowledge should be called
exactly that which is used in everyday life and work. And what lies in your
head like an unread book on a shelf – no one needs this knowledge.
Neither to society, nor to the individual owner.
I looked at the philosopher from under my browNot understanding
what all this reasoning about faith in God and about useful and useless
knowledge has to do with it.
I told him directly:
"I don't understand what all this conversation is about, and what it has
to do with—"
— Most directly. When I thought carefully that there is neither God nor
Holy Spirit, then I decided that the synthesis of a living protein, or rather, a
living organism, should be carried out differently from what we have done
so far. Until now, we have been doing this, so to speak, in a scientific
way...
"Have you decided to rely on the help of supernatural forces in your
work?" I ventured to ask Brainin.
"Yes, if only the human mind can be called a supernatural force.
"Well, you know, Mikhail Fyodorovich! You speak in paradoxes. I just

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don't understand anything! I exclaimed.
See. There is no God. There is no universal reason. Nature is brainless
and stupid, like this empty flask. And she still created life! The question is,
how? I rubbed my temples with my hands, trying to understand what the
academician was saying.
"Without laboratories, without a well-thought-out plan of research
work, without processing literary data, without colloquia and scientific
discussions, nature took and created life! And we are working according
to plan, conducting experiments, re-reading hundreds of books and
scientific articles by our predecessors and associates, analyzing,
synthesizing, arguing, conducting experiments again, and so far, as you
deigned to say, we have not even made a lousy virus, not to mention
bacteria. How do you like it?
To be honest, I didn't like it. Academician Brainin explained himself to
me in very strange terms.
— Have you ever wondered why nature did not create a nut or, for
example, a bicycle? No one has seen anywhere either natural nuts or
bicycles growing on trees. And they are easier to make than a live
bacterium!
"It's just," I babbled, "it's just that no one needs it... Nature does not
need this...
"Stupidity again! He
pursed his pale lips and, smiling, shook his head negatively:
"In order to create a nut or a bicycle, you need reason, you know,
reason! And nature does not have it. But you don't need any mind to create
a living cell. And nature created it! That's the whole story for you.
For several minutes we sat looking into each other's eyes. I had no hope
of understanding anything, he was frankly enjoying my bewilderment.
The plan of my interview was shattered, and I had no idea what I would
bring to the editorial office.
Suddenly a thought struck me.
"But it is known that nature created life by accident!
"Oh, that's closer to the truth!" That's almost true! And what do we do?
"And we want to approach the problem of creating living matter
consciously!"
— Also correct, except for the definition of where and in what our
consciousness and our mind are needed. Are we wise to approach the
problem of living protein synthesis too intelligently?
"I don't understand, explain."
— At the beginning of our conversation, you said that you expect our
work to synthesize some bacteria or viruses from the air, salts, and so on.
This is how most people imagine the solution to the problem. And look

655
what it means. For example, a molecule of a fairly simple natural milk
protein – lactoglobulin – has a molecular weight of about forty thousand.
AnalIt is made up of about two thousand carbon atoms, three thousand
hydrogen atoms, five hundred oxygen atoms, five hundred nitrogen
atoms, and twenty sulfur atoms.
Any protein is basically built from twenty amino acids with an average
molecular weight of about a hundred. This means that lactoglobulin
contains about four hundred amino acids. We must bind these acids in one
strictly defined order. The number of variants into which these four
hundred amino acids can be synthesized is expressed by a fantastic
number without a name, which contains about a thousand digits. Even if,
using the means of modern science, we reduce the number of variants by
millions of billions of times, then even then we will have no hope of
synthesizing the protein we need in our lifetime, even if every inhabitant
of the globe works on it 24 hours a day! Only for the analysis of one rather
simple protein molecule – insulin – the English chemist Sanger and his
colleagues spent 10 years. But what about the analysis and synthesis of
hundreds of thousands of more complex proteins that make up living
organisms?
I was stunned by these considerations.
— So, in the near future this problem will look no better than it did a
hundred years ago? I asked in a whisper.
Brainin rubbed his beard and smiled mischievously.
"No, it's better. Much better. What's more, you're damn lucky! Living
protein has already been synthesized.
I jumped to my feet and grabbed his thin arms.
"It can't be!" "
I'm not deceiving you." Sit down, and I'll tell you how it happened. And
then I will show you the first living creature created by man in the
laboratory. But first you have to understand that the method of synthesis
was completely different from what we imagined it to be.
Panting with impatience, I sat down comfortably and began to eagerly
listen to Academician Brainin. It was felt that he was in an elated, festive
mood. He straightened up and walked around the room. Then he stopped
at a black board hanging on the wall and wrote on it in chalk:
a) nature acted blindly, without any pre-developed plan;
b) she had enough time to try any options;
c) it is enough to hit the target once, and life on Earth will be born
forever.
— Do you know how major discoveries are made? Brainin asked me after
he had finished writing. "They are done when scientists turn off the beaten
path. Like chains, we are tied to the chariot of scientific history and follow

656
the same method from generation to generation. We are improving the
methods of scientific research and thereby becoming even more closely
attached to established traditions. The path that most organic chemists have
taken to solve the problem of living protein is based on the orthodox view
that anything that can be analyzed can then be synthesized. For these two
stages of chemical research, science has created a huge theoretical and
experimental apparatus, and it works flawlessly in all cases where what we
want to create is not very complex in its structure. Perhaps in the near future
we will be able to see, in the full sense of the word, not only the elemental
composition of protein molecules, but also the order in which the atoms of
the elements are arranged in the molecule. But today we do not yet have such
means, and very often we accidentally string one molecule on top of another,
one atom on top of another, in our test tubes. One of the fundamentally
important experiments, which in our time has been put at odds with the
orthodox method of organic synthesis, is as follows. In a mixture of water
vapor, methane and ammonia, that is, gases that apparently existed in the
primordial atmosphere of our Earth, an electric spark passed for several
weeks. What happened at the same time, no one knows. The resulting
chemical products settled to the bottom of the vessel in which the water was
boiling. And after the end of the experiment, the composition was analyzed.
What do you think was found in this water?
I shrugged my shoulders.
"It turned out to contain dissolved amino acids, which make up all
natural proteins! Pay attention to the method of the experiment! Some
mixture of gases is taken and something is done with it. And as a result,
substances are obtained, the synthesis of which requires many years of
hard work by analysts and synthetics. The chemist who conducted this
experiment did not act in accordance with the method of
analysis-synthesis. He followed the path that nature itself followed!
"If the hypothesis of the spontaneous generation of life is true," the
scientist continued, "then, therefore, having created in the laboratory the
conditions that once existed on Earth, we must necessarily obtain living
matter. The whole question is in time: how soon will living matter arise by
itself? In nature, the process of evolution of the simplest chemical
substances to complex protein and then to a living cell probably lasted
several million years, and it would seem that there is no hope of
accelerating this process. How to accelerate the process of the origin of
living matter? How to defeat the time factor, which did not limit nature in
its continuous attempts to accidentally combine substances so that living
matter was formed from them? It is in the answer to these questions that I
see the main purpose of the human mind. Not in the analysis and synthesis
of protein substances, but in the most accurate reproduction of the

657
conditions that existed millions of years ago on Earth, and in the
acceleration of the process of the origin of life. The human mind must
conquer time. This is the main task of protein synthesis. By the way, I set
myself the task of synthesizing a living creature within a month, or rather,
three weeks.
- Why such a period? Brainin
smiled again and rubbed his beard.
— I wanted to do all this at a time when everyone My employees are on
vacation.
"Strange. Didn't you need their help?
"You see, I didn't want to appear before them as an old man who had
lost his mind. The experiment as I set it up looks so wild, so incredibly
stupid that... In general, I would be uncomfortable in front of my
comrades, who consider me still capable of doing scientific work.
Especially if the results of the experiment were negative.
"Then I don't understand anything.
— It's all about the time factor. You probably know the classic
description of Mother Earth as it appears to our enlightened imagination in
those remote epochs when life was just beginning. There was no oxygen
in the atmosphere, but there were such primary gases as ammonia,
methane, water vapor. The seas were a soup saturated with various
substances, in which everything was mixed, reacted, combined, split, and
so on. And all this in conditions of intense heat, furious ultraviolet and
X-ray radiation of the sun, cosmic radiation, fantastic thunderstorms with
terrible lightning and deafening peals of thunder. So, in order to speed up
the solution of the problem, I decided to begin the experiment by creating
a suitable model of the primitive Earth. My model has to be "primitive"
enough that life can spontaneously arise on it, but not so "young" that the
process starts out of nowhere. And so, in order to defeat time, I decided to
"help" my miniature Earth with all the means of modern chemistry. Why
wait for metal carbides to arise on their own? Why should we expect the
appearance of the simplest amino acids when all this has already been
synthesized? I decided to put at the disposal of chance everything that
modern chemistry has accumulated and that is in my laboratory. Can you
imagine what an ancient alchemist I looked like, throwing into my sea in
an aquarium under a glass dome a huge amount of reagents, organic and
inorganic, containing atoms of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, iron,
nickel, zinc and other elements?
Don't think that I did it without any system. I introduced chemical
reagents into the primeval sea in approximately those ratios that would
provide an approximate elemental composition of proteins. However, I
did not bother to weigh myself too accurately. After all, nature, creating a

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living protein, did not use analytical balances! Powerful electric stirrers
continuously stirred the contents of the bath. Under it there were electric
stoves that heated water to boiling. Four powerful ultra-high-pressure
mercury lamps shone fiercely over my primeval ocean, emitting streams
of ultraviolet rays. Two X-ray installations irradiated the sea with streams
of hard radiation, and radioactive isotopes placed in different places
rained down streams of alpha, beta and gamma rays on the substances in
the bath, penetrating the broth with powerful beams of neutrons.
Today you will see this wild structure! When I created it, I thought I
was crazy to myself. If my collaborators had seen this experience, which
resembled those of insane alchemists, they would have decided that my
place was not in a modern laboratory.
And so, when everything was ready, I put my primitive nature into
action. From the high-voltage generator, blue lightning pierced the
atmosphere above the bathroom. Water was boiling, saturated with more
than ten thousand substances. Transformers of electrical mixers hummed.
Dosimeters showed a high degree of radioactivity in the solution and in
the space surrounding the bathtub.
I followed everything that was happening in the ocean using
instruments taken to another room. From time to time, I turned off the
radiation sources and went in to see what was happening. Amazing events
took place in the aquarium: the solution was painted in bright colors, then
suddenly precipitation fell on the bottom, then suddenly the walls were
covered with a silvery coating, then rainbow streaks appeared on the
surface, as if oil was poured on the liquid. And I continued to stir the
contents, exposing the solution at random to the most fantastic effects of
temperature and radiation. Two or three times I cooled the bath almost to
freezing, then reheated it to a boil, repeatedly increasing and decreasing
the intensity and severity of the X-ray and ultraviolet radiation. Several
times I put an ultrasonic vibration sensor to the bathtub and pierced it with
powerful streams of ultrasound. What happened in my model of the
primeval sea can probably be compared to hell itself, and this hell ceased
to exist only when the calendar showed that my employees would soon
begin to return from vacation. I will never forget the day when I first saw
the solution in the aquarium in a calm state. The liquid was crystal clear,
there was a layer of loose grayish sediment at the bottom, small gas
bubbles slowly rose from different corners of the bath. "If there is
anything alive in a liquid, it must breathe." Then I decided to let some air
under the hood that covered the bathroom. As soon as I did this, a real
miracle suddenly happened before my eyes. Tiny stars shone throughout
the mass of the solution, which began to turn into translucent jelly-like
grains before our eyes. They quickly merged with each other into lumps,

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then into large clumps, and finally began to grow! Soon some specimens
grew as large as a hen's egg, and then I noticed that the elongated opal
mass was not uniform, but that a blood-red spot was visible in its very
center. It was the nucleus of a living primeval cell!
"Why do you think so?" I asked, amazed.
"Come on, and I'll show you why I think so!"
"Will you show me the synthesized living protein?"
"I'll show you a synthesized living being.
We crossed Brainin's office and entered the side door. He turned the
switch, and the laboratory was filled with a bright electric light. I stopped
dead in front of a strange structure that resembled a giant aquarium under
a thin glass dome. X-ray tubes bent their trunks on metal racks over a
rectangular glass box, ultra-high-pressure mercury lamps gleamed on
tripods in reflectors. The aquarium stood on two metal supports, under
which electric wires went.
Brainin walked around the bathtub from the opposite side and turned on
the searchlight, which pierced the entire thickness of the liquid with bright
rays of light. I cried out in amazement. The liquid, which had seemed to
me just cloudy before, suddenly shone with all the colors of the rainbow.
The rainbow spots did not stand still, but slowly moved in different
directions. I came closer and froze, fascinated by the amazing, unique
picture.
Almost transparent balls, pulsating, slowly moved in different
directions. In the center of each of them was an amber spot, which, falling
into the direct rays of the searchlight, flashed with a blood-red light. The
balls periodically slowly opslumped to the bottom, stretched out into
oblong cakes, capturing the sediment that had settled to the bottom. For a
moment they became opaque, almost milky in color, but gradually
lightened again...
"They're eating!" I exclaimed, understanding the meaning of these
periodic immersions.
— Yes, they feed and divide, like any living cell. Look at this amazing
sight.
The academician pointed to a completely motionless specimen that
seemed to stick to the very surface of the liquid. His body was tightly
covered with many gas bubbles, and he grew and swelled before his eyes.
"Now I will shine a light on it, and you will see a real classical mitosis,
something that we can now observe only with a microscope.
Now it was clear that, in addition to the red core, two yellowish stars
appeared in the body of the gelatinous creature at both poles of its
elongated body, from which thin delicate rays stretched out to the core.
Thin threads sucked to opposite sides of the core and began to contract.

660
The cannonball fluttered and suddenly exploded in half. At the same time,
the entire giant cage narrowed in the middle, as if it had been pulled by an
invisible belt, and tore into two pieces.
I stood by the bathtub, shocked. And the gentle transparent creatures
were all dividing, moving, colliding...
"Tell me, why are they all the same?" Why didn't many species of
living things arise in your ocean at once?
Brainin shrugged.
— This also surprises me a little. Tomorrow I am going to conduct an
experiment on the creation of new species.
"How?"
— If you believe modern theories, then one of the factors in the
emergence of new species of living beings is chromosome mutations. In
the nuclei of my primitive cells, or, as I dubbed them, proteinoids, there
are probably chromosomes that determine and stabilize their current
appearance. If I can influence the chromosomes so that their chemical
structure changes, perhaps new species will appear.
— How are you going to affect these chromosomes?
— Gamma rays. It is known from radiobiology that gamma rays are
especially likely to cause mutations.
"Mikhail Fedorovich! If you will allow me, I will come to you
tomorrow with a camera and photograph everything that is happening here
and what will arise after your new experience. After all, this is a real,
revolution in biology! I am sure that now that you will be able to
demonstrate to the whole world what you have managed to accomplish
during these three weeks, no one will count you... by this very ...
I shyly passed my hand over my forehead.
"Do you mean that the winner is not judged?"
"Exactly.
"Well, come.
We agreed to meet with Brainin in a day.
As I left the laboratory, I saw him roll out a huge lead bomb from the
next room, which probably contained a radioactive isotope that emits
gamma rays.
The next day I deliberately did not appear in the editorial office, so as
not to disturb my comrades prematurely. If we write about the outstanding
discovery of Academician Brainin, then it is better to write about
everything at once: about how the experiment was set, and what
happened, and what happened next.
Clutching my camera, I walked around the city, and gelatinous balls
slowly floated before my eyes, shimmering with all the colors of the
rainbow. I saw them in shop windows, in passers-by's glasses. I kept

661
looking at my watch, impatientlym waiting for the hour when I can cross
the threshold of the biosynthesis laboratory again.
At last evening came. It was already seven o'clock when I flew up the
stairs to the third floor of a building I knew.
There was no answer to my knock for a long time. Then hurried
footsteps were heard outside the door, and as it swung open, Brainin
appeared, out of breath and agitated, holding in his hands what looked like
a child's spatula.
"It's so good that you came," he said, without greeting. "You're going to
help me now."
He literally ran into the room where the aquarium stood, and I followed
him.
At the door I stopped, not believing my eyes. Everything was here as it
was yesterday, but in front of me there was an aquarium filled with a mass
as black as pitch!
"What happened?!"
"They're all new creatures," Brainin muttered. "Lift the coverslip and
I'll try to get them out..."
"Who?"
"Damn mutants, be they wrong. Lift.
Without understanding anything, I lifted a large flat glass above the
aquarium, and Brainin, leaning over the edge, began to fumble in the black
liquid. There was a strong smell of hydrogen sulfide from the bathtub. For
a moment he grabbed something, and for a moment a brown gelatinous
mass appeared above the surface of the liquid, which shook noisily and,
slipping off, flopped into the liquid.
Brainin stepped aside and wiped his sweaty forehead.
"I'll rest a little." It seems that everything is lost...
"What happened to you?" I asked as we sat down in his office.
"When you left, I set up a cobalt gun under the bathtub and randomly
irradiated my proteinoids with gamma rays. Ten minutes, no more. Then I
removed the source and waited to see what would happen. Imagine, no
matter how much I waited, nothing special happened. The new
generations of proteinoids were exactly the same as their ancestors. Then I
went home. And so, when I came to the laboratory in the morning, I saw a
terrible picture. Among the completely transparent individuals, dark
brown creatures with tentacles suddenly appeared. Their structure was
completely asymmetrical. In appearance, they resembled huge amoebas.
But that's not the scary thing. To my horror, I noticed that the new
macrobacteria periodically attacked their ancestors and devoured them
mercilessly. After one primary proteinoid was destroyed, the division of
the secondary one immediately began, and thus, with each generation,

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more and more predators appeared. At the same time, the bathtub became
cloudy and finally became completely opaque. Only then did I understand
what had happened. I have irretrievably lost the very first view! I was
desperate and rushed to a nearby hardware store to buy this. And when I
began to try to catch black mutants with a spatula, I suddenly discovered
that there were very few of them in the bath and every minute there were
fewer and fewer. At first, I decided that they were just dying. But when
one day I pulled out a huge, human-sized ball of slime, I realized that they
were simply devouring each other and surviving the strongest. And now,
probably, there are no more than three or four creatures left in the bathtub.
But they are not visible. And I must definitely see what it is. Sure!
We went back to the bathtub again. The liquid in it was restless, large
black waves appeared on the surface every now and then.
"You see, I'm right! They're fighting among themselves! Each of them
wants to make the other their prey!
I dragged the glass to the walllid.
"Mikhail Fedorovich, give me your weapon, I'll try to catch some
creature."
For some reason, I was terribly angry at the reptiles who destroyed the
amazing world of primordial living beings. Now there was life here too,
but some kind of disgusting, predatory, foul-smelling one.
"Just please don't damage them. It is important for me to see what kind
of species it is, what it looks like. I am sure that this is also a single-celled
creature, but of such colossal size! By the way, maybe we can take a
photograph. Here's a ditch for you. When you catch it, throw it here.
I rolled up my sleeve and began to slowly fumble with my shoulder
blade in the thick mass. For a long time I could not feel anything, until
finally I touched something elastic and heavy at the bottom. The creature
immediately rushed to the side, and I had to start the search from the
beginning. The more the creature dodged me, the more fiercely I tried to
catch it. And one day, when the creature jumped to the surface, I picked it
up and lifted it high into the air.
What was lying on a flat aluminum spatula suddenly swelled in all
directions, hissed, and a brown tube, orange from the inside, climbed right
out of the black mucous mass to my face.
"Throw her into the ditch!" Brainin shouted. "Hurry!"
Out of surprise, I stretched out my hand with a spatula, not
understanding what I needed to do. Meanwhile, the creature swelled up
like a huge rubber ball, and the hissing pipe turned into a wide-open
mouth, which suddenly curved and bit into my hand.
I felt no pain, but only a nasty cold touch, and then another feeling, as if
a jar had been placed on my hand, which sucked my skin with great force,

663
I was suddenly burned by something, and I threw the creature away from
me in disgust.
"What have you done!" Brainin shouted. "You should have put it in a
ditch!"
Trembling with horror, I watched as shreds of thick jelly fell off my
hand. To the side, right next to the wall, writhed the body of a huge
bacterium, deprived of its organ of nourishment. Brainin tried to transfer
the remains to the ditch with his hands, but every time he approached the
ugly creature, it whistled in all directions and spat black acrid saliva.
Then the agony stopped, the primitive predator sprawled in all
directions and began to spread on the floor with thick black ink...
"It's all over," said Academician Brainin.
"Maybe there's something left in the bathtub?"
He began to move the ladle in all directions, but to no avail.
"That was the last one," he said. "It's a pity. Tomorrow my employees
will come together, and I will have nothing to show them. How strange it
all turned out.
Rubbing the burned spot on my hand, I tried to calm the old man.
"Nonsense. Now you know how to synthesize these creatures. In any
case, you have learned to control the time factor. Three weeks instead of
millions of years is not so bad.
He smiled faintly and remarked,
"That's right. But you understand what can happen. After all, when I
threw various chemicals into the bathtub, I didn't weigh them exactly, I
don't even remember what I threw here. And what if the second
experience does not work?
"After all, nature, when it "throwed" various chemicals into the World
Ocean, it also did not weigh them and did not know what it was doing!
— There is logic in this. HWell, let's try all over again.
"And not only logic, but also a completely new methodology. I have
reflected on your experience and have come to the conclusion that it is of
great importance for the development of all science. If it repeats, then
completely new ways of synthesizing natural substances and materials
will open. To do this, it is only necessary to study more carefully the
natural conditions in which substances or organisms arose, and to
reproduce them as accurately as possible in the laboratory.
"And I ask you, when these first, beautiful creatures appear, call me at
the editorial office before you start getting disgusting mutants. And in
general, do I need to get them?
"Of course! The synthesis of a living protein and a living organism is
only the beginning of a new direction in biology. And then it will be
necessary to trace all the stages of the evolution of these creatures from the

664
lower forms to the higher.
"Maybe you'll get to the ichthyosaurs that way?" I laughed.
If it is possible to accelerate the formation of a primordial living cell,
why not accelerate its evolution? Especially if it is known what
determines it.
— Geological epochs in weeks and months in laboratory conditions?
"Exactly!"
"Well, then be sure to call me at the editorial office. Do you promise,
Mikhail Fedorovich?
"I promise."
And now I am looking forward to a phone call from Academician
Brainin.

665
 Stanlyu Farm

«… It seems possible to grow a complete individual from a single

cell taken (for example) from human skin. To do so would be a feat of
biological technology, deserving of the highest praise..."
(A. Turing "Can a Machine Think?")

He sat on the edge of a park bench, his knocked-down shoes nervously

trampling on the damp ground. In his hands he had a thick knotty stick.
When I sat down next to him, he reluctantly turned his face in my
direction. His eyes were red as if they were filled with tears, and his thin
lips depicted the moon turned upside down.
Looking at me, the old man pulled his hat over his eyes, and the heels of
his shoes clattered more often on the ground. I wanted to move to another
bench, but he suddenly said:
"No, why not, sit down!
I stayed.
"Do you have a watch?.. What time is it now? The old man asked.
"Fifteen minutes to four...
He took a deep breath and looked to where the colorless building of the
Sperry Dancing Club towered behind the skeletons of the autumn trees.
He paused, sighed a few more times, and then raised his hat above his
eyebrows.
"What time is it now?"
"One minute to four. Are you waiting for anyone?
He turned his weeping face to me and nodded his head. Apparently, the
upcoming meeting did not bode well.
The old man moved closer to me and cleared his throat:
"That's right. Just like fifty years ago...
I realized that he was tormented by memories.
"Yes," I drawled vaguely, "everything passes..." There is nothing you
can do about it.
He moved even closer. The crying mouth made a semblance of an
ironic smile.
"You say everything passes?" Not at all!
"Well, of course, memories remain," I said. Memory is our constant
and annoying companion...
"If only that were the case...
After a pause, the old man asked me again what time it was, and then
said: "Another hour..."

666
 – ??
He waved his hand vaguely.
"The logic of thoughts and the logic of life have nothing in common,"
he said suddenly.
It was as if I woke up, because logic was on my part. As soon as
someone says the word "logic", I immediately come to life.
"You're wrong about that!" The logic of thought is a reflection of the
logic of life.
–You think so?
–Are you sure.
–How old are you?
–Twenty-nine. (The lesson will begin now, I thought).
Instead of a "lesson," the old man said:
"They are about the same age..."
"Who are they?"
He coughed.
–To whom? I asked.
Children...
"Are you waiting for them?"
–Yes... If you want, I'll tell you a little story... Anyway, wait for another
hour... I'll try to dissuade you of something...
"Strange old man," I thought.
"Of course, you will think that my story is nonsense. But you will be
convinced.. Do you understand anything about science?
Now it was my turn to smile ironically.
– I am a Bachelor of Science.
"So there is hope that you will understand.
"Okay, give me your story," I said, not hiding my mockery. Of course,
I'm going to hear some senseless nonsense now. And the old man is just
talkative, like many at his age.
– Have you ever thought about why such confusion and disorder reign
in our world? My interlocutor asked and continued, without waiting for an
answer:
"Disorder and chaos are explained by the fact that different people live
in society. People are different in everything - according to their
gender,height, age, way of thinking... They live in different houses and eat
different foods, they like different things and read different books. There
are no two people in the world who would be absolutely identical in any
way. Even when two people say that they love the same thing, they are
different, because, for example, everyone understands the word "tree" in
their own way. This refers to any words spoken by people in the same
language. Even the simplest words, like "yes" or "no", are understood by

667
different people in their own way...
"Something is incomprehensible," I tried to object.
Well, here's a simple example. I ask you: is it autumn now? "And you'll
say yes, of course." And I will answer "yes" to this question, and any
normal person will answer "yes". But all the millions of "yeses" will be
different. After all, by saying this word, you associate a whole world of
experiences, images, memories with it... Autumn is one thing for you,
another for me!
"I'm sorry, but you're complicating the matter. We say that in the
formal-logical sense...
"Ah, in the formal-logical sense!" He tried to laugh. – Is there a
formal-logical meaning for a person? Of course, you know examples from
history when states violated treaties sealed with solemn seals and
signatures. And the reason turned out to be that both parties understood
the same words of the contract differently. So much for the formal-logical
meaning! People cannot, you see, cannot think in formal-logical
categories. Only machines can do this, and even then not always...
– But there is a science, formal logic, isn't there? I objected.
You never know what sciences exist! I am not talking about the
sciences, which are a forced simplification of reality, but about the most
complex thing, about man... There is no formal logic for him. And this is
the whole tragedy. Imagine, a society in which tens of millions of people
speak the same language, and, nevertheless, they understand each other no
more than a crowd of foreigners. And even when they pretend to
understand each other, this is a lie...
I decided not to argue with my interlocutor, although I could give a
thousand examples to refute his arguments. I felt that this was not the most
important thing in his story.
"Let's assume that you are right. And the disorder of our world is
explained in your way. But what follows from this?
"Here's what. Nature itself gives us striking examples of how it is
possible to build stable systems consisting of the same elements. Have you
ever wondered why a piece of iron is stable, does not collapse, does not
crumble?
– No, I haven't.
"Apparently a schizophrenic," I thought to myself.
"You see, we are not able to look intently and deeply at ordinary things.
We just accept them as they are, and consider it normal. And I assert that
iron, and in general everything that is solid and stable, is such that it
consists of absolutely identical parts, of the same atoms... or at least the
same molecules.
– Yes, yes, that's why. Throughout the universe, carbon atoms, gold

668
atoms, iron atoms are one and the same. And these atoms, identical
throughout the infinite world, come together and form a monolithic
structure. Homogeneous and stable in all its mass. As soon as alien
elements penetrate into this mass, the monolithic nature will collapse.
"Iron rusts," I unexpectedly suggested an example.
– Absolutely, and there are many such examples...
"Yes, but...
– No, not "but"! The old man exclaimed. – Man is the atom of society.
The difference is that people are fundamentally different, while atoms of
the same element are fundamentally identical!
"Listen, you can't transfer the laws of physics and chemistry to the life
of society! It's proven like two times two.
"Oh, I think you can," the old man objected stubbornly.
I did not object, although there were objections.
"If we want to build an ideal society, we must first of all think about the
ideal identity of its atoms!"
I looked at the old man with apprehension. In the thickening twilight,
his face seemed even more tearful to me.
–In your opinion...
"Yes, yes, young man. We need to start with the standardization of the
atoms of society, with the standardization of people...
"But this is nonsense and nonsense!
"Yes, yes!" In my time, there were also people who repeated the same
thing. But in the course of the development of civilization itself, there are
forces that in a sense lead to the standardization of people, although
partial...
"This has never happened and will never happen!
"You're just not observant!" By the way, what time is it?
"We've been talking for fifteen minutes.
–Ok. You say it will never be? And a thousand people working on the
same machines and performing the same operations, isn't this an element
of standardization?
I shivered a little from the dampness. Where was the old man going?
"Society should automatically strive for a stable state, and it should
eventually come to the standardization of people... But how many years
will pass before the complete identity of people comes? Thousands,
maybe hundreds of thousands... A lot! We cannot expect a golden age of
full standardization. I even sometimes think that this will never fully
happen. Therefore, we need to take care of it now.
"You mean, standard upbringing...
"Oh, that's not enough!" Absolutely not enough! Even with a standard
upbringing, you will not get the same people. They are different from

669
birth, in their inclinations, abilities, talents.
"So what should we do?"
The old man rubbed his hands smugly. It seemed to me that he even
smiled. Glancing once more at the dark outlines of Sperry Dancing, he
asked quietly,
"Have you ever heard the name Forkman?"
– Yes, he was a well-known biochemist in his time...
–Namely. What else do you know about him?
"Perhaps nothing else.
"I'm his apprentice. Do you know what Professor Forkman has
discovered?
"No, I don't know...
"He has learned to grow adult human individuals from a single cell
taken from human skin!
"He's starting to delirium again," I decided, "It's always like that with
schizophrenics."
–So what?
– This is the key to solving the standardization problem!
–Don't understand.
"Imagine that a hundred cells were removed from your skin, and you
grew a hundred identical individuals according to Professor Forkman's
method. They, based on the same genetic information, will be completely
identical to each other and identical to you.
I shuddered: "What a move!"
–Curiously. And did anyone conduct such an experiment?
–Yes.
–Who?
I was silent for a few seconds.
"And what happened?"
"I have to tell you everything in order.
– This is very interesting!
"Forkman passed on the secret of his discovery only to me. I almost
forgot about it until I came to the conclusion that standardization was
necessary.
– Who did you take as a standard?
"Oh, my wife and I went through many of our acquaintances, discussed
them from all sides, and they all turned out to be flawed... You know,
everybody had some kind of congenital physical, mental, or moral defect.
Yes, it was a very painful choice. In the end, we opted for ourselves.
I couldn't help but smile. The old man noticed this.
"Don't laugh... In our youth, my Archie and I were outstanding
personalities, with above-average intelligence, and we didn't look bad at

670
all! When we reached adulthood, we found ourselves to have enough
wisdom for the standard man of a monolithic homogeneous society...
"I have no doubt about your qualities," I interrupted my interlocutor.
"What did you do in the end?"
"We raised two boys and two girls according to the Forkman method...
They were exact copies of us at the appropriate age. Archie and I did the
experiment of growing our young spears at Greenball Farm.
– Aren't there too few standard people for the monolithic nature of our
future society?
"Don't be ironic, young man! You should be asking why the children
were raised on Greenball Farm.
"Is it significant?"
–Absolutely. The fact is that it was on this farm that Archie and I spent
their infancy, childhood and adolescence.
"And what happened?"
"And the fact that for the identity of these beings it was absolutely
necessary to have an identical upbringing. Archie and I remembered our
years on this farm very well. We decided to recreate them with all
scrupulousness on our... uh... Children.
"For what?"
– There were two reasons for this. Firstly, we could easily reproduce
the entire cycle of education, and secondly, in this way we ensured the
repetition of our experiment in the future.
I began to vaguely imagine all the wildness of the plan.
"Are you saying that by repeating your life path in the creatures you
have created, you will achieve that at a certain moment they will come to
the same conclusions as you, and also repeat the experiment of growing
their copies, and their descendants will do the same, and so on?"
"You're smart.
"But it can't be!" I exclaimed.
–My god!
"Have the patience to listen to everything to the end. So, I took care of
the boys, and Archie took care of the girls. I must admit that our work was
truly enjoyable. You know, I once read a scientist who studied the life path
of many pairs of twins. He discovered that identical twins not only
resemble each other in appearance, but also their life paths and their fates
coincide in many ways. I remember him giving the example of two twin
brothers who separated in early childhood, and after many years it turned
out that they were married to strikingly similar women, practiced the same
profession, both had dogs, and both dogs had the same name! I didn't
believe it then. During my work at Greenball, I saw firsthand that the
genetic The identity of children makes it possible to achieve their spiritual

671
identity without much difficulty. But the most striking thing was
something else: in our offspring, Archie and I saw our copies, our
childhood, then youth and youth. We looked at the children and
exclaimed: "Look, Archie! They climbed the poplar! Do you remember
that when I was seven years old, I did the same thing, and you, like our
girls, threw a ball at me!"
"Dick! The girls are bending over the well! I bet they dropped the
bucket! Now the boys will climb after him!"
"Both for the same bucket?" I asked.
Archie and I looked at them, at their lives, as if they were fantastic,
twice repeated of their own being, transported thirty years ago. If a person
has a chance to ever regain his youth, it is only in this way!
– And how did you distinguish them from each other?
"The boys had the same name, Dick, and the girls, Archie. But
everyone had their own number. We sewed it on the back, as athletes do.
Soon the boys began to court the girls.
"In the same way, how do you follow your future wife?"
–Yes yes! There was a difficulty with the place of the dates, because
they always appointed the same place. But then they got used to it.
"Didn't they confuse each other?"
"Imagine, no.
"I wonder what happened next?"
"Archie lived on the farm until she was fourteen, and I lived on the farm
until she was eighteen:
After Archie, she went with her parents to New York. Therefore, when
they reached the age of fourteen, the girls went with Archie to New York
to repeat the course of life that Archie had gone through. They did this
without difficulty, with great success, and began to look even more like
Archie in his youth. They returned to the farm two years later, when the
young men reached the age of twenty. They still lived on the farm for three
years. And then the misfortune happened.
–What?
–My wife. Archie... hanged herself. And the horror was not only in the
very fact of suicide. Rather, in the cause of the tragedy.
"Maybe we shouldn't remember that?"
–Worth! The fact is that while the two Archies lived in New York, the
Dickies cooled off a little to them and began to visit the neighboring farm,
to Mr. Solp's daughters. The Solps have always had large families. In my
time, they had three daughters. And now there were three of them. And so
the Dickies got into the habit of visiting them.
"So why is your wife—"
"Once, shortly after her arrival from New York, we dined at the Solps'

672
and stayed late into the evening.
I was chatting with the old Solps and my Archie went out. Suddenly she
ran into the room, all in tears, with mad eyes. When asked what had
happened, she only cried even harder.
On the way to our farm, she wouldn't let me take her hand, not even
touch her. In just half an hour, we suddenly became complete strangers...
Only after her suicide did I guess, or rather, understand what had
happened. When she learned that our Dickies were guests in the Solp
family, she went upstairs and quite accidentally overheard a conversation
between the young men and the daughters of our friend.
My sons swore fidelity and love to the daughters of the Solps and
assured them that if they did not become their wives, then the inevitable
marriage with Archie will be the curse of all life for the Dicks. They said
that they did not like these cold fools and only out of respect for the old
people, that is, for us, they agreed to marry them. They suggested that the
daughters of the Solps flee immediately.
"Did that make an impression on your wife?"
"Of course! She immediately realized that before our marriage I had
cheated on her.
"I mean," I muttered stupidly.
"My boys did the same thing I had done. Archie realized that she had
been deceived into believing in my love and virtue. She hanged herself
from one of the oak trees that grows above our stream. After that, I left the
farm with my family and moved here.
"Did the young Archie know what was going on?"
"Of course not, they slept, just like my Archie in those distant days. So,
I moved with the whole family to New York. The boys entered the biology
department of the college, as I once did, and the girls got jobs as telephone
operators at the central post office. So they lived apart, virtually without
my intervention, until one day they met in the cinema. It was a joyful
meeting. Their tender friendship was renewed. Please, what time is it?
Okay, we have fifteen more minutes at our disposal. By the way, they met
at the same cinema that I once met with Archie.
–That's amazing!
"I wasn't surprised at anything anymore. I knew the whole game from
start to finish. I know exactly the day and hour when they will get married.
If you're not in a hurry, let's go to Sperry Dancing.
–What for?
"You'll see them there. They're going to dance there tonight... Archie
and I went too.
"Lord," I exclaimed, "what will happen next?"
"We'll find out in a moment. I'm just shaking with anticipation...

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Everything, down to the smallest detail, must be repeated!
We walked along a completely dark alley, the old man feeling the way
with a stick, and I slightly supported him by the arm. Now the windows of
the Sperry Dancing Club were shining, and music was coming from there.
It was a second-rate club with cheap entrance tickets. After the darkness of
the autumn evening, my eyes could not get used to the bright light. Jazz
roared at the top of its brass throat. Then the music stopped, and suddenly
two identical couples rushed in our direction.
–Daddy! Papa Dick! How did you know we were here?
They shouted simultaneously and, as it seemed to me, in unison.
Old Dick pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes. I could not
understand whether he was crying or if he had a severe cold.
"I guessed you were here.
–That's amazing! We didn't tell you about it!
– A father's heart. You know, it always feels. I think let me come in.
"We are very glad to see you. You are wise and can resolve our dispute.
My interlocutor somehow cringed terribly, as if he was going to be
beaten.
"I'm listening to you.
– We talked about the fact that it is impossible to create a harmonious
society from different people. What do you say to that?
The old man shrank even more.
"I'll talk about that some other time."
"No, tell me your opinion." Otherwise we will argue like this endlessly.
"In a month and a half, you will come to a conclusion on your own.
Then come to me.
"We came to the conclusion that if it is impossible to create a
monolithic society from different people, then we need to try...
At that moment, the dreamThe orchestra began to play, and Dickie and
his Archies began to dance.
Almost forcibly, I dragged the old man out of the hall:
"Listen! I can't admit that these beautiful girls, who will soon be the
wives of their Dicks, will sooner or later hang out on the branches of the
oak tree that grows on your Greenball farm.
"What can you do?" Old Dick said in a low voice.
"We must tell them about the incident in the Solp family immediately!"
"Do you think my Archie wasn't warned?" She did not believe a single
word. And when I found out the name of one of the poisons, then...
"What?"
"When I was young, I was very accurate. I mean, my sons are very
good at shooting.
"You mean...

674
 "That will happen. Not soon.
Everything began to get mixed up in my head.
"What are you going to do now?" I asked the old man.
–No problem. I can't do anything now.
"So it's going to happen again?"
–All. They'll come to the same conclusion as Archie and me. Then they
will rob the pharmacy...
"Will they rob the pharmacy?!"
"To get chemical reagents that are necessary for growing people
according to Professor Forkman's method.
"Did you get the reagents this way?"
– Yes – I had to. And before that, he blew up a tanker with oil.
- You're crazy!!
"I had to. I needed money to conduct the experiment. A businessman
promised them for me to put a hellish machine in a tanker of oil. He
needed it for some kind of scam.
"Why did you rob the pharmacy?" I broke the heavy silence.
"Because after the end of the case, my master refused to pay and also
threatened with prison.
"No, it's unbelievable!" This must be stopped immediately!
–Alas...
"Four Archies!" Why, you won't have enough oaks on your farm to ...
"By then, others will have grown up.
"They will destroy all the pharmacies in the country. The entire tanker
fleet will be sunk..
"Why did you fall silent?" The old man wheezed.
"I imagined a hundred old Dicks sitting in this park to look at a
thousand of their standard offspring. I imagined your Greenball farm
turned into a factory of standard people. It will be called Stanlyu Farm.
And thousands, hundreds of thousands of vegetative offspring will be
brought up there as standard. It will be necessary to plant a whole forest of
oaks. Can you imagine all this?
"I don't know anything anymore.
We walked in silence to the exit from the park. It suddenly seemed to
me that I was walking with the most inexorable fate, with a nightmare
materialized in the form of an ugly old man, which with inevitable
inevitability must repeat itself on an ever-increasing scale.
I grabbed the old man's arm.
–Listen to me! Do you really believe in this nonsense about stabilizing
society through the standardization of people?
"And if not, what difference does it make?" Now you can't help the
matter.

675
 –Can! We need to go through the police, through secret agents! You
need to warn your children.
"Do you want me to avenge my own crime on my own children?" No,
it's all my fault, you see, I'm alone! It's all my fault.
Now he was really crying, hoarsely, like an old man, not even covering
his face with his hands.
"Stop!" I! I have one question for you. This is a very important
question.
"I know your question," the old man wheezed, still sobbing.
"But you don't know what I want to ask you.
–Yes I know. Farewell... Farewell...
He quickly trotted along the grate of the park, banging loudly on the
asphalt with his heavy stick. I froze in indecision, looking at the retreating
hunched figure of the terrible old man until he disappeared into the
darkness.
I never asked the old man if he had passed on Professor Forkman's
secret to his offspring. If not, then everything will be fine and there will be
no standard people. And if so?
But it doesn't matter. Be that as it may, the laws of physics and
chemistry cannot be transferred to the life of society.
Several decades have passed since this strange meeting. And suddenly I
began to notice that on my way I began to come across very similar
people, that they were dressed alike and talked about the same thing. Very
similar young mothers babysit identical babies. From the cinema screens,
the same actors and actresses look at me. Almost identical faces and
figures flash on the covers of magazines and books.
Once a company of soldiers marched past me, and I almost screamed,
before all the soldiers looked the same! "Company of Dicks," I whispered
in horror. A whole crowd of identical girls, Archie, performed in one
music hall.
That is why, and for many other reasons, I sometimes think that Stanlu
Farm exists and is developing, and maybe my government even gives it all
kinds of support.

676
 Formula of Immortality
It began on the day of Albert's return from a trip to Europe. He drove up
to his father's villa and was paying the taxi driver, when suddenly a huge
colorful ball flew out from behind the fence and jumped along the damp
asphalt road.
"Please, pass me the ball," he heard a woman's voice.
He turned and saw the girl's blond head. She peeked out from behind
the hedge, a string of pearls silver on her thin, slender neck.
-Hello. Who are you? Albert asked, handing her the ball.
-And you? Why are you asking me?
- Because this is my house and you play in my garden.
The girl looked at Albert in surprise, jumped down and ran into the
depths of the garden without answering.
He found his father in the study. It seemed to Albert that he was not
very happy about his arrival. Or maybe he's just tired. After a few
questions about life abroad, about the work of several of the largest
European laboratories, he suddenly declared:
"You know, Albert, I'm tired of everything. I decided to leave the
institute and agreed with Professor Birkoff that I would stay with them as
a consultant.
Albert was extremely surprised. A month ago, my father did not even
stutter about resignation.
"You're not so old yet, Dad!" he objected.
"It's not a matter of years, Alb. Forty years spent in the laboratory mean
something. Keep in mind that these were crazy years, when one revolution
after another took place in science. They had to be comprehended, felt,
and tested in an experiment in a timely manner...
His father's words sounded unconvincing, but Albert just shrugged his
shoulders. Maybe my father is right. As far as he could remember, his
father had always worked like an ox, not sparing himself, completely
disregarding time. They say that after the death of his wife, some kind of
frenzy came over him. He did not leave the laboratory for days and
literally drove both himself and his employees to exhaustion. Back in the
day, when Alb was just a child, his group worked on the structural analysis
of nucleic acids and on deciphering the genetic code. He developed an
interesting method for controlling the sequence of nucleotides in the chain

677
of deoxyribonucleic acid using the effect of mutogenic substances on the
source material. She was talked about everywhere. Newspapers published
articles under sensational headlines:
"The key to unlocking the biological code has been found", "The
mystery of life is in four symbols", etc.
"I hope that after the probationary period, Professor Birkhoff will
appoint you in my place.
"Well, father, that's too much. I have not done a thousandth part of what
you have done.
"You know everything I've done. I'm sure you can.
Looking out of the office window, Albert asked,
"Who is this sweet girl?..
"Oh, I forgot to tell you. She is the daughter of an old friend of mine,
Elvin Shauli. She's an orphan now," the professor said quietly. "But she
shouldn't know about it...
"And what happened?"
- Elvin Shauli and his wife were killed in a plane crash over the Atlantic
Ocean. I was so shocked by this event that... that he invited the girl to live
with us, telling her that her parents had gone on an expedition to Australia
for several years.
"The lie will be revealed sooner or later!"
-Of course. But what the longer she won't know about it, the better...
The girl's name is Mija. She is sixteen years old.
"A strange name.
"Yes, a little strange," the professor said thoughtfully. "Here she is."
Mijae ran into the room and froze at the door for a moment. Then she
smiled embarrassedly and, making a graceful curtsy, said:
"Good evening, Mr. Professor, good evening, Mr. Albert.
"Good evening, dear," said the professor, and approaching her, he
kissed her forehead. "I hope you'll be friends with Albert?"
- And we have already become friends. And your ball, Mijaja?..
"Oh, I don't play ball that often. I like to read more. But today the
weather is so delightful.
"You need to be in the fresh air more often," Albert said in the tone of
an elder. "Will you accept me into your company?" I also like to play ball.
The girl flushed, her face flushed with embarrassment.
"Of course, Mr. Albert.
- And if "of course", then let's do without "master". Just call me Alb,
and I'll call you Mijay. Goes?
She nodded, took the professor's arm, and they went down to the dining
room.
They hardly spoke during lunch. Alb only noticed that his father was

678
staring at Mijae for a long time, intently, with deep anxiety. Probably, he
was worried about the fate of the girl.
When Albert returned to the laboratory, Professor Birkhoff suggested
that he analyze the structures of the X and Y chromosomes, which
determine the female and male sexes of a person, respectively. The task
was generally quite difficult, but something about it was known. As
before, the main research tool was artificial mutations carried out on
genetic material with the help of chemical mutogenic substances from the
class of acridines. The mutants were then controlled in an artificial
"biological cradle", where after 10-20 cell divisions it was possible to
determine the sex of the future organism.
A huge number of mutations had to be carried out.
As he began his work, Albert estimated how long he would have to
search for an answer, and was horrified: it turned out that even in the most
favorable case, a lifetime would not be enough to complete the work!
"Consult your father," Birkoff said. "Maybe he can tell me something."
In the evening, Albert entered his father's study. Midgea was also there.
The professor sat in the rocking chair with his eyes closed, and Mijaia read
him Byron's poems in a low voice:
"I would like to run away to the desert with you,
With only one friend, with my sweetheart...
- What an idyll! With whom do you want to flee to the desert and for
what? Albert asked cheerfully.
His father looked up at him with sad, thoughtful eyes...
"Oh, it's you, Alb!" Mijaya reads very well. Listening to her, I
remember my youth.
"I'm jealous, you probably have something to remember. By the way,
you have so seldom told me about your young years.
The girl closed the book and quietly left the room. Albert sat down
closer to his father and said:
"It's too bad that you left the institute. I'm alone like a blind kitten. I'm
afraid I'll bore you. For example...
And he told his father about the breasts that he encountered in the very
first days. As he spoke, his father's face became more and more harsh,
even hostile. At last he got up impulsively and said,
"That's enough. I knowThis is a completely hopeless task and it simply
does not make sense to waste time and effort on it.
"But the rest of the human chromosomes have been deciphered," Albert
objected.
- It's a different matter. They are built of the same type. It is enough to
unfold the initiator's formula - and the rest will stretch out like on a thread.
There is no such formula in the X and Y chromosomes. Here is a

679
homogeneous sequence of nucleotides...
Suddenly he fell silent. Silence reigned in the room. The window was
wide open to the park, and from there came the faint rustle of chestnut
leaves, the faint buzzing of nocturnal insects, and... singing. The song was
very simple, melodic and familiar. For some reason, it reminded Alba of
the distant years of childhood: a tall flower bed, densely overgrown with
azaleas, and he was a very, very small boy, and behind the flowerbed
someone was singing this song. He runs around the flower-bed, wants to
see the one who is singing, but she goes away from him, and sometimes,
interrupting the singing, calls in a sweet, gentle voice:
"Come, Alb, catch me!
And he keeps running, running, colorful flowers flashing in his eyes,
and he can't catch up with the elusive, wonderful, native naked. Then he
throws himself on the flowerbed, crawls in the jungle of flowers and
cries...
- Who is singing this? He asked his father, barely moving his lips.
-This is? Don't you guess? He sank heavily into the rocking chair.
-No.
- It's Midgea singing.
They were silent for a few minutes. Why did my father breathe so
impetuously? His pale hands gripped the edge of the table nervously.
Noticing his son's gaze, he suddenly said in a deliberately indifferent tone:
"The girl has a sweet voice, doesn't she? As for the Chi Y chromosomes
of man, tell Professor Birkhoff my opinion: the task is hopeless. I don't
understand what is the point of doing it.
- What's the point of studying? Alb echoed. Strangely. All your life you
have been doing nothing but studying the molecular structure of the
hereditary substance in detail. And now...
His father interrupted him with a sharp movement of his hand.
- There are studies that are completely unjustified... from an ethical and
moral point of view. And anyway, Albert, I'm very tired. I want to sleep.
As Albert left the office, he noticed that his father had taken a bottle of
medicine from his dressing gown pocket and put his lips to it. He must
have been very ill, but he tried not to show it. And it also became clear to
Albert that, for some incomprehensible reason, his father simply did not
want him to investigate the chemical nature of the X and Y chromosomes.
Alb went out into the park and walked slowly along the dark paths,
damp with evening dew, to the place where Midgea's singing could be
heard. She was sitting on a stone bench in front of a small pool.
-About! She exclaimed, when Alb suddenly appeared in front of her.
"God, how you frightened me! How can you do that, Mr. Albert? I don't
like it when something happens suddenly.

680
 He sat down next to him, and they were silent for a long time.
Somewhere a stream of water was rustling. A car sometimes flew along
the fence on the asphalt road.
- Mijaja, do you like it here? Albert asked.
-Very much. You know, I feel at home here. In fact, even better than at
home.
"And where is your house?"
- In the cable. This is a hundred kilometers to the north from here. But I
don't like Kable. When my father and mother left for Australia, I felt so
sad there. I am very grateful to your father for taking meI'm going to
myself...
"Kable, Kable..." Alb vaguely remembered the name of the place, it
seemed to be mentioned in their house.
- Do you love your father and mother? he asked, not knowing why.
She didn't answer for a while. It was felt that she was confused by an
unexpected question.
- Is it possible not to love your parents?
There was a note of bitterness in Mija's voice. Suddenly she laughed.
-Strangely. I never wondered if I loved them. And now I realized that I
stopped really loving them after Mr. Horsch came to visit us often.
"And who is Horsch?"
"A very unpleasant gentleman. He looks like a doctor. Perhaps he is
really a doctor, because every time he came to us, he listened to me,
tapped me and took blood for examination several times, although I was
completely healthy. I was very offended that my father and mother
allowed him to do all this... As if what Mr. Horsch was doing did not
concern them at all. They left me alone with him, and they left. He is a
very unpleasant doctor, especially when he smiles.
Albert felt sorry for the girl, he quietly hugged her shoulders. She clung
to him trustingly and babbled,
"It's cool, Alb, isn't it?"
"Really, dear.
She wrapped her thin arms around his neck and hid her face on his
chest.
It seemed that Mijaya had found some amazing peace, complete
oblivion of all earthly hardships and sufferings. She took a deep breath,
stretched, and wrapped her arms around his neck even tighter. Albert got
up and carried her, asleep, across the park to the already dark house,
feeling her hot breath on his cheek.
Albert did not tell Professor Birkoff anything about his conversation
with his father. The difficulties associated with the study of X and Y
chromosomes gave him the opportunity to come up with something that

681
could prove that Albert was also a good research biophysicist.
He re-equipped his father's laboratory in a new way. On his
instructions, a proton gun was made, which made it possible to bombard
any nucleotide in DNA and RNA molecules with protons.
Especially much had to be tinkered with the "biological cradle" - a
miniature quartz cuvette, where protein synthesis took place in synthetic
cytoplasm and in artificial ribosomes.
When the equipment was ready, work in the laboratory began to boil.
As the research front unfolded, Professor Birkhoff gradually handed over
to Albert all the employees who had previously worked for his father.
They were very nice, energetic people. Some of them, especially the
physicist Klemper and the mathematician Gust, were a little philosopher, a
little cynic, and developed the theory of the continuous transition from the
dead to the living. They considered any living organism as a huge
molecule, all the functions of which can be described in terms of energy
transitions between different states. What they were doing, Klemper
called "looking for a needle in a haystack." Indeed, the very first
experiments convinced them that the sex of the future living individual is
encoded not at the level of nucleotides, but somewhere deeper, perhaps in
the sequences of atoms in saccharide and phosphate chains. Several times
they managed to mutate the X chromosome and the Y chromosome, that
is, change the sex to the opposite, but no one knew why this happened.
Soon the work took on the usual character: experiments were carried
out, and the work of theIn general, nothing interesting happened. Albert
felt that new ideas were needed here, which neither he nor his
collaborators had.
He did not turn to his father again. It is quite obvious that he offered a
kind of passive resistance to the work being carried out. Not only was he
not interested in what his son was doing, but whenever he wanted to ask
something, he would either start a conversation on another subject or send
him away from the study, as if guessing his intention.
It was really passive resistance, because my father willingly received
individuals and entire delegations from various organizations who
opposed the war.
Alb had never suspected that his father was so interested in political
issues before. He was always the model of a university professor who
stood aloof from any ideological struggle. And suddenly, tired and sick,
my father was completely transformed when people came to him and the
conversation turned to political affairs, which scientists usually brushed
aside.
"You're a scientist, not a politician," Albert said bitterly, putting a
compress on his chest.

682
 - I am first of all a person. It is high time to tear off the mask of
imaginary neutrality from our scientists. Hiding behind a high rank, they,
you see, make naïve eyes when it suddenly turns out that the results of
their research work are being used to destroy millions of people. They
pretend to be fools who are supposedly unable to foresee a simple thing -
what will be the consequences of what they study and discover. For
decades, they have been using a nefarious loophole to get away with
complicity in the crime, blaming unwise politicians. If I give a weapon in
the hand of a madman, then I should be responsible for the consequences,
not the madman...
After this tirade, Albert decided that his father considered the research
work on deciphering the X and Y chromosomes of man to be somehow
dangerous for humanity...
On one of the cloudy autumn days, Albert returned home earlier than
usual. The air was cold, damp, and a fine rain was drizzling.
As he approached the door, he suddenly saw it swing wide open and
Midgea quickly ran out of it in one dress and rushed headlong through the
park.
"Mija, Mija!" he shouted.
But the girl did not hear. Albert caught up with her at the very end of
the garden, where she huddled like a hunted animal.
- Mijaja, dear, what's wrong with you? he asked, panting.
"Oh, it's you, Alb!" It's so good that you came!
-What happened? Albert threw his cloak over her trembling shoulders.
"He wants to take me."
-Who?
"Mr. Horsch." He's there now, talking to your father.
-Why?
-I don't know... He says for medical research.
"Let's go home." I won't give you up to anyone.
She obediently followed him.
"Sit here," Alb said, ushering Mijay into his office on the first floor. "I'll
go upstairs and find out."
From behind the loosely closed door of the office came the voices of the
professor and someone else's, sharp and hoarse. Albert stopped for a minute.
"Understand, my friend, this is real madness! I have repeatedly
explained to you that to make a great scientific discovery is a feat, but not
to make it is a feat squared! The Kom arguedA professor.
"I can't do otherwise," said a shrill voice. - I don't understand how you
can throw the results of your life's work into the trash. After all, we
imagined everything just the opposite...
"We were stupid and naïve. This is not the way...

683
 - No, this is the only right way! You're just a coward! A naïve pacifist!
If not for Solveig...
Albert threw the door wide open and entered. Father, completely pale,
sat in his rocking chair, and next to him stood a tall man with a yellow
cheekbones, with a prickle of thick brown hair on his head. As he spoke,
he seemed to gesticulate furiously with his hands, and when Alba
appeared, he froze in a ridiculous pose.
"Alb, I taught you not to knock," began his father.
At that moment, Horsch made a jump and grabbed Albert's arm.
From somewhere he had a phonendoscope, a head-mirror, a
magnifying glass, and in an instant he turned into a possessed.
"And now one drop of blood, just one," he muttered, pulling a finger
leather tool out of his pocket.
Alb came to his senses and pushed the mad doctor away with all his
might. He was taller, but his musculature did not cause envy. He flew
through the entire office, and if it were not for the desk, he would have
moved further by inertia. He bent over and grabbed the edge of the table
and looked at Albert with a hideous smile and... Curiosity. Yes, with the
strange curiosity of a madman.
"That's what you are, Alb," he whispered at last, straightening up to his
full height.
-What's going on here? Who is this gentleman? Albert asked,
approaching his father. He was completely pale, his eyes closed.
"Oh, Alb... This is Mr. Horsch, my long-time student and friend. Don't
be angry with him.
"Your friend has bad manners, father.
Horsch sat down wearily in his chair and laughed. He did not take his
devilishly curious eyes off Albert. Everything that happened here seemed
to be of extraordinary interest to him.
"I don't know how much I'd give for one drop of our Alb's blood," he
said at last, playing with the automatic needle in his hands.
"Shut up, Horsch..." You're going to kill me," my father moaned.
At the words "our Alba" Albert was furious. He ran to the chair in
which Horsch was sitting, grabbed him by the sides of his jacket, lifted
him to his feet, and dragged him out of the office. At the door, Horsch
suddenly straightened up to his full height and shouted in a nasty, hoarse
voice:
"But the girl really is mine! Give me the girl!
Then he disappeared.
After catching his breath a little, Albert returned to his father. The
professor was half-lying in an uncomfortable position, with his eyes
closed.

684
 Albert grabbed his hands. They were completely cold.
A month after his father's death, Albert reported on the results of his
work to the Academic Council. They were disappointing.
- What are your future plans? Professor Birkoff asked at the end of the
report.
Albert shrugged. Apart from the method that his father left him as a
legacy, he could not come up with anything else. Obviously, he didn't
show any outstanding talents in research, because Dr. Seat, a lean,
hunched old man, stammered,
"The Group needs a good consultant.
"Who would you suggest, doctor?"
"One of Professor Alfrey's old pupils... Well, for example, I remember
there was such a talented young man... I forgot his name... something like
Hirsh, Hursh...
"Horsh!" Albert shouted.
- Yes, yes. It is him. He was a very talented person. If only I could find
him...
Albert contracted like a spring. And Dr. Seat continued:
"I remember, even at the time when the deciphering of the genetic code
had just begun, he made some brilliant discoveries. Well, for example,
this... Inverse relationship between RNA concentration in cell nucleus and
amino acid concentration in cytoplasm... And he, together with Professor
Alfrey, learned to write a genetic message... A very talented scientist. But
it is not known where he is now...
Without waiting for the end of the meeting of the Academic Council,
Albert ran home. He decided to go to Horsch and find out what he had to
do with him and Mija, what his disagreements with his father were, and
what kind of person he was. Yes, after all, he was ready to apologize to
this unpleasant guy for the outburst...
Albert entered the dining room.
"Where's Mija?" He asked the housekeeper.
"Probably in the park." She went to the park in the morning.
He walked along the paths of the park, hoping to find the girl
somewhere in a secluded corner with a book in her hands. But Midgea was
nowhere to be found. He called her name several times. Suddenly, in one
corner, where the stone fence was broken, he saw something white on the
bench. As he drew nearer, he found that it was a volume of Byron. And
then his eyes fell on the bushes in front of the hole in the hedge. They were
crumpled, broken, as if something heavy had been dragged over them. He
rushed there, reached a hole in the brick wall, and there he found a blue
ribbon that Mijaya used to tie her hair.
His first thought was to report to the police. But at the memory of

685
Horsch, a terrible suspicion stirred in his soul.
It was a matter of a minute to get the car out of the garage, and here he
was speeding north in Kabla. Why did he go to Kabla? Why, Midgea used
to live there. It was there that Horsch visited her...
An hour and a half of travel flew by completely unnoticed. The picture
of the first meeting with Midgea flashed through his memory, then the
conversation about Horsch, the meeting with him. It is strange that my
father never told him anything about his most talented student and
collaborator.
Only now did Albert realize that his father had not told him much.
Moreover, he stubbornly hid from his son something most important in
life and in his scientific work. And this main thing was mysteriously
intertwined with Horsch and with the disappeared Midgea. Why does
Horsch need Mija? What was the "only right way" they argued about on
the day of their father's death?..
Albert drove into a small town or village, which, according to the road
sign, was called Kable. It was completely deserted, as if everyone had died
out here, and for a long time he could not find a single living soul to find
out where Midgea's parents' house was.
He drove the car to the gate and entered the miniature courtyard of a
small red-brick Catholic church. Dusk was already falling, and a quivering
orange light streamed from the windows. Albert was met by an elderly fat
priest who had apparently been cleaning because the hems of his cassock
were tucked into his belt.
"What can I do for you, young man?"
- I would like to know from you, wherehere in Cable is the house of
Chaouly. They have a daughter, a girl, named Migeia.
"Mijay?" The priest asked again with a note of surprise in his voice.
-Yes.
After a moment's hesitation, he said:
"You'd better go into the house..."
They walked along the dark gallery, walked around the altar, and found
themselves in a tiny room where a kerosene lamp burned.
"So, you're interested in a girl named Mija?" The priest asked.
- Yes, and her parents.
"Hm, strange. And let me find out who you will be for her?
- A distant relative.
- Very strange.
-Why?
- The fact is that the girl has no parents. That is, of course, there are, but
they are unknown. She's a foundling.
-A what? Albert exclaimed. "But she told me herself that she had a

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father and a mother, and that they had recently gone to Australia, and
that—"
"Alas," said the priest, "it is not so. The girl, of course, believes that
Madame Chauli and Mr. Chaouly are her mother and father. In fact, she
was brought here as a newborn baby by two young gentlemen and given to
be raised by the above-mentioned married couple... This, if my memory
serves me correctly, was about sixteen years ago. I remember well the day
when a rumor spread through the village that the Shauli couple had a
child. I hurried to them to perform the rite of baptism, but...
"What's the 'but'?"
"A strange gentleman who was present in the house said that the girl
did not need it. It was a terrible surprise for me. I asked him: "Why?" and
then he answered me... Yes, I remembered. He said, "They baptize those
who are of God. And she is from a man." I still don't understand what he
meant.
"We're all human," Albert said hoarsely.
-Exactly. And man is from God. But the girl was never baptized.
- And how long did Midgea live in the Shauli family?
"Six months ago, an important gentleman came for her and took her
away...
"And she didn't come here again?"
-No.
"Does the Shauli family live here?"
-No. They left for Australia. They say with the money they received for
raising the girl.
A dead end, Albert thought. There was one more question.
"Tell me, did you not know Herr Horsch?"
"Damn him."
"So you know him?"
- Of course! It was he who forbade the baptism of the child.
"Tell me, where does he live?"
"Not far from here, in Sandyck, on a forest estate.
A few minutes later, Albert's car was hobbling along a bad road in
Sandyck. It was very dark and it was drizzling.
Horsha Manor is a huge, gloomy, two-story brick building in the old
style, enclosed by a dilapidated metal fence.
The car stopped among the trees, opposite the gate of the estate. Albert
entered the courtyard, walked along the stone-paved path, and approached
the door of the mansion. There was a dead silence all around, and there
was no light in any of the windows.
He pressed the bell button. No one answered, he pressed again, again,
and then began to ring continuously.

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 Clearly, there was no one in the room. The door was locked, and Albert
began to walk slowly around the house, looking at the height of the
window.
Over the back door there was a roofOh, and above it was a small oval
window.
Albert returned to the car, took the electric torch, the screwdriver, and
then climbed onto the roof of the veranda without any difficulty. The
window was closed. He poked the frame with a screwdriver, tore off the
hinge, and got inside.
Albert ended up in the library. There was a smell of book bindings, old
paper and formalin. Then he noticed that the smell of formalin filled the
entire building.
Frankly, he was not very clear about why he had so unceremoniously
broken into Horsch's house. In the house. there was no one, and Albert
could be accused of anything. In case Horsch suddenly appeared, he had
numerous exculpatory motives ready in his head, one worse than the
other...
The library was huge. Shelves full of books rose to the ceiling. In
various places there were piles of books lying randomly, for which,
apparently, there was no longer enough space on the shelves He randomly
illuminated one of the shelves and found a selection of Biophysics
magazines for several years. On the other shelf there were books on the
mathematical theory of information, below books on cybernetics.
Old textbooks, monographs, collections of articles on physics,
chemistry, number theory, topology were lying on the floor. It seemed that
the owner of the library was interested in literally everything in the world.
From the library, the door led to a small corridor.
Albert went down a narrow, creaking staircase to the first floor into the
tiny hall in front of the front door. There was a narrow leather-upholstered
sofa and a mirror in the corner. Three doors - two on the right and one on
the left. The right door led to the kitchen. It was directly opposite the
dining room. The second door, on the right, was locked. Albert took a few
steps back, accelerated, and slammed his shoulder into the door with all
his might. It swung open with a sharp crack, and he flew into the spacious
hall. The beam of the flashlight bounced over the objects that filled it, and
he had no trouble realizing that it was a laboratory. But what a thing! The
equipment of the laboratory with its ultracentrifuges, electron microscope,
chromatographic columns, measuring instruments - all this was better,
more benign than in the institute. For some time he walked around the
hall, dreaming of those interesting works that could be staged in such a
laboratory. On a table near the window, he found a miniature proton
cannon, similar to the one he had ordered for his genetic work. His device

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seemed to him the skeleton of an antediluvian animal in comparison.
And here is the desk, wide, two-cabinet, covered with a thick sheet of
transparent plastic. Under the sheet there are papers with notes, formulas
and tables. In the corner, Albert noticed a small photograph, and when he
illuminated it better, he almost screamed in surprise.
It was a photo of his mother. With trembling hands, he took it out from
under the plastic and began to examine it, bringing it very close to his
eyes.
No, this is not a mistake... A beautiful young woman with slightly
slanted eyes and lush blond hair looked at him with a kind, slightly
mocking smile. He could not mistake this photo for any other, because on
his father's desk lay exactly the same one...
Why is she here? Maybe once two people, his father and Horsch, loved
his mother equally much? Perhaps, by giving preference to his father, she
thereby forever destroyed the cooperation between teacher and student?
There was some mystery here, and Albert could not find the answer to
it.
He completely forgot where he was, and sat down in an armchair near
the desk, clutching in his hands a photo of a loved one, whom he
remembered very vaguely. It was strange that his father had told him so
little about his mother. To all questions about her, he only repeated: "She
was a good woman... Her name was Solveig..."
For some time now, Albert began to think that Midgea was very similar
to his mother. He stubbornly drove this thought away from himself. With
his thoughts confused, tired, he fell asleep unnoticed.
He woke up in the morning. Bright sunlight fell through the wide
window directly into Albert's face. For a long time he could not figure out
where he was.
The laboratory appeared before him in all its splendor. Any of the
largest research centers could envy such a wonderful biophysical
laboratory.
As he walked around the chemical work room, he suddenly noticed a
strange glass and nickel structure in the corner, the purpose of which he
could not explain at first. In the center, on a porcelain table, rested a small
oval-shaped vessel with a volume of one and a half to two liters, to which
numerous glass and rubber hoses, tubes and capillaries were brought from
all sides. Around the central vessel on an openwork structure of stainless
steel there were numerous flasks made of quartz and frosted glass, and
under the rack in special sockets were fixed two nickel-plated cylinders -
one with oxygen, the second with carbon dioxide. A complex system of
thin glass tubes twisted around the central vessel and inside it, forming a
single mesh for heating and thermostatting the device. This could be

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guessed because the labyrinth of tubes began and ended in a metal tank, in
which an electric furnace and a thermostat were built-in. Several
thermometers protruded from various parts of the device, and their
readings were transmitted to a recording potentiometer with the help of
thermoelectric sensors.
On the surface of the glass there were inscriptions: "Nutrition",
"Enzymes", "Ribonucleic acid", "Adenosine triphosphate".
And then he understood.
Anyone who has ever dealt with the problem of artificial cultivation of
living beings in the laboratory could only dream of such a device! That is
why it was designed.
Understanding its purpose, Albert began to study its scheme.
Yes, there was no doubt. It was what scientists used to call a "biological
cradle" - a complex and ingenious system, maximally imitating the one
created by nature in living creatures. The device embodied everything that
is known to science in the field of embryology and physiology of higher
animals. It was built on the principle of self-regulation, and, apparently, it
was only necessary to place a single cell of a living organism in a nutrient
medium, as its development itself determined the harmonious functions of
all the nodes of the installation.
The device was in perfect condition. However, from the barely
noticeable traces of precipitation in the thinnest tubes, from the abrasion
of the walls, Albert guessed that it had been used, and probably more than
once. What was it used for? What kind of organism was grown in this
amazing system?
Perhaps he would never have been able to answer these questions if his
gaze had not fallen on a small iron box^ standing in the corner of the room.
At first he thought it was a stainless steel device, but when he took hold of
the handle and opened the lid, it was There was an ordinary box for storing
documents. Albert glanced inwardly at the thick green-bound book and
was about to close it, when suddenly his eyes fell on a small white sticker
in the upper right corner of the book, on which was written in large black
letters: "Solveig, version 5."
Solveig? What's it? Why Solveig? With trembling hands, he took a
notebook out of the drawer. He opened the first page of his notebook and
stared at what he had written. Then he began to flip through the book, page
by page, and found the same thing everywhere - rows of numbers. The
numbers were written in two lines, in the upper one only two were
repeated: 0 and 1, and in the lower one four numbers flashed in bizarre
combinations: 2, 3, 4 and 5. It looked like this:
1 0 1 00 111 01 0001 0 11 10...
4 4 2 34 224 52 5433 4 22 43...

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 "Code, genetic code!" flashed through his mind. 1 and 0 are the
saccharide and phosphate chains. 2, 3, 4 and 5.
These are nitrogenous bases - guanine, adenine, cytosine and thymine.
Fifty pages of the book were written in numbers alone. In one place he
found a small group of numbers circled in red ink. Above them was the
inscription "Lethality?".
The question mark was written out several times and underlined with a
bold line. "Lethality" means death... What could these numbers mean?
Whose code was written in the notebook?
Unable to find an answer in the mysterious rows of numbers, Albert put
the notebook aside and opened the drawer again. In addition to the papers
dotted with the same rows of numbers, he also found a small box made of
plastic, which he could not open for a long time.
A strange excitement seized him, and he felt that he was on the verge of
revealing a terrible secret...
The box turned out to be filled with photos. At first, it was a micrograph
of a single cell. Then the cell split in half. After - even more. Then
differentiation began. Here the cells have formed a lump. The lump grows.
Here is a large embryo... He didn't dwell on each photo individually. His
hands were trembling, and he was feverishly sorting through the cards,
jumping over one, then two, until at last he saw a photograph of a child, at
first very tiny, then larger, now he was smiling, staring at his eyes, now he
had grown up.
Albert stopped suddenly, feeling that he was no longer able to look at
the photos in a row. He clenched his teeth tightly, reached into the bottom
of the box, and pulled out the most recent photo. It depicted... coffin. The
coffin was buried in flowers, and the face of a dead woman... Albert
grabbed the previous photo and shouted in a voice that was not his own.
No, it was incredible, it was monstrous!
In his hands he held a photograph of his mother...
He did not remember how he had left the Horsch estate, how he had left
Kable, how he had rushed home. He forgot everything: himself, Horsch,
Mija. Only one face froze before his eyes - kind, smiling, infinitely
affectionate.
He arrived home and threw himself on the bed. Everything was mixed
up in my head, some faces, numbers, flasks, photographs flashed by. At
times he lost consciousness, and when he came to, he found himself lying
in bed, with some people bending over him: the housekeeper, Professor
Birkhoff, his fellow workers, the doctors in white coats.
He vaguely remembered how violently he had wrenched himself from
someone's hands and fled somewhere, I think, upstairs, to his father's
study, and there he toreUmagu, then photographs, tore into small pieces

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until he was grabbed and forcibly put to bed.
This fit of madness lasted for several days. Then he fell into complete
indifference, into apathy, and lay for hours with his eyes fixed on the
ceiling. Everything became gray, colorless... Albert felt completely
devastated and crushed...
Soon after all that had happened, he was visited by his fellow workers,
Victor Klemper and Antoine Gust. They entered the bedroom noisily, with
that feigned gaiety and artificial optimism with which one usually comes
to a seriously ill person.
"You've frightened us, Alb!" Klemper exclaimed, shaking his hand.
"We thought you'd never get well and we'd have to hand you over to
Professor Cusano for experiments."
Professor Cuzano is the head of the laboratory of biochemistry of
higher nervous activity. Recently, he has been engaged in the study of
physical and chemical processes occurring in the human brain affected by
mental disorders.
"As he watched you, he decided that somewhere deep in your body
there was a whole mascaline factory out of control. You had a real
schizophrenic poisoning in a violent version.
"Listen, friends," Albert began, "have you ever thought that turning a
man inside out like you do, or Dr. Cusano, or some other biochemist or
biophysicist, is a rather mean thing?"
They looked at each other uncomprehendingly. Without waiting for an
answer, Alb continued:
"As long as a man is young, healthy, and full of strength, he allows
himself from time to time the luxury of flirting with death, making jokes
about the inevitability of meeting it. But only in exceptional cases is the
real encounter of man with the last stage of his earthly existence a
spectacle filled with aesthetic charm.
"Alb, if you're not quite well yet," Antoine began.
"No, boys, I'm quite well, and what I'm telling you now is the result of a
lot of thought.
"In that case, explain what you mean." Isn't it yourself? We must tell
you that you are out of danger. You had an ordinary emotional breakdown,
a complete suppression of the inhibition function, what psychiatrists call
reactive psychosis. Dr. Cusano demonstrated the chemical morphology of
your blood in a lecture at the university, showing that such cases are
accompanied by a sharp increase in the concentration of adrenaline and its
derivatives. No wonder we started talking about mascaline. You know...
The fact that Alb knew, and the fact that they knew, and the fact that
several dozen university students knew, made him feel as disgusted as a
man who had been led out naked to be paraded in front of a large audience

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of curious people. He made an impatient gesture, and his friends fell
silent. They were silent for a few seconds, looking for another topic to talk
about. Finally, Victor, as always with rude cynicism, said:
"While you were lying here, we deciphered the molecular structure of
the X and Y chromosomes.
So what?
"Now parents can have a balanced family structure, and governments -
in any case, even in times of war - a balanced population structure. Great,
isn't it?
Albert shrugged. After all, it was a trifling discovery compared to the
one he had learned ofHe felt that behind the outward carelessness with
which his friends had reported their discovery, there was the pride and
vanity of scientists who had taken another step into the unknown.
"This is how complicity in a crime begins," thought Alb. - When is it
necessary to try me and my employees for a crime against humanity,
before the decoding of the X and Y chromosomes or after? Or when the
government will be able to have a balanced population in time of war? Or
when the war begins and it is too late to change anything?"
"What is all this for, Victor, Antoine?" It seems to me that research in
the field of molecular genetics of man, digging into the hidden
mechanisms of his once mysterious essence will lead to the fact that when
knowledge becomes the property of school textbooks, life for people will
lose all its charm, all its inexpressible beauty. People will appear before
themselves and before each other devoid of skin, as anatomical figures;
worse - as vessels molded from bundles of protein molecules of a known
composition, in which certain biochemical reactions and biophysical
processes are played out.
Albert felt that he was not saying what he ought to say. Of course, the
results of his father's and Horsch's work will sooner or later be replicated
in laboratories around the world. But what will follow? Sensible humanity
will not create chemical plants that produce people according to ordered
formulas. No, this will never happen. And yet such plants can arise,
secretly from everyone, underground, with the same bloodthirsty purpose.
He suddenly clearly imagined an energetic, or, as we like to say now,
effective, man in uniform, who clearly reported to the minister how well
things were going at the plant, and he wanted to shout at the top of his
voice to his friends:
"Stop! Stop that! Open your eyes wider and imagine what will happen
if..."
"Not to make a discovery is a feat squared," he recalled a phrase
dropped by his father before his death. He bit his lip until it bled.
"What do you suggest?" Stop? Shut down science? Return to primitive

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ignorance? So far, we have heard only a negative position. And where is
the positive one? Where are the successes of medicine, where are the
successes of agriculture, where is the improvement of people's adaptation
to the environment? Where are the successes in the treatment of hereditary
diseases? Where, finally, is the genetic aspect of solving the problem of
cancer?
- It's all true... But I am afraid that soon the excitement of parents
expecting a child will disappear, because children will be raised in flasks
according to a pre-made program...
- It is possible. Right, it is not excluded, Alb. I, for one, do not see
anything wrong with this, and the experiments in this direction are very
encouraging... What's wrong with you, Alb? Have you turned pale? Are
you tired?
Klemper and Gust stood up. Albert wanted so much to tell them
everything... But he did not do this, because he was sure that soon, very
soon, they would reproduce Horsch's attitude and at the institute, they
would begin, like the possessed, like medieval Fausts, to make people
artificially. It seemed that only now did he realize how right his father was
when he said that the scientist was responsible for the fate of his
discovery.
Albert had fully recovered and sat in his father's study all day long
reading books on philosophy. He never paid attention to how many books
on philosophy there were in the library, how many studies his father had
read onThe Petitions of Death and Immortality. Now, reading one book
after another, he seemed to be following his path.
It was at this time that Horsch appeared. He came in, old, hunched over.
For a moment, Alb felt sorry for him. Horsch stood before him with his
hands down like whips, in an old faded cloak, with a colorless face that
expressed endless fatigue and even greater guilt.
"Sit down," Albert said.
Horsch nodded his head and sat down. They were silent for a while.
"I'm listening, Horsch.
He raised his head.
"Why did you do that, Alb?" He asked at last.
-A what?
"You have destroyed the work of my whole life, and not only mine, but
also the work of your father.
Albert grinned. An unkind feeling of revenge spoke in him.
- What right did you have to conduct such an inhuman experiment?
What right did you have to give life to a person in this way?
Horsch smiled ironically.
"What right, what right... What right did people have to create

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gunpowder? What right did they have to create atomic and hydrogen
bombs? What is it, Alb? And what about airplanes? And rockets? And
what about deadly viruses? And it's all death, Alb, death... What right... If
you want to know, our right—I mean not only ourselves, but your father as
well—our right was based on an irresistible desire to neutralize the insane
desire of science to develop the means of destroying all life.
Albert looked up at him in surprise. He did not expect such a turn.
"Yes, yes, Alb, don't be surprised. If you are interested in the moral
motives of our research, then they were just like that. Many years ago,
your father and I swore to make man immortal in spite of all the tricks of
misanthropes and madmen.
-How?
"Of course, you know the history of the Dead Sea manuscripts. A
Jordanian shepherd found scrolls of leather that had lain in a cave for more
than two thousand years. The scrolls contain records of ancient traditions,
legends, and laws. Modern scientists have deciphered them, and now we
have the opportunity to look at the distant past through the eyes of people
who lived at that time. Wars, natural disasters, catastrophes swept over the
earth, one civilization replaced another, and the scrolls were waiting in the
wings. And the writings of the Mayan peoples and the Sumerian clay
tablets...
- What does this have to do with your work?
"Oh, Alb, the most directly. Your father and I, when he was younger,
decided to leave behind us priceless records, the most sacramental
writings for history that a man can make. We vowed to create a golden
book and record the results of our work.
- What did you want to write in this book?
-A what? Of course, the formula of man.
"A human formula?"
-Yes. The same one you saw in my lab. And a description of the very
attitude in which this formula can be synthesized. Isn't that, Alb, the
solution to the problem of immortality? In addition to the formula itself,
the book had to contain a detailed description of the apparatus in which the
synthesis could be carried out. It had to contain all the instructions on how
and what to start, when to finish, what to do with the newborn next. In the
end, having arrived at the exact chemical formula of the substance of
human heredity, we even began to think that the synthesis could be
automated from the beginning to the end, entrusting it to a cybernetic
machine. The design of such a machine is easy to develop. We wanted to
do this and also write it down in the golden book. Can you imagine what
this means? This is immortality in the full sense of the word. The book can
be put into a space projectile and sent into the universe. It can travel for

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millions of years and fall into the hands of intelligent beings unlike us.
And they can easily recreate a person! And here on Earth! You, Alb, me,
any person can be immortalized so that he will appear again and again on
Earth, observing the eternal evolution of our planet...
Horsch's tired and indifferent face brightened, and he began to speak
with rapture, ignoring Albert, talking about the fantastic possibilities that
the Formula of Man opens up for humanity. Alb suddenly felt that he was
a deranged person.
"It's a beautiful, but absolutely meaningless idea," he tried to stop this
crazy nonsense.
"After your father married Solveig and you were born, he said the same
words...
At his mother's name, Alb shuddered.
Meanwhile, Horsch continued.
- Nature is much simpler than we think. It's all about a small group of
substances that are the initiators of cyclic reactions. These are substances
that begin a closed sequence of chemical reactions, the final stage of
which is the synthesis of the initiating molecule again. You know, Alb,
what these substances are. First of all, it is a substance of heredity:
deoxyribonucleic acids, DNA... That's all.
- And then?
- And then we analyzed and synthesized the substance of human
heredity.
-Well...
- We managed to raise several children according to the same formula...
Solveig was the fifth in a row.
"And the others?"
"Died either in an embryonic state or shortly after... after birth.
-Why?
- To this "why" we have not been able to fully answer. The fact is that a
group of DNA molecules determines the survivability of an individual.
We found this group and in every possible way rearranged the nitrogenous
bases in it... We managed to get Solveig to live twenty-one years. But this
is so little... In the golden book, we wanted to write the formula of a very
durable person.
- What happened next?
"Solveig grew up to be a very beautiful girl. She was brought up in the
Shauli family...
"In the same place as Mija?"
Horsch nodded.
"Your father fell in love with her. I was categorically against their
marriage. But he was relentless. Solveig loved him too. And so...

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 -Gosh! Albert exclaimed.
Horsch winced. In a very broken voice he said:
"This is unusual, and therefore it seems unnatural. But soon they will
get used to it.
- When will the synthesis of people be described in school textbooks?
-Yes. Sooner or later, it will be so.
"All right, go on. What happened next?
"After his marriage your father gave up his work in this field altogether.
He moved to the Institute of Genetics and Cytology. He said that no
golden book was needed and that human immortality must be fought for
by other methods. You know what they are. He was a member of all the
committees on earth to protect humanity from nuclear war. I don't
thinkAnd it was very clever...
Alb approached Horsch.
"Listen, I forbid you to say that about my father. After all, you are only
his student. And it is not for you to judge what is smart and what is not
smart. I think he was quite right in abandoning this idiotic idea. And why
did you come to me anyway?
He looked at Albert with pleading eyes.
"Alb, just don't be angry—" Give your word that you will behave
reasonably.
-What do you want?
"Two things... Try to find at least scraps of the notebook you took from
me, and then... a drop of your blood for analysis.
Alb held out his right hand and watched with disgust as Horsch's
trembling hands fumbled hastily in his pockets as he pulled out a cotton
swab, a vial of ether, and an instrument. A slight puncture, a red drop
appeared on the finger.
Horsch put a serpentine tube to it and began to quickly suck blood into
the can.
- Why do you need it?
"Now I will know if you will live longer than your mother." It is curious
what happened in the structure of the DNA that determines lethality... And
now the notebook.
Alb rang the bell, and the housekeeper came into the office.
The elderly woman nodded her head and left. They were left alone.
Albert had a terrible question in his mind, which he was afraid to ask.
There was another mystery that needed to be solved, but the more he
delved into it, the more afraid he was to ask Horsch about it. He was also
silent, as if guessing what was tormenting Albert.
A few seconds later, the housekeeper brought a large folder with a pile
of paper.

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 "Here, Mr. Albert, is all that is left...
Horsch snatched the box from her hands and began to hurriedly
straighten the scraps of crumpled paper inscribed with rows of numbers.
-Eat. There is something... The main thing remains, and the rest can be
restored. That's the most important thing. Lethality... Now we'll try
something different...
As he delved deeper into the recovery of the records, his face took on
more and more the expression it had taken on when Albert had first seen
him... At last he looked up from the papers and turned his beaming gaze to
Alb.
- Have you looked at the photos? True, an amazing example of human
history. From the cell to death.
Albert was silent. Green and purple circles floated in front of his eyes.
They covered Horsch's face.
"Did you notice how much Midgea looked like Solveig?" He went on
asking.
And then Alb could not stand it anymore and asked:
"Is Mijae my sister?"
"What are you talking about, Alb, what are you! Of course not! This is
the sixth option.
Later... That tearing, hysterical cry still rings in his ears. And before my
eyes was Horsch's pale face. And then pain, pain in the head, chest, legs.
Apparently, he was beaten, torn from this twisted body. He cried like a
little child, and tears ran down his cheeks and fell on the unshaven chin of
the lifeless Horsch. Then he was tied up. Then a cold straitjacket. And
finally, the prison cell...
"The death sentence for murder can be commuted to hard labor for life,
if you present sufficiently convincing motives for your crime," a man told
him calmly, it seemed to be my father's old lawyer.
"A death sentence?" Lethality? Is Horsch Did you manage to do a blood
test? Albert asked, as if after hypnosis.
- Albert, collect your thoughts, think carefully. Tomorrow is the trial.
- Tell me, are there any laws by which people are judged for creating
people who are obviously doomed to death?
"What are you saying, Albert!
- Your DNA says when you're going to die...
"For God's sake, don't pretend to be crazy. Doctors have established
that you acted in a state of affect. And that's all. As for the rest, you are
perfectly healthy.
-Normal. Healthy. How strange it sounds now. As if you knew my
formula. Nobody knows her. And he will never know. It will not be inscribed
in the golden book of immortality, because I am not tenacious enough.

698
 Electronic Hammer

1.
Kennant unfolded a piece of paper and read, "Dear friend! The sender
of this letter is well known to me. Alas, his family suffered a severe
misfortune. His father, a poor farmer, died suddenly last year. The grief of
the mother of many children deprived her of the ability to move and,
apparently, chained her to bed forever. In total, there are seven people in
the family. The one who gives you this letter is the eldest and, therefore,
the breadwinner of the family. His name is Fred Alixon. I remember you
wanted to have a good assistant in your work. If you take him to your
laboratory, you will not only find him, but you will also do a good
Christian deed. We so often forget the Gospel, which speaks of helping
our neighbor. Hugs to you, old man. Your faithful Augustus."
"So, Fred, did you cross the continent to work for me?" Kennant asked
a tall, slightly stooped blond man with large blue eyes (on which whitish
hair crept from his bulging forehead).
"Yes, Professor. Your friend, August Schröder, advised me to do so.
-Ok. What can you do?
- Anything you order. I'm not afraid of any work.
- And what about your education?
"Oh, not very much. Three courses of the Faculty of Natural Sciences.
There was not enough money anymore and...
"I see, I see.
Kennant stared at one point and rubbed his stubble chin for a few
minutes.
"And how is Augustus?" he asked at last.
-Thank you. Ok. He still collects stamps.
"And how is his health?" Kennant asked.
- He doesn't complain yet. True, sometimes, especially in autumn and
spring, his heart is naughty.
"Heart, you say?"
"Yes," Fred said. "My father also died of a heart.
Kennant, coughing and rubbing his chin, walked around the office
several times. Then he stopped beside Fred and looked at him with his
watery eyes.
"Well, good. I'll take you. I take it because my best friend recommends

699
it. It is not me that you should thank, but him.
"Oh, Professor—" Fred made a sharp gesture toward Kennant to shake
his hand. An old man with a gray mane resting on a snow-white collar
stepped back in fright.
"No, no, no," he said hurriedly, raising his hands to the level of the
chest pockets of his jacket. "I told you, you will thank Augustus.
The young man moved his long, clumsy arms in the air in
embarrassment and finally hid them in his trouser pockets.
For several minutes both were silent. Fred stared at the strange setup. It
resembled several short pipes inserted into each other, wrapped in black
insulating material. Kennant watched the young visitor's expression. At
last he said,
"Actually, do you know what we're going to do?"
"I admit not," said Fred, and smiled guiltily.
"The thing you're looking at is called a linear accelerator," Kennant
said.
"That's right. Does this mean that nuclear particles are accelerated on
this device?
- In a way, yes. If only electrons can be called nuclear particles.
"An electron accelerator?" Fred asked.
Kennant nodded his head and, going around the black-wrapped pipes,
turned on the switch. On the marble shield there was a flash of beautylight
bulb. The vacuum pump rattled.
"We're going to have to go into another room." The energy of
accelerated electrons is about five million electron volts. As they make
their way through the thin aluminum foil from the accelerator chamber,
they create a strong gamma radiation background. It's not safe.
The professor and his new assistant quickly left the laboratory for an
adjoining room, closing the heavy door lined with sheet lead tightly
behind them.
Kennant sat down at his desk, and as he flipped through some papers,
he seemed to have forgotten all about his new assistant. Fred shifted
noiselessly from foot to foot and looked around. On small tables in the
corners of the room were a metallographic microscope and a
microprojector. A huge massive safe towered at the front door. It was an
unpainted cast-iron box more than one and a half meters high with walls at
least ten centimeters thick.
"You'll have to see how the electronic hammer works," Professor
Kennant said at last.
"An electronic hammer?" Fred asked, surprised.
-Yes. This, of course, is a figurative name. However, in a sense, it
conveys the main idea: Electrons can be used to forge metal. Yes, yes,

700
and, if you like, you have entered the forge of the atomic age. And I am a
blacksmith in this forge.
Kennant narrowed his eyes and smiled mischievously.
"Well, I'd love to be your apprentice, if you want to," said Fred, and
smiled too.
-Good. But first of all, you have to understand the basic idea. Do you
know what metal is forged for?
Fred thought for a moment. In this age, it is very common to ask
extremely simple questions at first glance, which are easiest to answer if
you know nothing about modern science.
"That question could best be answered by some hereditary blacksmith,"
Fred remarked embarrassedly.
"Then you don't know. Well, I'll tell you. Of course, very briefly. You
will read the rest in books. Metal is forged not only to give it the desired
shape, but also to impart to it some important properties. When we process
metal with hammer blows, we create a dense layer on its surface, which
makes the product durable. The metal is strengthened.
"I see," Fred said.
- Forging metal can only be successfully carried out up to a certain limit.
If you go over the norm, the metal will crack due to internal stresses.
-Present.
- All these are external signs. More important is what happens inside the
metal being forged. Do you know what's going on inside?
Fred shook his head resolutely.
- No, I don't know.
- Forging distorts the crystal structure of the metal. Metal atoms are
getting closer. After forging, a shell is formed that is denser than the rest of
the mass. It is she who gives the metal strength.
-I see it.
- There is enough theory for today. I'm going to dinner, and you sit down
at my table and read this.
Kennant handed Fred a book entitled: "Changes in the Structure of
Metals during Forging."
"All right, I'll read it," Fred said.
"I'll be back in two or three hours." If you decide to leave, the key is in
the door. On the first floor of the institute, hand it over to the duty officer.
Fred sat down at the professor's desk and nodded his head.
When the door closed and Kennant's footsteps stopped, Fred flipped
through the book for a few minutes. Then he pushed it aside and began to
examine the table at which he was sitting. Pulling up a sumptuous ink set,
gilded bronze on black marble, he found a huge hole in the table
underneath. It was a shapeless hole made by some blunt instrument. Rags of

701
mutilated wood stuck out in all directions. Around this hole I could see a
few more, smaller.
When he had finished examining his desk, Fred got up quietly, listened,
and walked up and down the room. Then he went to the safe and at first
lightly, and then with all his might, pulled on the handle of the door. The
safe was locked. As Fred tugged on the handle, there was a sudden hiss and
crackling sound from inside. Fred made a huge leap to the side and wiped
his sweaty forehead. Then he went back to the safe and pulled the door
handle again, to no avail.

2.
A round concave chrome cup was fixed in a special clamp mounted on a
rotating shaft. When the shaft began to rotate, the cup made oscillating
movements up and down, to the right and to the left, describing a complex
trajectory in space.
"Just like Plato's epicycles," Fred said, as he watched the metal cup toss
in all directions. "What is all this for?"
"That's so that the electron beam can process the entire surface,"
Kennant said. - If electrons keep forging the same place, it will instantly
become white-hot and finally melt. This should not be allowed.
- You say that the energy of electrons is equal to five million electron
volts?
"Yes, Fred. At this energy, electrons are able to displace metal atoms
from the nodes of the crystal lattice. In this case, the metal atoms come
closer together, and the treated surface acquires greater density. Just like
when forging metal with a hammer. If the usual distance between
chromium atoms is about three angstroms, then after it is processed with an
electron hammer, this distance decreases to one tenth of an angstrom. Can
you imagine what this means?
Fred blinked his eyes uncomprehendingly.
- The density of matter is inversely proportional to the cube of the
distance between atoms. It is not difficult to understand that after
electronic forging, the density of the metal will increase by more than a
thousand times. If the weight of one cubic centimeter of chrome is seven
grams, then one cubic centimeter of forged chrome will weigh more than
seven kilograms.
"Oh," Fred exclaimed. "Just like stellar matter. They say that the
density of the matter from which some stars are built is fantastically
enormous. One cube of this substance weighs several tons.
-Exactly. This happens due to the compaction of atomic nuclei.
"So you want to reproduce stellar matter?"
Kennant walked over to the pulse generator and turned on the voltage.

702
 - Let's get out. Electronic metal processing will begin now.
Kennant and Fred walked into the next room, leaving a roaring
generator in their wake. Electronic forging of the chrome cup has begun.
"So you want to reproduce stellar matter?" Fred repeated the question.
Kennant sat down at the table and stared into his assistant's eyes for a
long time. Then he said,
"The fact is, my young friend, that the creation of stellar matter is not
the main task. Everything I do is necessary to solve one extremely an
important applied problem in the field of optics.
"Is that so?" Optics? Fred asked. "And I thought you were dealing with
a purely metallurgical problem.
-No. All this is necessary for something else. I decided to build a
gamma microscope.
- Gamma microscope? Fred asked.
- Yes, a gamma microscope, it will help people see individual atoms
and maybe even electrons...
"You're joking, Professor," Fred said incredulously.
-Not at all. Conventional microscopes use light rays with wavelengths
ranging from four hundred to seven hundred millimicrons. These are
approximately the minimum sizes of objects that can be studied in these
rays. There are microscopes that use ultraviolet rays. This allows you to
see objects ten times smaller. The smaller the size of the microscopic
bodies we want to observe, the shorter the wavelength of light should be.
The size of the atom is about one angstrom. This corresponds to gamma
rays.
- But how will you focus these gamma rays, how will you make them
obey the laws of geometric optics? After all, this is impossible.
"Perhaps," said Kennant. - To do this, you need to have a material from
which, as you correctly noted, you need to create focusing devices for
gamma rays. It is not difficult to guess that this substance must have an
enormous density, that is, a very small interatomic distance. If the distance
between the atoms of a substance is significantly less than the wavelength
of gamma rays, they will be reflected from it like light from an ordinary
mirror.
"That's right!" Fred exclaimed. - And this is why you are engaged in
electronic forging of metal?
-Yes.
- But it's great! And do you succeed?
"Almost," said Keinant, "look at this diagram.
Kennant led Fred to a wall on which hung a diagram of a mirror
microscope.
- Three spherical mirrors are depicted here. This is a parabolic

703
capacitor. This is a mirror lens into which gamma rays are introduced. The
image is formed on a luminescent screen.
"It's all very simple, really," Fred said. - Of course, with the exception
of obtaining material for the manufacture of a mirror that reflects gamma
rays.
"That's where the electronic hammer helps.
After a moment's silence, Fred remarked, as if in thought,
"If such a material can be made, then a gamma-ray searchlight can be
built..."
"For what?" Kennant asked. His gray eyebrows furrowed.
"It would be the perfect searchlight for the death rays that have been
dreamed of for so long..."
-A what? Death rays? The professor stood up and looked sternly at his
assistant.
-Think so. It is possible to make a large parabolic mirror and in its focus
to strengthen a source of gamma radiation, for example, a piece of cobalt
with an atomic weight of 60. It would be impossible to hide from the
beams of such a searchlight, even behind a stone wall.
"I don't like this talk, Alixon," said Kennait. In my laboratory, I
categorically forbid thinking about deadly devices.
The old man walked around the office several times.
- There has already been an attempt to use my works for this purpose.
But it was not crowned with success and, I think, will not be crowned.
With that, Kennant left the room. Fred heard how in the "electronicoh
smithy" slammed the switch. Professor Kennant turned off the electronic
hammer. A few minutes later, he returned, holding a processed chrome
cup in his hands. He opened the safe and hid it inside. Without saying a
word, he left the room.

3.
-Now Fred, you know how and what to do. I'm going away for a day or
two and instructing you to work on these chromium paraboloids. They
will be useful for the capacitors of the future microscope. Just please, after
processing, immediately hide them in a safe and do not touch them until
my arrival. Got it?
"Yes, Professor.
A faint shadow appeared on Fred's face for a moment, which
immediately disappeared. He looked at his boss.
"Will you leave me the key to the safe?"
-Of course. Keep in mind that these parabolic mirrors are extremely
valuable. Do you remember you told me about death rays? Now, these
mirrors are especially suitable for this purpose. If the Ministry of War of

704
our country knew that we had them, they would not skimp on any money
to acquire them. Therefore, I repeat, immediately hide each manufactured
mirror under lock and key. Here's the key for you.
Kennant handed the key to the safe to his assistant. Fred pressed him to
his chest with both hands.
"And also," Kennant went on, "if you accidentally break any of these
mirrors, there are chrome blanks in my desk. You can repeat the
experiment.
-Breaks? Fred asked.
-Yes. They sometimes break. After electronic forging, they often
become brittle. So, is everything clear to you?
- Yes, everything is clear. I'll do as you say.
After this conversation, Kennant walked around the laboratory for a
few minutes, carefully examined all the instruments and installations, and
finally stopped at the exit door.
"I adjure you. Immediately hide each newly made mirror in a safe. This
is extremely necessary, you see? If you don't do this...
"What are you talking about, Professor! Fred exclaimed. "I'll do as you
say."
"Then I wish you good luck." Goodbye, As soon as Professor Kennant
left the room, Fred jumped to the linear accelerator. He tucked a chrome
parabolic mirror into the holder and turned on the electronic hammer.
Forty minutes later he repeated the same with the second paraboloid, then
with the third, with the fourth, with the fifth. He finished his work late at
night, when there were already seven ready-made parabolic mirrors on the
desk - reflectors of gamma rays.
"An old ass!" Fred whispered maliciously to himself. "What an idiot he
is!" Finally, I will get what I am entitled to for this work. And how did
Bright fail to do this earlier?
When he had finished, Fred opened the safe and looked inside.
"A cunning beast!" he whispered to himself. "He destroyed everything
that had been done before!" - Only fragments.
Indeed, he did not find a single intact mirror inside the safe. Only small
fragments of former spherical and parabolic mirrors were scattered on
four shelves.
Fred put five mirrors inside the safe and stuffed two into his pocket.
They were heavy, and the trousers were sliding down.
After that, he locked the safe and left the laboratory.
At the Siren Café, Fred hurriedly dialed the phone number.
-Kaiser? Hello, old man. I hope you have your checkbook with you. So,
rush to me and get the goods. Yes Yes. I don't understand how Bright
failed to do that. Easy! He himself put everything in my hands. A what?

705
All this is provided. He said that some of them could become brittle and
break. These are in perfect order. Hurry up and take it, or I'll be left
without trousers. They are as heavy as aerial bombs. A what? Okay, as
long as I agree to an advance. After the test, the rest? Okay. So, the café
"Sirena". Waiting.
The Kaiser did not enter, but burst in.
- Congratulations, lucky one! He whispered in Fred's ear and shook his
hand.
"I've worked out this ancient pacifist briskly, haven't I?" Fred said
cheekily.
-Chic. I don't know how you managed to do it so soon. Our boss is
delighted. Where are they?
Fred looked around the empty café and then carefully pulled out of his
pocket first one and then the second parabolic mirrors.
-Cash down.
The Kaiser handed him the check. After reading the number, Fred
smiled broadly.
"I just called the Ministry, the chief one. Tomorrow he will personally
take them to a special test site. If everything is in order, this amount will be
increased fivefold. Here is a letter of guarantee.
"All right," Fred said, and handed his friend both mirrors. "Don't forget
to tell the principal what else I owe for knowing how these things are
made. After all, they will soon begin to arm the army with them! I can take
on the task of setting up mass production.
"Of course," said the Kaiser. - This is meant. Well, now let's have a
drink - and go home. It's time for you to go to bed. After all, tomorrow you
have a damn hard scientific work. Two mirrors turned out to be fragile and
broke. They need to be made again. Right?
The Kaiser and Fred laughed loudly.

4.
Kennant found Fred at his desk. He sprawled in his chair with his legs
outstretched and exhaled cigar smoke luxuriantly from his lungs.
"Hello, young friend," the professor said cheerfully to his assistant.
- Ah, chief, we have arrived! How are you feeling?
-Fine thank you. Very much, even. And you?
-All is well. A little tired. Those damned mirrors...
"What's wrong with them?" Kennant asked, smiling.
"Yes, what you warned me about. Two of them turned out to be very
fragile and broke...
Kennant looked at the young man intently, shook his head, and said
sadly.

706
 -I knew it. This is all the misfortune. I don't understand what to do with
them? It is in this fragility that the whole snag lies.
Fred got up and walked over to the professor.
"Don't worry, I've made new ones. As you ordered. There are seven
pieces in total. Do you want to see it?
"Oh yes, of course. Show. Fred walked over to the safe, clicked the key,
and threw the door wide open.
"Please watch."
Kennant looked inside the box. He stood silent for a few seconds, and
then looked up at Fred in surprise.
"Where are they?"
"Like where, here, here...
The last word got stuck in Fred's throat. He looked into the safe and
found no mirrors there. Instead, the shelf was covered with a thick layer of
metal dust and shrapnel. Then he turned his dull gaze to the professor.
"They were there... Keniant smiled wryly.
"Alas," he said bitterly. "The same thing happened to them as to thatand
two.
"Which ones?" Fred whispered.
"Well, the ones you say crashed."
Kennant stepped away from the safe and took a deep breath.
"It's good that you survived," he said, as if in passing. "And that's
because you strictly followed my instructions and hid the mirrors in this
drawer immediately after processing.
Fred followed the professor with an anxious face, waiting for an
explanation.
"Oh, if it were not for these terrible inner tensions! Kennant exclaimed
bitterly. - We would have built a gamma microscope a long time ago.
- What voltages?
"Yes, these are the very ones that make our mirrors so fragile and
scatter on their own, like fragmentation grenades. Take a look.
Kennant pushed the ink machine to the edge of the desk and exposed a
shapeless hole underneath.
- This is the result of my first experiment. I made the first mirror
and put it on the table. It lay quietly for two days and then exploded.
Shrapnel pierced the top of the table. Fortunately, at that moment I
was in the room where the linear accelerator is. Remember, I told you
that even with ordinary forging of metal, its surface sometimes cracks
due to the stresses arising from this. The same thing happens with
electronic forging, but the metal does not just crack, but literally
explodes. After the first experience, I bought this safe. Why risk your
life, right?

707
 Fred, his face as pale as a dead man's, stared at Kennant, his eyes
bulging with terror.
"Well, there's nothing to be afraid of now. The main thing is that you
hid the treated mirrors in a safe in a timely manner. I understand you. You
can imagine what would have happened if you had not followed my
instructions.
Kennant giggled good-naturedly and patted Fred on the shoulder.
"Professor, I'm feeling very bad," Fred wheezed at last, "let me go..."
"Please, I don't mind," said Kennant, sitting down at his desk. "You can
go home and rest." You've done a pretty good job without me, haven't
you? You deserve your vacation.
Fred put both hands on his head and ran out of the office. Kennant
looked after him mockingly. Then he took a piece of paper and wrote,
"Dear August. So, the story has come to its logical end. A minute ago,
your "protégé" ran away in panic. I think he's struggling to get a plane
ticket to go somewhere in Chile or to the Santa Cruz Islands. Otherwise, it
will be difficult for him. It is unlikely that the War Department will
forgive him for this thing. The tragic death of the head of the Special
Studies Department from the explosion of fragmentation grenades planted
in a car, which you have probably already read in the newspapers, is quite
enough reason to accuse Fred of terror, sabotage or espionage for some
foreign power. By the way, you ask how I knew that Fred was a crook sent
to me by the military? Very simply, when they composed a letter on your
behalf, they did not take into account that you are a notorious atheist. How
often, in committing baseness against humanity, our official masters refer
to the Gospel! Your Kennant."

708
 A Man For The Archive
From this follows a conclusion of fundamental importance: the
mechanism of thinking cannot be located at the atomic-molecular level...
Neutrino... as if it is already approaching these requirements.
Journal of Physical Chemistry, No 4, 1966

1
The first time I was reminded that I was no longer a young man was
when I made an attempt to return to the army. This was during a chance
meeting with Colonel R. (he asked me not to mention his name later). We
ran into each other on a path that wound along the gentle bank of the river.
I had noticed him earlier, behind a small wooden bridge where he and his
wife were fishing. I was standing with a fishing rod a little upstream, and
as soon as it dawned and the fog cleared, I recognized him at once.
His wife and a boy of about seven years old, his son, who was carrying
a nylon net with fish, walked a little ahead, and when we met, each of us
involuntarily looked at who had what catch.
"And I, by the way, once met you," I said to the colonel.
He narrowed his eyes, which were already narrow:
"I don't recognize something... However, maybe...
"You are Colonel R., and my military service took place in your
brigade. Military psychiatrist.
"Ah," drawled R. "I remember. It was then the amusing case of the
soldier Crois, who poisoned himself God knows what and called me
"Madame" for a whole week.
We started talking.
The hotel was about three kilometers away, and we had plenty of time
to remember a lot. It was then that I shed a tear that civilian life was very
unsettled and twitchy, that I regretted leaving the army and that I had
nothing against returning to the unit, especially since I remained a
bachelor.
He asked how old I was.
"Now the army is being rejuvenated. And your age...
This hurt me, especially since the colonel himself was much older than
me, but I, fortunately, realized that the rejuvenation was not at the expense
of replacing people like R.

709
 Just in case, he wrote down my address and phone number, and in the
evening I fell asleep, and when I woke up, I had already forgotten about
this meeting and about my desire to return to the army. In fact, it was not
even a desire, but a kind of attempt to escape from the life that we are used
to calling civilization. After all, the army is in a separate position, and in
spite of its machine organization and iron discipline, it has a great
advantage over the frenzied confusion of free civil life.
Imagine my surprise when three months later I received a call from
some institution and was told that someone would like to meet with me.
To this day, I do not know what this institution is called. Only later did
I realize that it was in some way connected with Colonel R. (or rather, he
was in some way connected with this institution). It was here that an
elderly man in civilian clothes reminded me of my age for the second
time. It turned out that now they were quite satisfied with my age, my
education, and my life experience, and they could offer me "something
like a job."
I didn't think about that "something" at the time, because it said
something more important to me:
"You don't seem to be delighted with the madness of the city. And it is
understandable. It is very difficult for us old people (I am an old man,
thirty-eight years old!) to adapt to the crazy, ever-accelerating pace of our
lives. And here you will be completely calm...
I agreed.
At first, I had to fly by plane, then I had to loop in the car among low
hills for a long time, and here I was.
Indeed, everything in this wooded valley was striking in calm and
silence. The silence was not disturbed even by the usualthe hiss of the tops
of tall pines.
I was struck by the solemnity with which the giant trees and shrubs and
the grass on which I walked were silent.
"Something like work" appeared behind a high green wall of densely
planted thujas. It was a three-storey light house of Italian architecture with
light columns and small balconies. I was a little surprised that all the
windows were covered with lattice blinds, even though the sun had not yet
set.
When I was going here, I expected that everything would be unusual
and even mysterious. And now, when I stood all alone, in ringing silence,
in front of the shining palace, I remembered my student youth...
At that time, I was prepared to get a job in some backwater mental
hospital and spend my life dealing with chronic alcoholics, drug addicts,
and people obsessed with the inevitability of atomic war. There will be
sexual schizoids and schizophrenic sexuals, idiots of all types and kinds,

710
and I will prescribe them aminazine, barbamile, tranquilizers and
stimulants, and so on all their lives, almost always with the same patients,
because no one is ever really cured of this. Then I will marry a pretty girl
who regularly came to visit my alcoholic father, and I will have children
with bad heredity and a lot of worries until old age, if, of course, fate sends
her to me.
The war destroyed even my modest plans, and instead of a provincial
hospital, I found myself in the active army, at the front, and treated people
who lost their minds because of fear, pain, hatred, betrayal, injustice, and
God knows what else, and there are more reasons for this in war than
necessary...
After the war, I worked for a long time to be demobilized from the
army, and when I was released, I was faced with a completely different
kind of horror.
… I sat down on my suitcase and lit a cigarette. Well, of course, there is
some kind of research center, or institute, or God knows what. And,
probably, they are dealing with extraordinary patients, such that no one
should know about at all. Who knows what is going on in the souls of
people now. Every now and then there are disorders for which there are no
names in medicine, even in its most refined sections. Maybe this happened
before, say, a hundred years ago, but I don't believe in it. It's all about our
civilization and how it develops, trampling on all of humanity. People
create her for their own destruction, of this I was quite convinced, and she
takes revenge on them for her birth, for her ugly stature, for her narcotic
attractiveness. People strive for it, but it kills them, some immediately,
others slowly. It deprives some of their limbs, others of sight, others of
hearing, and most of them of reason. I was sure that if we had carefully
examined all the inhabitants of our modern cities, we would not have
found a single normal person. If there are normal people, it is only in
villages, on farms, on pristine land, and in those countries where neither
radio, nor television, nor jazz, nor drugs, nor whiskey have penetrated on
such a terrifyingly accessible scale as in our cities.
Almost a hundred years ago, the Austrian psychiatrist Krafft-Ebing
wrote that madness begins from the moment a person begins to
involuntarily read the signs above the shops. Now it's outdated! Madness
begins when a person, sitting on a high chair at the bar, alone pulls
alcoholic filth through a straw, or when, lounging on the sofa,
nervouslytwitches, reveling in ragged screeching rhythms.
Any psychiatrist, looking at the first, petrified, and the second,
twitching, will establish the primary insanity. And, it would seem, what is
easier: to knock the glass out of your hands or hit the tape recorder with a
hammer!

711
 But no! The man will scream: "You raised your hand against my
freedom!"
And society does not care what will follow a glass of cocktail and
nerve-wracking music...
… I was met and led to the building by an elderly woman in large
horn-rimmed glasses. On the way she said that a telegram had been
received about my arrival and that a room on the first floor had been
prepared for me.
I was a little embarrassed and slowed my steps when, passing through a
small hall immersed in semi-darkness, she began to descend the stairs.
Seeing my indecisiveness, my companion explained:
"It is customary for us to count floors from the very bottom...
Understand? Only part of the building is above the ground.
It reminded me of one front-line city, where the air force had destroyed
almost all the houses and where we found a nondescript stone shed - a
superstructure over fourteen underground floors. It was an underground
ammunition depot.
In the semi-darkness we stopped on a landing, then the elevator door
opened, and for a few seconds we quickly descended.
The floor was very similar to modern underground passages with walls
lined with shiny tiles and soft fluorescent lighting. Doors were blackened
in the walls, some made of glass, others made of opaque yellow plastic,
and still others made of metal.
"And here is your apartment," the woman said, opening one of the
yellow doors wide. "Number seven." Settle down and relax.
She was not too talkative and restrained, this is my guide.
I never noticed where she had disappeared.

2
The three of us sat at the same table and drank coffee. Me, another man
across from me, and a girl on my right.
What I had experienced in a few hours made an impression on me, and
going down into this shining tiled dungeon, I was pretty scared.
In general, there is nothing special about it, I reassured myself. Now
people are getting underground more and more often, and not only to hide
some secrets here, but also for other reasons. And why don't people go
underground altogether, like Wells's Morlocks?
Perhaps, I thought, the subterranean life will save us from a lot of
trouble and trouble. For example, from wars. I could not imagine a war
between underground states. What kind of military and industrial
organization is needed for this? And what are the means of warfare? And
no bombs, even the most advanced ones, will help here. There is no need

712
for aviation, missiles, navy, or guns! All of this would be meaningless if
all of humanity were buried underground.
At the thought of the underground undermining of one state under
another, I laughed.
I looked at the girl cheerfully and asked:
"Do you think it is possible to fight if all mankind moves underground?
Can you imagine, underground cities, villages, farms and so on?
She shuddered and with a quick movement of her head threw back a
lock of brown hair. She was very nice, but by the light of the fluorescent
lamps it was difficult to tell how old she was.
"N-I don't know...
She said it in a quiet, melodious, slightly sad voice.
"I can't imagine a war underground," I went on. "For that, you need
completely different principles, completely different weapons. And until
all this is created, people will forget what war is in general! Or like this. To
end wars, you need to resettle everyone underground, say, for a hundred or
a hundred and fifty years. And then return it back. Two generations are
enough to forget about everything.
She sipped her coffee in silence and said nothing.
— And why did you, in fact, talk about the war?
The man who asked this question was a tall, thin blond man with small
blue eyes. This cursed lighting made it impossible to determine either the
age of the person or the features of his face. Light streamed from wide
luminescent panels embedded in the walls and ceiling, and there were no
shadows at all. But only shadows create the architecture of the face, by
which you can distinguish youth from old age.
"Isn't all this," I made a broad gesture with my hand, "for war?"
"There are not only military factories underground," he remarked
evasively.
"What else?"
— Well, for example, laboratories for the study of cosmic rays. Or
seismic stations.
The guy clearly avoided answering my question.
"I don't see anything here that would remind me of this," I doubted.
"However, I am not a physicist or a geophysicist, but just a psychiatrist.
By the way, let's get acquainted. My name is Pei Sorran. And you?
— Goll Intree.
"I'm just Sad.
"You stubbornly hide your last name," the girl smiled.
"It doesn't matter," the blond man put his cup down on the table and
stood up. "Here you can call yourself by any name and call any surnames.
What's the odds? We could well use figures for this purpose. For example,

713
for men they are odd, and for women they are even. I am one, you are two,
and Mr. Pei is three.
"And why did you appropriate the first nomeR? It's impolite," I tried to
quip, looking at the smiling girl.
"Because I was the first to arrive here.
Sed was clearly in no mood to continue the conversation. I poured
myself another coffee. The girl was smoking a cigarette, staring into her
empty cup.
"What is your specialty, Goll?" Can I call you that?
"I don't have any specialty... almost none...
— Didn't have time to graduate from university?
She grinned.
"What a university it is!" She worked as a model... Then in the circus a
little...
"Interesting... And do you know any circus tricks?
"And I don't know the tricks. I only dressed acrobats there. She sewed
outfits for them.
- I see. And then they decided... However, I'm afraid to seem intrusive.
Well, you can ask me anything. And I can tell you everything myself. I...
She threw the cigarette into her cup and got up from the table.
"We'll still have time to tell each other everything. You need to save
your stories. You know how boring it becomes with a person when you
already know everything about him.
"O-la-la!" I exclaimed. "And you are not a beginner in life!
"Alas, I'm not a beginner. Good night.
Goll and Sed made me angry: smart guys who know something I don't
know yet. When you find yourself in the company of strangers, it always
takes time to move from "strangers" to "friends". Well, I'll wait.
The brightly lit corridor with tiled walls seemed to stretch to infinity.
This corridor, in which behind light glass doors there was a wardroom, a
recreation room and several living quarters, for some reason was called a
"floor".
I turned into the recreation room. The light in the room was more dim
and softer than in the corridor. Several armchairs, a grand piano, a
bookcase. A large tape recorder and a tape library. In the corner there was
a huge aquarium with colorful fish and blue-green algae. From the bottom,
from somewhere under the yellow sand, rose a miniature geyser of air
bubbles. I sank into my chair and thought. "And why is there a circus
model here? If this is an ordinary underground enterprise or laboratory,
even for the study of cosmic rays, then what does it have to do with it?
Well, come on: there is no need to rack your brains over this. Anyway,
sooner or later, I'll find out."

714
 I went to the bookcase and pulled out the first book I came across. It
was a volume of Heinrich Heine's prose, and I immediately found a thing I
had loved for a long time: "Pan Schnebelevopsky". I have always loved to
laugh at the heroine who beat her husband with a rolling pin when he
dreamed of women.
I wonder how she knew about it? Or did she feel it?
Perhaps Heine himself did not think about this, because in his time
there was not so much talk about telepathy as now.
I flipped through the book, running my eyes over the familiar lines,
until I suddenly found that I was very sleepy, despite the three cups of
coffee I had drunk.
I fell asleep with the same question:
"What is Goll here for?..

3
I knocked on the door of room number three, which was next to the
wardroom, and without waiting for permission, I entered. Sad had just
taken a shower and was rubbing himself with a shaggy towel in front of
the mirror.
"May I?"
"Go ahead. I'm not one of the shy.
He had not yet had time to make the bed.
"I have the impression that we are here at a resort. They feed, drink, and
do not force me to do anything. Just now there are no doctors and nurses in
white coats.
"Are you sure?" Sed asked.
— Absolutely.
— Do you think that physiological, biological and I don't know what
kind of research is necessary? Were there doctors and nurses on the first
spaceships? And, nevertheless, quite accurate information was obtained
about the well-being of the guys who rushed thousands of kilometers from
Earth. More accurate than some doctors get by sniffing a patient in their
office.
"In space, the guys are covered with all sorts of sensors and stuff," I
defended myself.
Now, go back to your room now and unfold your bed. Inspect the
mattress carefully, pay attention to the chairs, especially the backrests and
seats. And, in general, take an interest in the place where you live. It seems
to me that you are very... good-natured.
The friendly rapprochement that I, frankly speaking, had counted on,
again did not work out. For some reason, he emphasized his superiority in
every possible way. But what the hell!

715
 I left him angry.
I did not go to my room, however, because I heard the soft sounds of
the piano from the recreation room.
Goll was sitting at the piano, dressed up, picking up something with
one hand.
"Hello, Goll!"
The girl turned to me and nodded. In the semi-darkness she seemed
much younger than yesterday over coffee.
"Can you play that thing?"
"Oh, no!" Of course not. I just remembered one melody, and I try to
reproduce it. It sticks out in the brain like a nail. Can you guess what it is?
She began to play again, but I did not understand anything, because I
was completely deprived of musical hearing.
"Goll, have you checked what you have under the sheet and in the
backs of the chairs?"
"I checked," she replied, without looking up from the key. "And there is
nothing surprising in this. After all, experiments will be carried out on us.
I shuddered. Are there experiments above us? Are there experiments
above me? What?
"You're joking, Goll!
The girl burst out laughing, and thousands of questions swirled wildly
in my mind. Why didn't they tell me anything from the beginning? Why
did you choose me? What do they want to do with me? Or with this beauty
who is now laughing at my confusion and whom I am beginning to hate
for some reason?
I dragged the chair to the shining aquarium and began to examine its
back. It was all studded with shiny tips of wires. Trembling with
impatience, I tried to pick out one with my fingernail, when suddenly a
thin, hissing purple spark dug right into my finger. I writhed in pain.
Goll came over to me and put her hand on my shoulder.
"Calm down, Pei. Sed and I went through it. It doesn't make sense.
"Don't you think it's all mean?"
"I don't know. I don't know much about it. And then – both you and I
are here of our own free will.
Goll's words reminded me that during university lectures, almost every
professor, when talking about something new in medicine, often began a
sentence like this: "There wasAnd a group of volunteers was taken, who
were injected intravenously with such and such a substance. At the same
time, arterial pressure, pupil dilation reflex were carefully measured..."
Or: "A group of volunteers agreed to spend three days in a cell where the
temperature did not exceed five degrees Celsius. At the same time, it had
an effect..." Or: "Two volunteers were injected with gold electrodes into

716
the hippocampus during brain surgery. After applying a voltage of ten
millivolts..."
I have always been outraged by the immorality of the very fact of
attracting volunteers for such experiments. But now such things can be
done to people, and without asking for their consent.

4
After breakfast, I wandered into my room for a minute to change my
clothes. We agreed with Goll that I would come to her and amuse her with
curious stories from psychiatric practice, and she, in exchange for my
stories, would tell her something about the backstage life of the circus that
I had no idea about. Sad, as always, was silent, and, as soon as he touched
what he gave us, lazily wandered to his third room.
For the first time I had been underground, I tied my tie, straightened my
hair, and walked over to Goll's.
She lived at the very end of the corridor, in room nine.
No one answered my knock. Then I threw open the door. You could
enter here with your eyes closed and immediately guess that a woman
lived here. Some fragrant comfort, a tiny intimate paradise that young
girls can arrange so well, especially if they are beautiful. In some
mysterious way, they create their own individual world, strikingly
accurately corresponding to their appearance, spiritual qualities, and
intellectual needs.
The room was empty.
Stamping on the spot, I glanced at the neatly made bed, at the dressing
table with a mirror, at the armchair with some carelessly thrown sewing, at
the colorful shoes sticking out from under the sofa, and went out.
Maybe Sed has it? I didn't want to go to him. Am I not afraid of him?
Well, no, damn it! And I resolutely walked along the corridor to the
wardroom, looked there just in case, and then knocked on the third room.
But Sed was not in the room either. On the table in the ashtray was
smoking the cigarette he had begun. I looked into the bathroom, then went
back to the table, automatically extinguished my cigarette and went out
onto the floor.
I made my way to the end of the floor and went into the library. It was a
spacious, brightly lit room with five wide tables and shelves full of books.
There were a lot of books in various fields of knowledge. But most of the
library was stocked with books on physics, or rather, on the physics of
elementary nuclear particles. Here I read for the first time the names of
sciences, the existence of which I had not even suspected before:
"Psychophysics","Thermodynamics and Information", "Thermodynamics
of Thinking", "Nuclear Foundations of Mental Processes"...

717
 On one of the tables lay an open book by a certain Professor Ellinger,
"Information at the Level of Mesons." Goll couldn't read it, that's clear.
Sed, then? Who is he – a physicist?
Out of curiosity, I began to flip through page after page, but I
understood absolutely nothing in the gibberish of formulas and equations.
In one place in the margin, someone scratched out a paragraph with his
fingernail, which also did not tell me anything: "Thus, the only particle
acceptable from the point of view of thermodynamics that would keep the
rules of formal logic unchanged is the neutrino..."
In the library, I found something for myself. There were works on
psychology and psychiatry, including Buchhardt's famous work
"Mysterious Phenomena of the Human Psyche", "A Course of Nervous
Diseases" by Strumpel and files of the journal "Psychiatric Archive"
collected over several years by Buchhardt... He argued that the psyche
could not be connected with the work of the brain alone, and that in order
to explain many mysterious phenomena it was necessary to accept the
hypothesis of the existence of extra-cerebral mechanisms that were
allegedly responsible for many mental manifestations of man.
I remembered the sensational discussion that had engulfed the entire
scientist a few years ago world. It was devoted to the problem of the
mechanism of thinking. Everyone agreed that Ivan Pavlov's point of view
was fruitful in the first approximation, as, by the way, any brilliant theory.
However, if we consider the processes of thinking and consciousness in
their connection with other human properties, it turns out that the
hypothesis requires additions. After all, the essence of the problem lies in
how human consciousness forces itself to solve this or that problem, how
it chooses from a variety of solutions exactly the one that it needs at the
moment.
Psychologists and psychiatrists unanimously repeated the words "will",
"effort of will", and physicists who joined the discussion only laughed.
At the final session in Lausanne, a Russian physicist unfolded a
beautiful map of the brain in front of the audience and said:
"This is the brain that you all know better than I do. Point your finger at
the place where your will is placed, which governs consciousness and
thinking.
It was a daring challenge that infuriated the audience. But there was
nothing left but rage. Everyone left, poisoned by skepticism.
"Are these physicists always going to stick their noses into
everything?" Professor Shull of Ireland asked.
A colleague from Honolulu replied to him, not without bitterness:
"Today they are the most restless people. They need mechanisms,
ratchets and wheels. Atoms of will, atoms of thought. In general, the

718
fundamentals. And you and I are content with the abstractions of the day
before yesterday.
I slammed Buchhardt's volume shut and left the library.
Where are Goll and Sed?
I didn't know where to go or what to do. I decided: I will go to my place.
And then it dawned on me. Door! Metal doors in front of our rooms. What
are they for, where do they lead? I became more and more convinced that
the disappearance of Goll and Sed was connected with them.
I stopped at one of the doors that was opposite Goll's room. The metal
is silver-colored, lighter than oxidized aluminum. I tried to open it, but it
didn't work. Then he sat down on the floor and decided to wait, wait until
he had enough strength, until the doors opened and they came out.
There were about two hours left before lunch, and this was not so much.
You can wait.
Leaning my back against the cool wall, I thought about how far modern
science had come. They have already ceased to be surprised by the
subway, underground passages, underground structures, where there is
everything that a person needs - air, light, water... And there was more air
in this corridor than on the seashore, moreover, it was fresh, clean, filled
with some delicate earthly aroma that can only be felt in the forest or on
the seashore. Where does it come from, this air? Where are the
communications with the outside world? How do ordinary, movable
chairs with many microscopic sensors communicate with the research
kitchen, from where we are watched like guinea pigs?
It was all both delightful and terrifying. Delightful because it was the
fruit of the labor and genius of people. It is scary - because of its
incomprehensible purpose.
For some reason, I came up with the idea of those who agree to create
ingenious, but terrible structures in their purpose. And not only structures,
but also devices, machines, devices, sometimes infinitely ingenious. I read
about the diabolical instruments of torture, in which the latest
achievements of electronics and quantum physics were used. And
someone was thinking about it, a scientist, a living person...
I glanced at the clock: lunchtime had long passed, and it was still gone.
Then I got up and walked in the direction of the wardroom.
Mechanically, he stopped at Sad's door and opened it. In a moment I was
rushing like a madman to Goll's room, threw the door wide open, and
stood on the threshold.
The girl was asleep. Her breathing was steady and calm.
I quietly closed the door.

719
 5
One day, an elderly woman in horn-rimmed glasses, whom I already
knew, appeared. Smiling, she said that I was asked to go upstairs. As I
walked through the metal door across from my room, Goll and Sed were
standing outside the wardroom, staring mockingly in my direction. I saw
this as an expression of an irritating superiority in knowing something I
didn't yet know.
The top floor was no different from the one I had spent almost two
weeks on. It was just as long, and one wall also shone with white tiles. But
the opposite, glass, looked like an endless window of a modern store, and
behind this showcase there was a laboratory...
We entered a room located at the very end above the library on the first
floor, and my guide, leaving me alone, disappeared. Everything was very
simple here, like in the reception room of the director of a small enterprise
or office: two armchairs, a secretaire and a cabinet with papers. Scarcely
had I thought that a beautiful secretary was missing behind the secretaire
when a pretty girl appeared from the very door behind which the woman
with glasses had disappeared.
"Sit down, please." Professor Boller will see you in a moment.
I was met by a man who bore little resemblance to the professor. He
looked too young for that, even somewhat frivolous. I often saw such tall,
broad-shouldered youths with short-cropped hair, dressed more than
casually, in nightclubs and bars. They rubbed in the corners, sucked
cocktails and chatted with their painted girlfriends. This one was sitting in
the company of a bespectacled lady I already knew, and when I entered, he
winked at me cheerfully and pointed to an armchair.
"I think you're pretty tired of loitering around.
I was about to begin a long-prepared tirade about the tactlessness of
experiments on people, but he did not let me come to my senses.
"Today we will start working. First of all, I want to bring you up to date
on what is going on here. By the way, it's very good that you had the
patience to leaf through the books in the library. This will make the
conversation easier.
He got up and walked around the office.
— First, a few questions. First of all, did you follow the research of
biochemists and biophysicists in the field of all sorts of molecular
foundations of life, heredity, and so on?
The question was asked with brazen carelessness.
"Let's say," I said through clenched teeth.
"Great. As a psychiatrist, of course, you know that memory is stored
written on long molecules of this, like his...
He looked at the lady inquiringly.

720
 "Ribonucleic acid," she prompted.
"And you should know that," I quipped. He waved his hand and
grimaced.
"I have never been able to pronounce a single name of organic matter.
How do you start: three-seven-alpha-ethyl-iso-propylene... And! He
waved his hand. "It is important that all this consists of hydrogen, carbon,
oxygen, and so on. It's easier, isn't it? At the university, I always had
problems with organics... So, after all, the molecular basis of life is
zero-approximation nonsense. Which is deeper? Deeper are atoms.
"The atomic basis of life?" I asked mockingly.
And this is not the limit! Atoms are made of something, too!
"The nuclear foundations of life?!"
Now I was openly laughing. But the young man was not at all
embarrassed. He came up to me and, raising his index finger up, said
edifyingly:
"You forget that the nucleus consists of elementary particles. There are
a lot of them. More three hundred - and they all consist of each other, in
general, a terrible bacchanalia, which no one has yet figured out. Most
likely, these particles are quantum levels of something else.
At this time, the secretary came into the office and reported:
"The third one has a breakdown again..."
"A breakdown?" Tell Felek to move him back.
The secretary nodded and left.
"So where did we stop?" Yes, on the second question. Do you
remember anything from particle physics?
I couldn't stand it:
"Listen, Professor, I know that I'm not here to take my physics exams.
You were going to do some experiments on me, so start without these
stupid questions!
He rounded his eyes in surprise, then looked at the lady staring at me
with her huge glasses and shrugged his shoulders.
"Do you really think we need fools for experiments?" I have to make
sure I'm dealing with an intelligent person. In any case, they understand
what they want to do with him. Otherwise, these, as you call them,
experiments will go down the drain.
For some reason, I remembered a university professor of physics, not as
young as this one, but somewhat reminiscent of him. Well, yes, he was
just as impudent and cynical. I hated him for the entire time he was
teaching his course.
And later, by perfect chance, I happened to witness how he was buried
at the front. An enemy mine tore off his head. This head, stuffed with
formulas and physical laws, was carried separately behind the coffin.

721
They say he was a brave officer...
— Or maybe we should start right with the introduction?.. A woman in
glasses came up to me.
"I know that you have some psychological difficulties. "Experiments"
on people are immoral, and all that. Believe me, there will be nothing
terrible or harmful to your health. You will soon see for yourself that this
is surprisingly interesting. For example, now Professor Boller himself will
participate in the experiment with you. Isn't it, Professor?"
"Go ahead. Let's go, Pei. Let's switch places for a few minutes, so to
speak.
Passing by the secretary, he said:
"I'll be gone for ten minutes." If Felek calls, let them drive the third to
his former place.
When we entered the laboratory, where all the instruments were turned
on and buzzing as if they were alive, he blithely continued to chatter:
"This is a spark chamber. This is a chic electromagnet for half a million
oersteds. This is rubbish, not EPR. Here is a candy – a neutrino counter.
And now, Pei, here. Stand on this piece of iron next to me. Don't be afraid,
I won't bite you. Carroll, go ahead!

6
"Carroll, go ahead!" I shouted and looked mockingly at this eccentric
Pei. How many of them are divorced today. Everywhere they see only
tricks and dangers. To them, the science of our century seems no less
dangerous than the black book to the medieval inquisitors. In every new
scientific discovery, they imagine a hydrogen bomb that can kill a million
people. Because of their fear, they have lost their orientation in the world,
and the lack of internal energy does not allow them to keep up with time.
"Pei, how are you doing?"
No, this doctor's soul is in the dark! His lips tremble, and he looks
around absurdly. Where had his agility and arrogance gone, with which he
had come to me? Like, a boy, a puppy, decided to examine me.
"Pei, have you forgotten how to speak?"
"N-no... But... I don't understand anything...
"And there is nothing to understand here. You are you, and I am I. And
nothing happened. We just stand in our wonderful laboratory and stare at
each other. True, at first you will wonder why now you are wearing a
white coat and your face seems to have become younger, and your
hairstyle has changed. Ha ha ha!
He hesitantly passed his hand over his head and cringed as if in
unbearable pain.
Frankly, I feel a little sorry for him. If you also consider that his skin is

722
perforated in two places and he has never been married, then you are
completely imbued with compassion. Perhaps I need to cheer up the guy a
little and explain something. However, it is possible to cheer up, but it is
too early to explain. What good, a psychiatrist will go crazy! Anecdote!
"Wait, I assure you, the experiment is completely safe. In a few
minutes, it will end. So to speak, the end of the first session. There are
several more interesting ones ahead. At the last minute, Carroll will bring
a mirror, and you will try to take a good look into it. And that's enough for
today.
"I don't think I was standing here," Pei said plaintively.
"What difference does it make where you stood, here or there. The
main thing is that you are alive and well.
"You... hypnotist?
— A typical question from a doctor! Oh! It's all about these machines.
By the way, to the question of the morality of experiments on people.
After all, you, I mean your profession, were the first to poke electric wires
into people's heads and pass current through them so that they experienced
and felt what was not really there. And who began to poison the brain with
all sorts of morphine, cocaine, mescaline, LSD? You, doctors. And what
did you achieve with this? They tried to do to the human personality what
it never was and never will be.
"Why are you telling me that?"
"And then, so that you can think carefully about your ethical principles,
you, a man who understands brains. You'll have time to think about this
first experiment. As for the conclusions, keep them to yourself for now.
Carroll, get the mirror!
"Indeed, she is already quite old, and it is difficult for her to wear it. We
urgently need to order a sheet of polished aluminum."
"Put him in front of Dr. Pei."
She placed the mirror in front of Dr. Pei, and he stared into it with
distraught eyes for a long time. And then he fainted.

7
I woke up on a sofa in a dimly lit room and saw next to me the same
young girl whom I took to be Professor Boller's secretary. Smiling, she
handed me a glass of some medicine.
"Now drink this."
"Where am I?"
"You're perfectly safe, and nothing has happened to you. She took my
hand and felt for a pulse.
"It's all right. Both frequency and content. I didn't think you were so
impressionable! With your specialty...

723
 She couldn't stop smiling, and that cheered me up somehow. The room
where I lay was pleasantly warm and peaceful.
"You know, for a moment it seemed to me...
"Oh, don't talk about that. Frankly speaking, although I've been here for
a long time, I can't get used to it.
"You mean... swoon?
"No, not at all! These are completely harmless experiments of
Professor Boller. And he is just a hero! He does whatever he can with
himself!
"And yet, what happened to me?"
"Absolutely nothing...
She still held my hand in hers. Her large, dark eyes were fixed on the
corner of the room, and she seemed to be looking for something there. I
thought she was much more beautiful than Goll, but when I tried to
remember her face, I suddenly imagined something completely different:
a woman in glasses dragging a heavy mirror, and I saw in it not myself, but
the professor with short-cropped hair.
"It's hard to get used to it," the girl repeated, as if in thought.
— Yes. It's still cruel... What's your name?
"Katharine... I think it's Katharine.
"Why does it seem?"
"Your name is Pei Sorran?"
— Yes.
"Remember that well. Who knows what can happen to memory...
She hurriedly left the room.

8
"Well, how?" Goll asked, sitting down next to me at the desk in the
library. Her eyes were sparkling with mockery, and her cheeks were
flushed.
She seemed to be just waiting to meet me after her first visit to
Professor Boller. But I was in no hurry to satisfy her curiosity. I haven't
quite figured out what happened to me yet. Did she figure it out?
— Tell us, how did it happen to you?
She shrugged her shoulders and curled her lips.
"I just knew at once that I was no longer me, when I felt how crooked
my legs had become, and what a vile figure. So I told the professor to stop
this outrage.
— Did they put a mirror in front of you?
"Why?" I know myself without a mirror," said Goll, not without pride.
"So you felt it right away?"
— Of course. I looked at my hands, and they were so wrinkled, with the

724
stains of age, that I wanted to scream. I did so, and Boller came over and
asked what I wanted to be. And I replied that all my life I dreamed of
playing in films. Then he promised that my dream would come true. You
see, I was standing in front of him, old, bloated, with glasses, with crooked
legs and a terrible bust, and he was chattering to me about my dream
coming true. Then I screamed even harder, and everything fell into place...
"Goll, don't you remember who you looked like?"
"I'm telling you, that lady with glasses...
"Who takes us to the professor?"
— Well, yes. She, of course, may be a good person, but not for me. This
professor simply overdid it.
"Have you seen anyone next to you?"
— No, I don't. Only the professor was nearby.
"Where was Sad?"
"He was invited to another laboratory.
"Didn't he tell you what happened to him?"
Goll smiled embarrassedly and lowered her head. She became a
stranger to me again, and I wanted her to leave the library.
"Do you think Professor Boller will keep his word?"
"Ask him about it.
"He said yes.
"So, you should be a film actress...
I buried my face in the book and pretended not to notice it. She finally
understood the reason for my mood change and moved closer.
"Do you want to know what happened to Sed?" He was a woman, or
rather, a girl.
I jumped to my feet. That was too much! I ran out of the library and
rushed to Sad's. He was lying on the sofa with a magazine and smoking.
My arrival did not seem to surprise him in the least.
"Listen, Sad, tell me how you were among the girls," I asked snidely,
sitting down in an uninvited chair.
He looked up at me with tired, indifferent eyes.
"Aren't girls people?"
— You understand that experiments on the human psyche are not in
vain. And if you still care about your identity, you must flee from here.
And you, and I, and Goll!
Sed was in no hurry to answer me. He stood up, turned on the fan,
crossed the room diagonally several times, and stopped:
"You're a round blockhead, Pei! Instead of thanking God for
confronting you with the greatest discovery of the century, you are raging
like a village medicine woman who could not stand the competition with a
visiting doctor! Have you thought a little bit about what the professor told

725
you and what happened to you?
"I thought so. Some kind of nonsense like an electronthe nuclear
foundations of life, plus the electrical effect on the brain... The learned
chatter of this snotty professor is just a disguise for something else, more
important.
Goll came into the room without knocking, all in tears.
"What's the matter, baby?"
Sed's voice was very tired. It seemed that he had just given a tedious
lecture to the students.
"I don't believe the professor will keep his promise...
"And you're right not to believe... You'll die as a fashion model,
although it's quite possible that you'll look a lot like some movie star.
The conversation took on an idiotic meaning. The fact that both of them
were already "touched" did not cause me any doubt. I went back to my
room.

9
A few days after the first experiment was performed on me, another
man arrived on our floor: an athletic guy, squat, red-haired, with a heavy
lower jaw. The left eye is under a black bandage. He walked heavily
stooped, his heavy arms dangling like those of an orangutan.
"Where do they feed here?" He asked me as I left his room.
"At the right end of the corridor, or floor. It is customary to call
corridors floors here," I answered.
Tell me better, do they give meat here?
"They give anything. On the machine there is an encoded keyboard
with a decryption. Choose what you want.
"I'm illiterate," he said without a trace of embarrassment. "Come on,
get what I need."
There was no point in taking offense at him, and I went.
I would read him a permanent menu engraved on a plastic plate, and he
would order everything. Soon the whole table was covered with many
plates, trays and saucepans, and the guy began to destroy it all. It was hard
to believe that one person could eat so much.
"You're hungry, I suppose?" I asked him.
"As usual. At Neckert's I ate even more. Especially before
competitions.
"And who is Neckert?"
— The director of our club. The Granite Fist Club, have you heard?
— No, I don't. I have never been interested in sports.
He stopped chewing, and his single eye showed contempt.
"What a type!" He barked. "Now there is no one who would not like to

726
see how people hit each other in the face.
I thought he was almost right. In any case, there are a lot of them,
perhaps more than necessary.
"I see you're out of luck.
"Nonsense. I'll rest here and return to Neckert again. Sensation! A
boxer with one eye.
"It will be very difficult.
He ate two steaks, a chicken leg and began to eat cutlets. All this was
washed down with large sips of sour wine. He paused for a moment,
leaning back in his chair and sniffling.
"Eye, what's that... Relik was not lucky at all. His skull cracked.
"It's barbaric," I remarked with disgust.
"Ha!" The more injuries, the more the public likes it. In our club, you
can fight with brass knuckles and without gloves. Commercial fights. The
collection is fantastic.
After a pause, he asked,
"Do you know how long this will last?"
"What?"
I thought he was thinking about the philosophy of his animal craft.
— Light.
I didn't understand.
"I see blue light all the time. Like the sky through milky glass.
"Do you see the light with this eye?"
He nodded.
"It means that there is still an inflammatory process going on. It affects
the visual fibers.
He began to eat again, sniffing heavily. To his left grew a mountain of
empty plates.
"And who is this woman?"
I realized that this referred to Goll, and his rudeness outraged me.
"This is not the Neckert Club. And there are no women here.
— Yes, there is. Definitely there is. Do you know what decent people
came to me? Ha ha! Wives of directors. Daughters of company presidents.
So you say inflammation?
– Inflammation. If you like, I can see your eye—I know something
about that.
"Doctor?"
"Almost. Or rather, yes. What's wrong with your eye?
"Leaked. I'm tired of this blue saintEm. I see him even when I'm
sleeping. And the bandage does not help.
At the exit from the wardroom we ran into Goll. She was coming out of
Sad's room with a pile of magazines. The boxer jumped up to her and

727
snatched the pack from her hands.
"Help, baby?"
Goll smiled coquettishly, and I felt disgusted. Boxer carried the
magazines to the library, and Goll came over to me.
"I'm sorry for the guy," she said. "This is the famous Queens Risder. I
watched his fights several times. Delightfully! How much temperament!
Quince Risder doesn't even know that I have his autograph. Then he nailed
Camp Toren, and blood was gushing from his right ear, Queens dipped his
index finger in it and poked it into the outstretched papers and postcards
with his image. I was terribly lucky then.
I looked at her as if she were a patient who had come to see me, a
psychiatrist.
"Goll, do you know what happened in the Roman Empire on the eve of
its demise?"
"No, I don't know," she admitted frankly.
"And what are gladiator fights?"
"Is this something like a bullfight?"
"Almost. Or rather, like the fight he talks about with such delight. Do
you really like such a sight?
She laughed merrily. I interrupted her laughter.
"Did Boller conduct any more experiments with you?"
— No, I don't. But during the last meeting, he promised that he would
keep his word. This is about cinema.

10
Waves, waves, waves... They stretched in endless lines on a black
background through thousands of pages of scientific journals and books.
Brain waves, waves of a part of the brain, waves of a group of brain cells,
waves of a single brain cell. Tireless instruments wrote them with stupid
persistence, and scientists racked their brains over their explanation, and
waves rushed through their heads — electric, exciton, phonon, magnetic.
And then devices were created that generated waves themselves, and
now these artificially created waves were brought to the head, to the brain,
to a part of the brain, to a group of cells, to a single cell, and scientists
observed what came out of it...
The human "I" gradually dissolved in the ocean of waves recorded on
black strips of oscillographic tapes, and as I delved deeper into reading the
articles and deciphering the waves, it seemed to me that I too was slowly
disappearing, going somewhere into darkness, turning into that black field
through which electric waves travel...
I begin to notice with horror that I am becoming negligible, tiny,
extremely primitive, consisting of nothing more than some waves. Instead

728
of thoughts, I have waves, instead of feelings, waves again, waves instead
of experiences. Pride is waves, and they are not much different from
waves of insult or waves of joy.
And what a refined experimental technique! What devices! What
electrodes! Waves are amplified, analyzed, and recalculated. They are
automatically differentiated and integrated. They are assembled together or
laid out into Fourier components. They are sent to an electronic machine,
which deciphers them and prints on tape what it thinks about these waves.
Giant polished boxes with humming radio tubes connect to the brains of
those who laugh, cry, get angry, lift weights, run, are born or die...
And at this time, the waves are recorded.
When I stay up late at night with magazines, Goll sometimes stealthily
comes to me, and I hug her, trying not to think that she, like any other
person, can be decomposed into waves and impulses... As I kiss her, I
curse in my heart those who first discovered the waves. I remember the
Munich doctor with unkind words, it was he who was the first to attach
electrodes to a person's head and discovered that electrical oscillations
occur in them.
Do I have the right to scold him? If he hadn't done it, someone would
have thought of it anyway, and everything would have gone as it is now. I
whisper to Goll that the tread of science is inevitable, that there is some
accursed inexorability in it from which there is no escape. But Goll doesn't
care about anything, and she's just happy with me, and she obediently
agrees with everything I say.
In the darkness, I can hear her heart beating, her breathing rhythmically
and deeply, and I find myself counting the rate of her heartbeats and sighs
in disgust. And it becomes completely disgusting when I remember that at
this very time thousands of small wires are transmitting waves
somewhere... The very waves that mean love, sleep, and thinking itself...
I was already accustomed to the fact that an experiment had been
performed on me, and on Goll, and on Sed, and on the boxer, and that we
had long ago been decomposed into waves and impulses... Well, let it be.
Ultimately, if you don't remember it in the dark when I'm with her, then
everything falls into place. If people were constantly thinking about what
life is doing to them, no one would endure it. It is good that at every
moment a person can only think about something and it is also good that
he can force himself not to think about something by an effort of will.
I smile into the darkness when I realize that I am uttering meaningless
words like "think" and "willpower"...
"Goll, do you know what an effort of will is?"
She does not sleep. I know she is also thinking about something now.
"No, I don't know," she whispers and presses closer to me.

729
 "These are waves, too," I say.

And yet, I am sure that recording the waves and deciphering them is
useless. In any case, it will not be possible to record all the waves,
especially since they change at every moment, and what a person was a
second ago will never be repeated. Unless some general law is found,
some grandiose universal rule that may turn out to be ridiculously simple,
like the universal law of gravitation that governs the universe.
The latter scares me the most. This will mean that the human "I" has
fully known itself. So it's the end. Exhaustive knowledge of oneself means
the limit of all knowledge, beyond which the empty nothingness extends...
"Goll, would you like to know yourself to the end?"
— No, I don't. I want to be a film actress...
"Silly... Oh my God, it's so good that you're silly..
This is all salvation! Let thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of
thousands, dig into the deciphering of the waves from which the "me" is
built. So what? Only they will know about it, and Goll and the boxer and
millions like them will still be people for whom the most important thing
is what they do not understand. They will never rack their brains over
deciphering the cursed waves, and their joys and excitements will remain
with them, untouched and primal as they were a thousand years ago. It is
they who will save Torquato Tasso, Beethoven, and Tolstoy from death.
There is another side to the matter that needs to be thought about. When
people experiment on their own kind and try to penetrate into the holiest
recesses of the soul, they are guided not only by simple curiosity! I do not
think that there are madmen in the world who believe in the possibility of
synthesizing the human "I" from an innumerable number of waves and
writing a mathematical formula for it. Most likely, the matter is simpler
here. Behind all these experiments there are some more immediate goals,
some very specific intentions, such as the search for a cure for human
ailments, or, on the contrary, the search for ways to artificially control the
human soul.
Of course, since the articles on waves are published in scientific
journals on medicine and psychology, at first glance it seems that all this is
done to achieve the first goal. And the second?
I will never forget the expression on Colonel R.'s face when, during the
German attack at Aachen, our brigade faltered and began to retreat. The
soldiers stopped listening to the officers and rushed to run, and the
Germans shot them in the back. R.'s face was distorted, and he began to
growl downright ...
"Won't a cure for cowardice be found?.. Or the medicine of selfless
courage?

730
 And a couple of decades later, such drugs were even written about in
newspapers.
"Goll, how did you get here?"
She turned to me and whispered right in my ear,
"Won't you be angry if I tell you the truth?" My word upon it?
"Honestly.
She took a deep breath.
"I had a friend. Lieutenant. We met in our atelier, after a demonstration
of models. It was winter...
She fell silent.
"Well?..
"He invited me to a restaurant. We danced and chatted about this and
that. After that, we met again. He was very handsome and smart. Like you,
only younger and braver. You're not angry?..
"No...
"He also said a lot of clever things and laughed when I didn't
understand anything... In the end, he told me that he was tired of me, but
he still has friendly feelings for me, and if I need anything, he is ready to
help me. And here I am...
"And why were you kicked out of the circus?"
"Oh, it's a long and boring story... Let's sleep better...
But I didn't sleep until morning. I was thinking about Colonel R. and
the lieutenant.

11
It was truly a majestic sight. Giant pines with tops gilded by the
morning sun were motionless. They stood in tight rows, like grenadiers in
a festive parade, but in their immobility there was no tension, but only
peace, a frozen joy of life and a sense of self-worth. And when a gust of
wind swept through the peaks and the whispers of the green giants began
to slowly increase, goosebumps ran through my body.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" Boller asked.
"That's not the right word. It always seemed to me that trees were
talking. One Japanese man recorded on magnetic tape the rustle of the
leaves of various trees. For some reason, it is believed that only people and
animals have their own language. We do not know very well what a
collective of plants is. But they also live in a team and somehow influence
each other, and, perhaps, the wind helps them to talk?
"I'm sorry we've kept you in the dungeon for so long. This, you know, is
a kind of psychological preparation...
I grinned.
"Are you sure I'm quite prepared now?"

731
 "I'm sure. And not only you. Everyone else is ready too. But you are a
special article.
"Why special?"
"I already told you at the first meeting. You understand something
about human brains, about how they work.
We rounded the building and walked along the path straight into the
forest, and I inhaled deeply the smell of the pines, the earth, and the
moisture that smoked over the glades warmed by the morning sun.
"And now you will allow me to take walks?"
"And not only you. All.
"How many people are here, I mean test subjects?"
"Forty-nine."
"My God! Where are the others?
"Our laboratory is huge. There are fourteen more floors under the
building.
I was surprised at the strange coincidence of the number of floors of the
bombed-out German ammunition depot and this laboratory, but I said
nothing about it to Boller.
"A noisy company!" I can imagine how this silent forest will come to
life when everyone is here.
"And a very interesting company. You will soon see this. Frankly, I
myself can't wait to start a mass experiment as soon as possible. My
colleagues and I will need your help, or rather, your, so to speak, professional
observations. There may be curious psychological incidents here.
— Do you mean breakdowns?
"God forbid!" This is enough without our laboratory. Someone, but you
must know, that we do not have enough beds for the mentally ill.
According to the Senate commission, more than thirty percent of recruits
are rejected during the next conscription into the army due to mental
inferiority... Thirty percent!
I stopped. In the daylight, Boller didn't seem as young as he did down
there.
"Maybe you're going to treat them?"
He smiled his sincere, boyish smile.
"It's up to you to treat it... I am a physicist, not a doctor.
"Then what is it?"
He took a deep breath.
"I will be frank with you, especially since Colonel R. recommended
you to me as a person who understands what army discipline is.
"Do you know R.?"
— Yes. Now, I want you to understand your outstanding role in the
experiment.

732
 When I went to the front, I was also told that my role there would be
"outstanding". It didn't take long to make sure it wasn't Nothing more
pitiful and helpless than a psychiatrist at war. If the human psyche is
almost uncontrollable in times of peace, then what can we say about
wartime. After I returned from the front, I became convinced that all the
so-called unharmed, who, however, had spent years on the border between
life and death, were no less disfigured than those who returned
shell-shocked, or wounded, or without arms or legs. And this is natural,
because war constantly forces a person to do something that is unnatural to
his very nature: to suppress the instinct of self-preservation.
So what will be my outstanding role? I asked, not without irony.
"You will witness the abrupt transformations of the human self.
"I've been thinking about this a lot lately.
"Very good. — But you thought about such transformations, so to
speak, in an abstract theoretical plane. And now you will face the real
facts.
After a pause, Boller turned to me again.
— Do you know the principle of operation of electronic digital
machines?
— In general terms.
"That will be enough. Our computing center in Beisend has the most
modern machine by today's standards. Two giant circuits assembled from
microcomponents. They model the two hemispheres of the brain.
Engineers even tried to give them an appropriate look. Two pearlon
hemispherical shells stuffed with transistor relays. Do you know what was
the most curious thing about the creation of that car?
"What?"
"It was made almost without any scheme. The components were
connected to each other largely arbitrarily.
— And you got a model of a madman?
— No, I don't. We got a model of a newborn baby. And then they began
to "train" the car. Various signals were fed to the input buses, and they,
these signals, forced artificial neutrons to connect in a very specific way,
an organized circuit capable of intelligent and useful actions automatically
appeared.
"Is that so?"
I vaguely began to imagine how this curious plan was carried out.
— By the way, note that I said that the original scheme was to a certain
extent arbitrary. In the initial stage, some elements of the organization
were already laid, and it was they who determined the specific talents of
this machine. It's like a hereditary predisposition, if you like...
— What was your car most capable of?

733
 — To foreign languages. Less for mathematics and not at all capable of
music. She didn't understand her, and no matter how hard we tried, she
couldn't compose a single line of music. Built in this way, the machine
was very similar to the human brain, but...
We came to a large clearing overgrown with thick grass. The sun was
already high, and Boller, falling to the ground, nodded to me to follow his
example. It was very warm, even hot, and without agreeing, we took off
our jackets and put them under our heads. The tops of the now
continuously rustling pines rested against the blue, cloudless sky.
"But when the machine became trained, there was a problem. For it to
work productively, it was necessary to create a device where a lot of
original information would be stored at the same time. You understand
that in order to think, you need to have initial data. For example, the
machine had a lot of input "nerves" and those to which the signals of
"inference" are transmitted. It was necessary to abandon the usual
methods of recording data and commands on punched tapes or magnetic
tapes and develop a special machine for storing information, which had to
be paired with a thinking apparatus. We built such a machine, and it
successfully stored all the data and instructions fed to our "brain". Notice
that I put the word "brain" in quotation marks, and you will soon
understand why. Our engineers, either on a whim or guessing that a
terrible confusion was about to arise, also gave the second machine the
appearance of two hemispheres. And so, imagine: in one hall there are two
cars next to each other, completely identical in appearance, but having
completely different internal structures and purposes. One stores
information, the other processes it, that is, thinks. Do you feel what was
supposed to work out and what happened in the end?
— No, I don't feel it yet.
"So here's the thing. Within a few weeks, we who worked on machines
began to wonder which of the two machines should be considered a model
of the brain.
Boller lay with his hands behind his head, smiling. He clearly enjoyed
remembering how this nightmarish problem had arisen.
"Both together," I muttered, rising to my feet. He pretended not to hear
my words.
— We have thought about what function the real human brain
performs: does it store information and instructions, or does it think?
"Both, at the same time...
Again he did not hear.
— Does a person think with the help of the brain?
"Listen, I told you that the brain performs both functions at the same
time!"

734
 We got up, shook off our jackets and wandered to the building. I looked
inquiringly into his face. Why did he tell me this parable about two twin
electronic machines, neither of which could be a model of a real brain?!
And in general, what does his laboratory, if it is really his, have to do with
electronic machines?
— If it is legitimate to talk about models, then I am sure that both
electronic machines together represent a semblance of the human thinking
apparatus.
I said this without any certainty. Something vague, unclear wandered in
the darkness of my mind, and perhaps that was why I added:
"At least, that's what most scientists think.
"What a blessing that not everyone thinks so! If everyone always
thought the same thing, discoveries would never be made in science. And
in general, any progress, including scientific progress, begins only when
someone begins to doubt the inviolability of the so-called truisms.
He stopped for a moment.
— The fact of the matter is that there are no truisms. Each new stage of
development is a revision of all existing concepts and even the meaning of
the words with which they are expressed. First there was "soul", then
"consciousness", now it can be something completely different. However,
let's leave it for now. I have one, so to speak, amateurish question for you
as a specialist.
"Please."
— Does it happen that a person suddenly begins to think that he is not
John Smith, but Mohammed?
"As many as you like.
— And, probably, there is some name for this in psychiatry?
— Of course.
"Do you think this newly-minted Mohammed really feels like a
prophet, or is he only pretending?"
I grinned.
"To do this, you need to visitIn the shoes of such a madman. But I am
sure that he really feels like a Mohammed.
He didn't ask anything else.
We went up to the second floor (now the real second floor) and stopped
at one of the doors.
"Your lodging will be here now," Boller said.
"Do I need to do anything?"
— Not yet.
— Why did you tell me the story about electronic machines?
He grinned.
— You belong to the number of people who must reach everything on

735
their own. You only need a seed, an initial impulse. Goodbye.
When he disappeared, I pushed the door open and froze on the
threshold.
The closed blinds outside were lit by bright sunlight, and because of
this, the room was filled with orange twilight. Against the background of
the wide window, I saw the silhouette of a woman. Her face was not
visible, but I guessed at once that it was Katharine.

12
She was standing in the middle of the room and did not move at all.
Like a statue.
"Katharine?" She
was silent, and then I walked around her to the right to open the blinds,
but she caught my hand.
"Don't. Please...
My eyes became accustomed to the twilight, and I saw that she stood
there completely bewildered, pale, and only her large eyes reflected the
orange grating that covered the window.
"How did you get here?"
"You?"
"Do you have anything to do with me?" Have you been sent for me? I
tried to guess what had brought Boller's assistant and secretary to me.
"I don't know. I don't know... Only it seems to me that you and I have
been on a first-name basis for a long time...
I lightly touched her shoulder and gently led her to the chair.
She sat down and covered her face with her hands.
"Are you feeling bad?"
"Leave me... It always happens... It has always been like this...
"What happened?" I tried to be as affectionate as possible and sat down
on the armrest of my chair. "Stop crying and tell me what happened.
Katharine, come on! Who offended you?
She lifted her tear-stained face.
"You...
"Me?"
"Why do you call me Katharine?" And why do you always say "you"?
Perhaps...
I made another attempt to open the window, but the girl grabbed my
hand tightly and hid her face on my chest. She was trembling all over.
"Explain. I don't understand anything.
Now Katharine sobbed loudly, and only occasionally did the incoherent
words "you" break through... "you"... "This is no longer possible"... "God,
how scary"...

736
 I decided that I should talk about something that would distract her
from her gloomy thoughts.
"You know, Boller and I were just wandering in the woods, and he told
me a funny story about how he and his staff couldn't decide which of the
two email boxes was the brain! There was something to argue about,
right?
"It was," she whispered. — I have always argued that the brain is where
only memory is stored. That second box was the brain.
"So you also took part in the argument?" She
nodded her head.
"But it's not as simple as it seemed to some, including Professor
Boller...
Her voice was still trembling, but she stopped crying. I sat down on the
table opposite her.
— And what is the difficulty? "
When the brain and the thinking apparatus work together, there is some
mysterious mutual influence, and then something gets into the brain from
the storage of information, and from the brain into the storage of
information, and, probably, both change in the process...
"Do you know all this?" I didn't think so? What do you do for Boller?
— As when. Sometimes I help him in his experiments. Sometimes I
analyze electrophysiological data. And sometimes... I've already told
you...
"Do you want me?"
She sighed and fell silent. Her hot, wet hand slowly stroked mine, and
her wide-open eyes looked into the corner of the room, from which a
sunbeam crawled out.
"Or maybe she didn't," she said thoughtfully. "Who knows... Drink, do
you still love me?
It must have been a long time, for the sunbeam had fallen on the wall,
and we were all sitting in agonizing thoughts, each of us afraid to break the
silence. Finally, I could not stand it anymore and, bending down to the
girl's ear, asked:
"Katharine, what makes you think that I love you? It's only the second
time I've seen you.
She shook her head, keeping her eyes fixed on the sunspot on the wall.
"Can you hear me?" I whispered.
"Why don't you answer?"
"I'm not Katharine now...
"And who?"
"Gaull." I remembered the circus and that lieutenant...
I smiled bitterly. He's very careless, that Boller! The chatter about John

737
Smith and Mohammed gives him away. Whatever means he employs, it
seems to amount to something in which a man can be made to believe that
he is but a shadow of himself. I looked at Katharine regretfully and
stroked her soft hair.
"You're not Goll, you're Katharine, and the circus has nothing to do
with it. Don't you understand that? When we first met, you warned me not
to forget my name. Remember? So you must remember well that you are
Katharine. And Goll is a completely different girl. She is a model.
"I was the model... And my name is Goll, and I remember very well that
you loved me, and how it all was.
"If you're Goll, you must know a lieutenant, the one who met you at a
fashion show.
"I know this lieutenant well. And we met on the eighth floor, when you
woke up after the first experience.
— Let's assume that this is so. But we didn't meet after that, because I
lived in my room on the first floor all the time. And Goll still lives there. It
was she who knew the lieutenant, not you, I'm quite sure of that.
And suddenly I stammered. One thought pierced me like an electric
current.
"You see, you're silent. This means that you are not very sure of what
you are saying. I swear to you, I'm Goll...
She came up to me and wrapped her arms around my neck.
"I'm Goll, don't you believe that, dear?"
"What if she's really Goll and the other one..."
I ran my hand over my forehead, trying to figure out what to do.
"Well, if you're Goll, who's the other one?"
"Who?"
"Well, the one they call Katharine?"
"She stayed there...
"Where?"
Katharine waved her hand vaguely. I suddenly felt that I was going
crazy. Everything about it seemed terribly familiar and close to me. I tried
to push her away, but she clung to me even tighter and whispered,
"Don't drive me away, don't drive me away, please." I'm Goll, your
Goll.
— And you dream of becoming a movie star?
She laughed softly.
"What are you talking about, dear! What an absurdity. It has never
occurred to me yet. Though... What did you say?
"What do you dream of becoming?"
"I've long since achieved my ... It's enough that I work for Boller. You
get so tired of it...

738
 "Then you're not Goll. Wake up, Katharine!
"Wait... When we started experimenting, it seemed to us that
everything would be simple: you don't need to confuse two different cars,
that's it... Otherwise, one machine will remake another...
"What cars?" What are you talking about?
"The same ones that stood in our laboratory in Baysend. Oh, if you only
knew how much we argued until Boller came along among us. He put
everything in its place. Like a god, he came, stood next to the second car,
which kept the memory, and said: "Here is the brain." And when he was
asked what the first car was, he answered: "I don't know." Well, we
laughed after thatabout the answer. But Boller is not one to be
embarrassed. He said that we need to wait. New ideas are in the air, and
someone will soon come up with the right answer.
At last I managed to free myself from her hands, and I raised the blinds.
The sun disappeared behind the forest, and soft pink clouds slowly floated
across the sky. Katharine smiled at the gilded tops of the pine trees, and
then looked around strangely, her face taking on a worried expression.
"Don't you think, Goll, that everything you say is nonsense?"
"Why nonsense?" If there is a very important problem in science, there
is bound to be a person among millions of people who will solve it. He
will not necessarily be a genius. Most likely, it will be some unknown
scientist whose thinking is not as ordinary as everyone else's. There are
very few cases in history when one person manages to solve several major
scientific problems.
"Goll never philosophizes so much, and he can't do it," I said.
We seem to have agreed...
— Yes, indeed. Why are you looking around so strangely? Are you
looking for something?
The room was getting dark quickly.
"It seemed to me... For some reason, it seemed to me...
"What did you think?"
"Oh, nonsense. Have you ever felt as if the setting, and the actions, and
the words you say have already been experienced and spoken by you? As
if you are experiencing this for the second or third time?
"As much as you like...
"I have the same thing now. Only here"—she went to the door—"there
was a clock, a big clock with a heavy pendulum, a bronze ball on a thin
chain. For some reason, there are none.
"This is my first time here, and I don't know if there has ever been a
clock here.
She went to the door and began to carefully examine the wall.
"Turn on the light, please."

739
 I flipped the switch. She exclaimed joyfully:
"I knew it! They were simply taken out. Look, there is a trace on the
wall.
I approached and saw a barely noticeable elongated rectangle on the
step.
"That only proves that you're not Goll," I said.

"You're not Goll," I repeated, and backed away from her to the window.
"I'm sure Goll has never been here before.
"What nonsense!" What makes you think I'm Goll? Have you forgotten
my name? I asked you so much that you would never forget names.
I gritted my teeth. I thought I heard a faint click, like the sound of a
switch.
"Why are you looking at me so strangely, Pei?"
"So what was that second car?"
— Like what, with your brain, of course.
"And the first one?"
"As if you don't know!" Sorry, it's too late to talk about it now.
Professor Boller asked you to come to him on the eighth floor. Hurry up,
we've already chatted with you...
I felt terrible fatigue, complete indifference, apathy, gradually turning
into disgust for everything in the world. I sank into the chair where she had
been crying the other day, and covered my eyes with my hand. Boller's
laughing face stood before me, repeating all the time: "Mohammed and I,
Mohammed and I..."
She was silent.
"Do you hear, Katarine?" Tell Boller that I'm very tired and not feeling
well.
She remained silent.
I raised my head and opened my eyes: Katharine was not in the room.
Maybe I dreamed all this. After all, a living person cannot disappear
like this, silently, like a ghost!

13
I came across Riesder in the large living room on the right wing of the
building where we now lived. The windows overlooked a wide courtyard
with auxiliary brick buildings on the sides and a netted tennis court in the
middle. He stood at the window and looked out into the yard with his only
eye.
– Have you ever played tennis? I
can't stand this meaningless ballet.
"And I thought that athletes are more or less familiar with all sports.

740
 – I'm not an athlete. I am a professional boxer. Or to be more precise, a
professional fighter.
I put my hand on his shoulder.
— I would like to ask you one question. Do you mind?
He made no reply and continued to look out of the window.
"Have you met Professor Boller?"
Risder nodded.
"And nothing strange happened to you?"
He turned. His face was not at all the same as the first time, pitiful and
confused, it did not fit in with his fierce bearing.
"What are you doing here?" What are these things? He asked in a
whisper.
"Personally, I don't do anything, my position is no better than yours.
His face twisted painfully, and a large tear gleamed in his only eye.
"You know, I've never been a diligent student," he suddenly admitted
piteously.
"Why are you telling me this?"
"And, besides... How can I explain to you... Once you have already
been given something, then you don't need to take it back...
I pretended to understand him, and, taking him by the hand, led him to a
wide sofa.
— Tell us how it was.
"You see, my father, a postcard dealer of dubious content, convinced
me from childhood that only fools needed science. He said that there is no
need to learn to read when there is radio and television, and it is also not
necessary to write, because anything can be said on a record or tape. He
himself read and wrote a little, but literacy was not useful to him in his
entire life. But he knew how to take pictures well... In our house, I saw
different people who bought my father's products wholesale and retail.
They laughed over the photographs, not at all ashamed of me One day a
guy appeared in the house, whose attention I attracted for some reason. He
said to his father: "Your offspring has excellent data. If you start training
him now, he will turn out to be a great fighter. This business is more
profitable than yours, and most importantly: legal." That guy's name was
Farkat, and my father sent me to study with him. In his establishment there
were about twenty other people like me. In addition to the fact that we
learned to beat each other half to death, we were forced to read and write
for something. And also count. But I was too stupid for that. Maybe my
head used to cook, but after the fight with Kleene... I have always been
afraid of this meeting. The guy was a whole head taller than me and much
stronger, and most importantly, when I looked at his face during the fight,
I became scared. Such faces are dreamed of during illnesses, when you

741
have a high fever. After that, I always imagined it after a heavy drink...
Farkat knew that I was afraid of Kleenie and postponed our meeting until
the last day. It was as if he was holding her for a snack. And everyone else
was looking forward to our fight. One evening, a friend told me that I was
having a fight with Kleenie the next day, and I couldn't sleep all night.
And at dawn he went to the room where he slept, pushed him and said:
"Kleeni, today we are going to fight with you. I know I'm going to get a lot
of it, and I'm not afraid of it. Just please, don't make this terrible face." He
giggled nastily: "When I'm excited, I don't think about my face. It happens
by itself." "Then hit me immediately in the temple so that I lose
consciousness before I see what is happening to your eyes. You'll win the
fight, and that's the end of it." He chuckled again: "If we fight brass
knuckles, I will do so. And in a normal battle, you need to hit for a very
long time so that the enemy loses consciousness... And then you can't do
anything with the face." Kleeney knew that everyone was afraid of his
face, and he was very proud of it. In the morning, when we went out into
the hall, I found Farkat and warned him: "We will fight with brass
knuckles." "But he can kill you." "I know one trick too," I lied. "All right,"
said Farkat. "Just keep in mind, I can't vouch for the consequences."
Everyone gathered in the hall to see what would happen, and I went up to
Kleenie and whispered: "So will you do as I asked?" Porcelain is
especially suitable for this, it is hard as steel, but much lighter. Farkat gave
the signal, and we began to converge. And when Kleenie raised his right,
Farkat whistled and ordered the fight to stop. "This will not work! Why
does Queens have his hands down? What kind of comedy is this?" Then
the whistle blew again, and now I raised both hands as if to attack Kleene,
but I had no intention of doing so. The blow was a little above the right
temple, and I saw a flash of bright light, and Kleene's face separated from
his head, but on it the eyes had not yet crawled out of their sockets, and the
forehead was like a forehead, and not a narrow deep slit. It seemed to me
that I was walking on something soft, like grass, and in front of me
everyone parted as if I were some kind of saint, and I walked straight and
straight, and saw only a bright light ahead. I walked through the wall, and
through the air I swept over the houses and found my father in the dark
darkroom. "Father," I said, "I did not ask you anything about my mother
until the last day." In the darkness in the red light, he swayed the cuvette
with photographic prints and, without looking at me, said: "She was
buried long ago." - "Where?" - "She was burned in the crematorium, and
the urn is behind the linen closet." But the urn wasn't there, so I went back
to Farkat's school, and I complained to him and Kleenie and all the boys
that my father must have thrown the urn away, and lied to me that I had to
look for it behind the dirty laundry closet. Everyone began to laugh loudly

742
and surrounded me in a tight ring, so tight that it became difficult for me to
breathe.
Then a strange thought struck me. To get rid of all this, I decided to stop
being myself, and turn into someone, for example, Kleene. I'm still
amazed at how easily I did it... When I became Kleene, everyone parted,
and Farkat shouted, "Stop these things, or I'll kick you out of the school!"
But I didn't stop running after everyone, and beating everyone, and, above
all, rejoicing that my eyes had become like Kleene's, and my forehead had
disappeared, and my teeth had become metallic. Now I didn't care about
the trash can, I just didn't remember it at that moment. And then Farkat hit
me, and I came to my senses...
"Did he really hit you, or was it all nonsense?"
Queens grimaced.
"Really hit. After all, then I killed Kleene. But that's another story.
After all this, I not only forgot the literacy that I had been taught, but I
stopped understanding anything in study at all. But Farkat loved me more
than anyone else, and I graduated from his school with the best Bondohm.
Riesder's face was still in pain, and I didn't understand why he had told
me this disgusting story.
"So you asked me about my meeting with the professor?..
"I asked...
"We met, and I went with him to a small dark room where there was a
box like an X-ray machine, and I had something similar to what I
experienced after the fight with Kleene... But everything is different... It
seemed to me that I was reading some books in an incomprehensible
language and praying to the professor about some tests in which I
allegedly took part. I don't remember what I read or where I experienced
anything. I only remember that it was about something as thin as a needle
and reaching all the way to the moon... It seemed to be pierced, and then I
called some figures... And I also remember that I saw everything with both
eyes...
"Can't you remember exactly what you said to the professor?"
"No," Queens replied emphatically. "How can I remember if it wasn't
me at the time, as it seemed to me...
I really felt sorry for the unfortunate guy. Who knows, I thought, what
he would have to endure while still being here. Now Riesder is full of
regrets that he is illiterate, but what will happen to him tomorrow or in a
week?
And what if he killed Boller or someone else in an unconscious rage?
"Boller is playing with fire," I thought, "but I don't know the rules of
this game or its purpose yet..."
He stood for a minute, thinking heavily, and nodded.

743
 14
Now I can look at poor Sed from the outside! I wonder how he will
cope with the charge that is stored in someone else's gray matter? As for
me, I can handle it perfectly. Now I know everything, or almost
everything. If Boller hadn't been fooling around, he could have trained the
right assistants for himself long ago. But I understand what worries him.
He needs to solve the problem on a massive scale. He is not interested in
uniques. Sad, or me, or somebody else... The point is that this can be done
on everyone and without their knowledge.
When I first started doing the experiments, I unfortunately didn't know
anything about the workings of the brain, just like Pei doesn't know anything
about neutrino physics. True, I can feel that Boller gave birth to some
thoughts in him, and they brought him out of his complacent contemplation
of the world. Everything used to be easy for him. They say that there is a
human "I", unique, unique, given by God once and for all. And if it has
changed in any way, you are welcome, to the appropriate institution!
I remember how it was, and I think how it could have been if I had it then...
"Sed, spit on accelerators and reactors and do biophysics."
I had great respect for Dr. Krügge and, I must confess, I did not expect
such a turn of events from him. By the way, this is also a striking example
of an inverted "I". Prior to this conversation, Krugge was considered an
avid atomic scientist who dreamed of discovering a five-hundredth
elementary particle or creating a two-hundredth artificial element. And
suddenly - spit! "Why is that, Dr. Krugge?" – "Because there is a dead end,
a dead end. Anyway, they got entangled in these particles, and are unlikely
to get out until something completely out of the ordinary is done. This can
only happen in biology." "Physics has nothing to do with it," I protested.
"Sad, I thought you were smarter. Physics, biology, astronomy. Some kind
of nonsense. As long as we believe that nature is made of matter, there is
no need to quarter it. Do you understand?"
To be honest, then I thought that this was the usual rhetoric that people of
the older generation are so fond of resorting to. But he said something that
made me think hard and then make up my mind. He said, "Sad, the most
promising problem is the problem of human thinking. How and why does a
person think? What is the physics of thinking? That's what you need to think
about. I don't want you to cut frogs or stick electrodes into the brains of a
rabbit. There are more respectable things." — "Which ones?" — "For
example, how physical fields affect the nature and content of human thinking."
"That has already happened, Professor Krugge. The magnetic field,
electrostatic... These fields are doing something..." — "That's it, something.
But it seems to me that these fields should not be dealt with." — "What else?"
— "Don't you guess? Strong and weak interaction". I burst out laughing: "Do

744
you want me to put my head in place of the target at the output of the
accelerator and for my brain to bombard protons with an energy of a thousand
billion electron volts?" Your brains are bombarding protons anyway, and not
just high-energy protons. Cosmic rays. But weak interaction..."
Krugge worked in a secret laboratory of the military department on
"free topics". The U.S. military has sensed where the smell of "roasting"
comes from, and now it gives the most "reliable" scientists the opportunity
to do what they want. This is how something new and unexpected arises,
and not at all according to plan.
So, your Krugge studied beta decay in living organisms. Or rather, he
injected beta-ak into the body of the test subjectssubstances and observed
what happened...
By the way, what Sed has become is coming! I still can't figure out who
or what should be called by the name that is given to a person after birth. I
am always disheartened by the following paradox. Let's say someone X
committed a crime and was sentenced to death. A prison surgeon begs him
for his ultimate experiment to overcome biological incompatibility. He
cuts off X's head and, under anesthesia, transfers it to the shoulders of a
less dangerous criminal, a Y, whose head he attaches to the body of X. The
experiment turns out to be successful, and after the operation, both Y-X
and X-Y-recover and feel excellent. The question in the problem is: who
should be executed? The one who has the head of a criminal, or the one
who has hands that have committed a crime?
If you think about it, in both cases the execution will be unjust. And
hence the question: where is the "I" placed?
"Hey Sad, how are you?"
Pei stopped and looked at me coldly. No, he didn't look as confused
now as he had during the experiment with Professor Boller. He reached
into my jacket pocket and took out a magazine.
"Here, read it.
"What is it?"
"You can't understand this with your psychiatry, although everything
that is said here has to do with your science. Wow! A new option! You
need to think about this carefully.
"What is it about, Sad?"
— Neutrinos and Thinking. Neutrinos significantly change the
mechanism of consciousness.
"Oh, Sad, I read that article a long time ago!" And, by the way, I am its
author!
He knitted his eyebrows in surprise and looked at the title of the article,
then at me, then at the article again.
"So you're Sad?"

745
 — Yes. How about you?
"Of course, I... I'm kind of a Sed too... Though...
"Well, well, don't be shy, speak...
"Although I thought that... How can I tell you... It would be easier for
me to be called Pei Sorran.
— Why is it easier?
He winced as if in furious pain and began to rub his temples, but said
nothing.
We were standing in the spacious hall of the first floor and it seemed
that each of us was going for a walk. Pei (I decided to call him that now!)
held an open magazine in his hands and looked happily at the approaching
Goll. Oh, now I see perfectly well that all the emotions are still with him!
Goll came up to me, took my hand, and said,
"Pei, aren't you bored with this weirdo who doesn't part with his
scientific journals?" Let's go and wander through the forest.
I've been watching Pei closely! He rushed to her, but looking at me, he
stepped aside and somehow cringed all over.
"No, Goll, I'm not very bored with that queer." If you don't mind, let's
go for a walk together.
She made a disgusted grimace, looked at Pei with hostility, and said,
"Well, if that's how you like it, then let's go."
God, how long would Boller torture the real Pei? I understand that now
he is interested in the localization of strong emotions!
We left the building. Goll held my hand tightly in hers. It's funny, I
have some kind of special tenderness for her, which I didn't have before.
From the very beginning, she was for me one of those many girls who
agreed to Dr. Krugge's experiments for a living.
Before the start of the experiments, these girls (there were a lot of them
and they were all listed under numbers) signed a paper in which gI got
excited that they wouldn't have any complaints against us if anything
happened to them. We, for our part, undertook to carry out all kinds of
treatment, if necessary.
However, nothing terrible ever happened to our test subjects, and no
one ever had claims against each other...
"You know, Pei," Goll said to me, "I'm starting to get interested in
Professor Boller's experiments. Yesterday I met with Katharine, and I
don't know why, I started telling her about two electronic machines...
What is it called, wait, I'll remember... Oh yes, two electronic models of
the brain. Am I right?
The real Pei smiled bitterly and answered instead of me.
— That's right. And no one could figure out which of the two machines
was a model of the brain?

746
 "Exactly.
Goll looked at him curiously.
"Do you, Sad, know that?"
"I'm Sed?.. Though... I seem to be beginning to understand something...
Hmm..." He looked at me. "Pei, don't you think that my knowledge was
less useful to you than yours... uh... method of thinking for me?
I did not answer this question that had been bothering me for a long
time. We walked around the building and walked along a shallow ravine
that began just behind the hedge. The day was bright but overcast, and
sometimes large raindrops fell from the high gray clouds. At first we
walked in silence, and then Goll laughed merrily and exclaimed:
"Boys, for some reason you have become damn much alike!
She pushed my hand away and ran quickly down the slope of the
ravine, and Pei, or rather the one I decided to call that, rushed after her,
and in a few seconds their heads flashed among the bushes, and soon
disappeared completely.
I walked in the direction where they had disappeared, and thought
about what Pei had said and what Goll had noticed.
It seems that in the argument with Boller, Pei was right: the brain, or,
better, the apparatus of thought, cannot be divided into two parts.
Boller made a methodological mistake. It would be necessary to build
two models of the brain, and after "training" periodically exchange
information and summative parts. We need to think about this carefully.
Soon I heard loud voices, and was terribly surprised to see Pei and Goll
talking animatedly under the tree.
"You seem to have reconciled?"
"And Sed and I never quarreled," the girl replied arrogantly. "Go on,
Sad, it's very interesting.
"First of all, tell me what you have left of Katharine?"
"First of all, these machines. And also... How to put it... Strange attitude
towards Boller and so on...
On the way home, Goll did not stop chatting about the peculiarities of
the work of models, and at the very door she suddenly fell silent.
"Go on, Goll," Sed said.
She looked at me and Sed and shook her head slowly.
"I won't go on," she said now, barely moving her lips. "I won't go on
until I've figured out which of you is which."

15
Confusion, terrible confusion in my head. Now the mystery is
beginning to be clarified, although in these cases there always comes a
moment when you are afraid to admit the most important thing. If

747
everything that happened during my last meeting with Sed and Goll is
true, then... No, it is too early to draw a final conclusion.
So, let's look at things soberly. In the laboratory of Professor Boller (I
call this gigantic structure a laboratory conditionally) experiments are
carried out on changing people's consciousness. Of course, it would be
possible to start a terminological dispute about what to call
"consciousness". However, it's not about the name. I judge by myself. I am
clearly beginning to realize that after each reincarnation something
changes in me, something is added or disappeared, and I can indicate
exactly from whom I have acquired something new. When I say "I have
acquired," I mean, first of all, a subtle variation in my thinking, in my
knowledge, and in the content of my memory. Changes in all three
components constitute the essence of the change in my consciousness.
One prominent scientist noted that no matter how vivid consciousness
may be for its owner, there are no means of transferring it to another
subject, and therefore consciousness cannot be the subject of scientific
research. Was it not this hypothesis that Boller encroached upon? And not
only Boller, but also Dr. Krügge, whom I have never seen, but now know.
No, you can't rush to conclusions. I become too impulsive in my
thinking, and this is fraught with hasty decisions, and therefore deep
mistakes. You need to understand everything in order. First of all, you
need to talk to Sed about the challenges. I know for sure that yesterday he
remembered some tests and compared Goll with the test subjects.
Professor Boller said that I had to think of everything on my own,
otherwise the mass experiment would go down the drain. Well, if so, then
he will not hinder me in anything. I don't ask, and I don't want him, as a
teacher, to stand at the pulpit and give me a lecture. It's quicker to figure it
out while I'm still "me."
Having quietly dressed and turned off the table lamp, I went out into the
corridor. The bluish light reflected dimly in the brown tiles of the plastic
floor.
I walked past several doors and went down to the first floor. It is strange
that this amazing laboratory is not guarded by anyone. The door to the
garden was wide open, through which cool streams of night air penetrated
into the room, and the rain rustled among the pines.
The elevator opened silently, a bright light came on, and I pressed the
button that stood next to the number "2".
The descent was smooth, but very fast, you could feel how with each
floor the air became more and more stuffy, with an admixture of the smell
of some medicines, just like in a hospital.
When the elevator stopped, the exit door opened automatically, and I
found myself back in a corridor with tiled walls. However, unlike the first

748
floor, instead of doors to the right and left, there were side galleries, as shiny
and semi-dark as the main one. I went at random along the first one leading
to the right, passed several heavy metal doors, and stopped at a dead end
with a small round hatch. It was ajar, and I crawled into it without difficulty,
after which I found myself in a spacious round hall, where in the center
under a glass bell stood some kind of device. It was much lighter here. The
device was somewhat reminiscent of a self-recording barometer or
thermometer. A paper tape was slowly rewound from one roller to another,
On it, a metal pen left a straight red line.
I stood near this device for a long time, not understanding why the pen
writes only a straight line instead of registering something. The walls of
this hall shimmered with blue and purple, and when I came close, I had no
trouble guessing that they were lined with tiles of lead.
This means that this fragile device in the center of the hall is reliably
and tightly shielded from something by several hundred meters of soil and
a layer of lead. No wonder the pen leaves only a straight line on paper...
Nothing penetrates here... And it is unlikely that it can penetrate.
And suddenly – a sharp click!
The pen still wrote a straight red line, but now there was a red pillar to
its left, which meant that this underground hall was not screened from
everything.
What else is left?
"What else is left?" I said, and my voice sounded like in the grave.
— Neutrinos.
Boller was standing behind me, smoking a cigarette. His face showed
no anger or surprise. It seemed as if we had been having a leisurely
conversation with him for several hours in a row. And now we have come
to the moment when the device registered the hit of a mysterious and
elusive nuclear particle.
"For the first experiments on the registration of cosmic neutrinos,
abandoned mines in southern Africa were used," he explained. "The very
organization of the search there was defective, although they still
managed to catch a few neutrinos. Can you imagine, Sorran, how much
each neutrino costs? Such hits happen once or twice a month. And in order
to catch them, you need to spend... Oh my God, this money can be used to
build a large, well-maintained city!
"Science has become too expensive in general," I tried to notice at least
a shadow of surprise on the professor's face. — Sometimes it seems to me
that if less money was allocated for scientific research, it would be more
inventive and fruitful.
He grinned.
- Hardly. It can be proved quite rigorously, on the basis of the most

749
general principles of quantum mechanics, that each next step into the
structure of matter must be many times more expensive than the previous
one. There is a hyperbolic dependence here. Well, let's get out of here,
there's nothing else interesting here.
We left the hall with the neutrino counter through a barely noticeable,
massive side door and immediately found ourselves on the elevator platform.
"I'm going to show you the most interesting floor," Boller said.
He pushed one of the doors with his foot, and we found ourselves in a
room no different from the one in which I had originally lived. The light
wasn't bright enough, but you could still see her stony, lifeless face and
eyes staring blankly ahead. No, it did not resemble an Egyptian sculpture,
whose arms were also stretched along the track. She was more like a
person who has lost himself and now cannot figure out how to live on.
Yes, I have lost myself!
There was a microphone right in front of her, she was talking, and her
incoherent speech went through the wires somewhere where she was
being studied:
"You don't have to do this to me... When everything is cooked, we'll
see... And then he left... Rain...
"What's wrong with her?" I asked Boller in a whisper.
"Listen again. And later I will explain to you what "white noise" is.
"And the bicycle fell... Then a strong wind arose... Because it costs a
lot... TrafficI slowed down... Night fell... And the launch... Especially
when the street is covered with asphalt...
I felt terrified, and she kept muttering, muttering...
In my mind, I remembered several Latin names for mental disorders in
which incoherent speech is observed. I looked at Boller questioningly.
"She's perfectly normal," he said. "Look.
He went to the telephone on the table and gave a curt order:
"Restore the AB-117.
It was as if she had woken up. Not a shadow of embarrassment on his
face. Adjusting her skirt and smiling sweetly, she continued:
"My child died, and I had to go to my mother in the village. And you
know, Mr. Boller, how difficult it is for a city dweller to get used to village
life in our time. Although there is also radio, and television, and bars and
all that, still the people there, how can I tell you, psychologically lagged
behind the city.
— Yes, you are right. That's enough for today, Inga. Rest, and
tomorrow you will tell me your story. Good night.
We got out and walked along the corridor further.
— So what is "white noise"? "
One more observation and you'll understand."

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 Again the door. And another test chamber, but this time I didn't see
anyone at first. And only a voice, a hoarse child's voice, came from
somewhere:
"Mother... mummy... daddy... mummy... daddy... daddy... mummy...
A child was lying in the crib, and a microphone was also hanging in
front of him.
— Do they supply such people for experiments? I asked Boller bitterly.
Smiling faintly, he spoke of something else:
"Here's a typical 'white noise' for you." If you flip a coin and count
heads and tails, you will get something like this sequence of "mom" and
"dad". A disorderly flow of signals creates "white noise". In a person with
a large memory capacity, white noise has a more complex structure if the
accumulated information is not directed by anything. At any moment in
time, he can utter any sentence buried in memory...
— You said that the accumulated information is not sent by anything. Is
this true?
"Oh, yes, I think I'm getting ahead of myself..."
"Mom... mummy... daddy... As
we walk down the hallway again, I think of the woman whose rambling
speech has suddenly been replaced by a meaningful story. What Boller is
talking about is beginning to seem to me very important, almost gigantic.
He, as if guessing what I was thinking, said:
"Your head resembles a huge book depository, in which everything you
have read, what you have learned, and what you have experienced is
collected and recorded. But this is not enough to think. It is necessary to
make a selection from all this, and according to the laws of logic, to
compose it into a conclusion. This is not done by the brain, in our usual, I
would say, anatomical representation. He cannot do this on principle.
I was interested in this statement, and I was waiting for an explanation.
But Boller, looking at his watch, suddenly said:
"Now I will leave you in an interesting company, and I myself will go
upstairs: there is an extremely important experiment going on.
He led me into a cabin filled with people. There were about ten of them,
or maybe more. At the sight of women and men dressed as if for an
evening reception, strictly and elegantly, I involuntarily remembered my
own, by no means elegant dress, and I felt embarrassed.
Noticing Boller, everyone stood up and fell silent.
"Gentlemen, I want to introduce your friend and assistant, Mr. Pei
Sorran, a psychiatrist by profession. He, like you, is an active participant
in our grand experience. I hope that you will make friends with him.
Everyone's attention turned to me, and I smiled shyly in my battered
suit.

751
 16
I was about to apologize for my unrespectable appearance, but at that
moment someone came up from behind and took me by the chin.
"Handsome, do you want absinthe?"
I turned: in front of me stood a hideous old woman, with a wrinkled
neck and a head covered with sparse gray hair, through which yellow skin
shone through.
Seeing my confusion, she hung on my neck and laughed hoarsely.
"How nice it is to touch something new and fresh!"
I rushed to the side, but at that moment another, deep, chesty female
voice spoke.
"Lazzi, stop being naughty. Not everyone has met this gentleman yet.
The one whose name was Lezzi reluctantly let go of me and,
whimpering, walked away. Men and women began to come up to me and
introduce themselves.
"Gregor, the retired captain," said the young man with a loose gait.
"Lily Pons, Countess.
— Crockwood, James Crockwood, Chess Champion
The "champion" - a lady of forty-forty-five, dressed in a wide-necked
black dress with a diamond brooch, bowed to me with dignity. "Carmella"
turned out to be a young simple-minded guy whose right cheek twitched
all the time.
It was a gathering of people who had lost themselves, a monstrous
psychological carnival, where there were shells filled with content taken
from nowhere. I remembered myself and Sed, and as I looked at the
seventy-year-old Lezzi twitching in the dance, I decided that Professor
Boller had spared me. In any case, these were not in a privileged position.
Music was playing. I sat down at a small table on the side and, like a
puzzle, solved the problem in my mind: who is who.
"Carmella" came up to me and unceremoniously sat down on his knees.
Already expecting something like this, I was not at all surprised and did
not even try to drive the guy away. I just patted him on the shoulder and
asked,
"Don't be silly, honey, there's a lot of people here."
"I don't care," Carmella said. "Do you love me?"
"You're gone," I replied in tone. "I prefer Lezzi, she's more feminine."
"That vile old woman?"
The Carmella laughed at the top of his lungs, and the retired captain
walked up to him and slapped him in the face with all his might.
"Hey, you face!" Know how to behave in polite society.
"Carmella", sobbing, slid to the floor, and began to complain that
before, as her father and mother used to say, men did not even raise their

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hands against women in their thoughts.
"Mr. Sorran, may I invite you to join our company?"
At the buffet stood the "chess champion," the "countess," the "music
historian," and two other young girls whose profession I had forgotten. I
walked over and they poured me a cocktail, but before I could bring it to
my lips, one of the girls, a skinny, little blonde, quickly snatched it from
me and was the first to take a sip.
"The argument, of course, is trivial," the "professor" turned to me. "But
still, we are interested in your opinion. Madame, excuse me, Mr. James
Crockwood says that all chatter about chess-playing machines is
meaningless. That there is some higher matter that governs the creativity
of a chess player. He simply does not know what this matter is called. He
says he forgot. Maybe you remember?
"And you, professor, don't you know what governs the composer's
work?"
"Oh, of course I know!" Soul!
"You see. So, the soul, or whatever you call itis the substance that directs
the movement of thought along a certain channel. Depending on how this
substance, which is used to being called the soul, is arranged, a person can be
either a chess player, or a composer, or, like you, a music historian.
The "champion" laughed loudly, and her lush breasts swayed over the
black dress.
"Nonsense! In our time, talking about the soul is like treating diseases
with spells. The order in which information is processed is what matters!
For a while I stood confused.
— But you yourself claimed that there is some matter in chess
creativity!
"Exactly. But not the soul. I just forgot what it's called.
"Is it important to have a name?" I asked her point-blank.
She thought for a moment and suddenly said something that James
Crockwood would never have said.
"When you are loved, then you can talk about the soul... And when...
She closed her eyes and fell silent.
The second blonde came up to me and for no reason began to giggle. I
thought she was drunk, and just in case, I smiled too, gently touching her
shoulder.
"Of course, you forgot that I was Katharine!"
"Are you Katharine?"
— Of course! And you have forgotten that I asked you to always
remember your name.
"Oh my God," I whispered, "poor girl, how often do we have to travel
like this...

753
 "Let's have a drink...
She began to stir the cocktail, and at the same time in the other corner of
the salon someone was again beating Carmella, and he was still repeating
that men used to treat the fair sex more delicately.
"No, soul, that's not the right word... Damn it, how did I forget that?
At this time, the "professor" was busy with a thin blonde, who was
singing melodies to him in a hoarse voice, and he was trying to guess who
composed them.
"It's Weber, the Magic Gunslinger!" "Magpie thief"! Schoenberg's
"first"! Albéniz, like Albéniz, "Navarre"! My dear, you don't want to work
as a nurse, but to sing in the opera!
"Maybe some part of her sings in the opera?" I thought.
"Katharine, let's go over there to the table, I want to ask you something.
The blonde, pressing the glass to her chest, obediently followed me.
We stepped over old Lezzi and "Carmella", who were frantically
fiddling on the floor. A "retired captain" sat on the table and judged this
disgusting battle. Then I had to squeeze through the company gathered
around the "Countess" Pons. She said:
"And now they are chattering about morals! Of course, our century was
immoral in its own way. But we were not afraid of death. Now immorality
stems from fear, from uncertainty about the future; because there are many
things, but nothing can be had; because of the abundance of artificial
feelings and pleasures that can be obtained by dropping a coin into the
machine...
"Katharine, try to force yourself to remember how it all started?"
"With me?"
"Yes, with you. And what is all this for?
She put the glass down on the table, put her hand on her forehead, and
closed her eyes.
"It was a bright, sunny spring laziness. No, not like that. That was
different. A bright day is not mine. He's a stranger... On the contrary, it
was cloudy and it was evening. The studio had just closed, and Hadzawa,
who had been working on The Two Gentlemen of Verona, told Catarine
that she was not suitable for the role of Sylvia and that she was no longer
willing to do anything... Yes, it was exactly so... I remember walking for a
long time between the giant pavilions on the territory of the film studio,
and I was not even afraid that among these gloomy lifeless hulks I was
walking, a small, completely insignificant film actress who was no longer
needed by anyone. At first, it was even fun...
After a pause, she opened her eyes and looked at me from under her
brow.
"I know what you think. Do you think I went to the café "Kransk", or to

754
the boulevard "Gretta", or somewhere else... Nothing of the kind. I went to
Colonel R.
I shuddered. Again, this R. He, like an evil fate, like fate, follows all
these people.
"At R.'s house I was received by his wife, a very sweet, warm-hearted
woman, who was not in the least surprised at my arrival. She said that R.
would be back in half an hour and that I could wait for him if I wanted.
They have such cute children. I remember a girl of about five years old
playing the piano, moving her lips funny to the beat of her finger, and the
older boy was making something in the next room and sometimes glanced
sideways in my direction. "So you have made up your mind?" asked Mrs.
R. "Yes." "And they did the right thing. It's not scary at all, but the
earnings are good." — "And what kind of tests are these?" — "Really, I
don't know. Some injections, and then very thorough medical
examinations." — "Does it hurt?" — "Oh! I never part with it." She went
to the bedside table and pulled out a syringe. In front of me, she gave
herself an injection in the leg and smiled. I approached the little girl and
began to play with her. So we played the piano until R. He immediately
wrote me a check for a large sum and gave me the address of the person I
was to meet the next day. The next day I met with Professor Baudelaire.
And then the trials began.
"Which ones?" I asked.
"Well...
"Nothing special. Anyway," she smiled sheepishly, "I think I've fallen
in love with Boller, and he has fallen in love with me. And what happened
next, I don't remember very well...
"And you're right not to remember...
Boller leaned over us, his face now stern and concentrated.
"That's enough for today, Pei.

17
I don't have a very good idea of what it means to be "oneself," but it
seems to me that with any change in one's social position or occupation,
there is still something completely unchanged in one's mind, something
more important than one's appearance, which is important only to the
police.
I know many cases when, during a very short period of life, my good
friends "changed themselves" several times. Sometimes this was dictated
by changes in service, sometimes by changes in family life, sometimes by
reasons that no one could detect at all. Be that as it may, for others, people
change several times in their lives. Everyone's "I" always remains
unchanged. It is only hidden so deeply and so carefully that its existence

755
can only be spoken of as an improbable hypothesis. It is not for nothing
that some great Christian priest said that one can sincerely confess only to
oneself, and even then to oneself.
Like most people of our time, I have always been an inveterate
materialist, and I am not concerned with the problem of the self in its
verbal expression. I just want to know: what happens to the material
essence of a person, if you will, to his atoms and molecules, when he, say,
suddenly turns from your friend into a sworn enemy?
I asked myself this question with particular poignancy when I saw the
one-eyed Risder Queens drawing some formulas on the ground. A strong
wind was blowing that day, the pines were literally moaning, and not only
did he not hear me approaching his bench, but he did not even pay
attention to my call, and only when I came close he raised his only right
eye at me and said:
"Boller's scheme is very simple, and therefore wrong. I was
dumbfounded: Queens – Boller and formulas!
"How are things with the eye?" Still blue light? I asked, to gain time for
reflection.
"To hell with him, with the eye. Sit down and let's think together where
Boller is wrong.
I sat down next to him. Riesder carefully erased what had been written
before, and the following lines appeared from under his wand:
I (Risder) = Inf (Risder) + Sozn (Risder)
Me (Sed) = Inf (Sed) + Sozn (Sed)
Me (Risder) = Inf (Risder) + Sed (Sed
) I (Sed?) = Inf (Sed) + Sozn (Risder)
"It's a scheme," Quince began. — My "I" and, accordingly, Sed's "I"
can be represented as the sum of two components; the stock of information
and the consciousness that processes this information. One should not
think that this consciousness is the same for all people. For example, I
think that information organizes consciousness, and if, say, Sed's
consciousness is added to Riesder's information reserves, then it remains
to be seen whether anything worthwhile will come out. Do you
understand?
Now I understand. It was not Risdair Queens in front of me, but Sad, or
rather, Sad's "information processing mechanism"!
"You're writing some kind of devilry!" Move the terms as you please,
as if they were objects!
He raised his only eye at me, which now expressed boundless surprise.
"Oh my God, Pei, you still don't understand these things?" Yes, if
Risder's beginning, that is, his information component, was dominant, I
would now punch you in the face for your lack of intelligence.

756
 "And it doesn't frighten you at all?"
"Me?" What are you talking about! I am damn interested in this!
Otherwise, what a scientist I am then!
"But you...
"Me, me, me!" What am I! I watched myself, you, Risder, Goll, Boller,
and I realized that arithmetic alone was not enough. Do you remember
Boller teaching a machine that was originally a model of a newborn baby?
Risder, or Sad, or God knows what he was, thought for a moment. Then
he said to me confidentially:
"It seems to me that Boller has figured out what kind of 'machine' it is,
which processes information. I dug it up and learned how to transplant it
into anyone's head. Like living organ transplantation...
"But he doesn't do anything like that!"
"He doesn't?" And neutrinos? I was stunned.
"What does neutrino have to do with it?" "
Didn't I tell you about our trials?"
"Everyone talks to me about these trials, but I can't understand
anything.
"My friend, you don't know the most important thing! Okay, I'll tell you
what happened to one of the test subjects. She was not a bad actress, but
something did not go well with the producer. You know how it is there, in
the cinema. The Japanese kicked her out, and she was hired by Dr.
Krügge, where Boller was also working at that time. And when this actress
began to be given chlorine-thirty-seven, she began to change before our
eyes. Previously stupid and untalented in any exact sciences, she suddenly
spoke to us in such a language that we simply gasped. Then we made a
control experiment, and began to inject her with substances with a
different nature of radioactive decay. Alas, her scientific abilities
gradually began to fade, and she soon returned to her former state. So
think about it: after all, chlorine-thirty-seven emits not only beta particles,
but also neutrinos.
I was completely shocked. Boller's plan suddenly became clear to me. I
know now for whom he is trying.
I felt dizzy and got up to walk. I crossed a birch grove, passed a low bush
and saw the chimneys of some factory on the horizon. A gray cloud hung
over him, which was motionless and unchangeable, despite the gusts of
strong wind. I stared at this suffocating cloud and suddenly heard a faint cry
nearby. After running a few steps across the clearing, I went back into the
bushes, and near a tall old pine tree I saw Sed furiously beating up a young
"retired captain," the same one I had seen in the salon the day before.
I rushed to the rescue unfortunate "captain", but he was too late. Sed left,
leaving his victim under a pine tree. And only now did it dawn on me: this was

757
not Sed, Sed could not be such a beast. It was Risder in the "shell" of Sad!

18
I met Colonel R. on a side path. He was walking along with Professor
Boller and was talking animatedly. Seeing me, R. was at first surprised,
and then, with a kind of guilty smile, he raised his hand and exclaimed:
"My God, it's you, Pei!
I also stopped and looked at my former military commander. Yes, now
I knew that he was one of the main figures in this devilry.
"Are you sure, Colonel, that I'm Pei?"
He thought for a moment and looked at Boller, smiling. He nodded his
head.
"Yes, it's Pei for now. We need him Pei.
"And Queens?" I asked. "And Sad?"
"I assure you, you are you," Boller said. "I told you we needed you for
another purpose.
The colonel came up to me and put his hand on my shoulder.
I remember how you complained about civilian life and wanted to
return to the army. Now you have such an expression on your face as if
you regret it.
"Is this an army?" I was surprised.
However, maybe you won't be so harsh? After all, we are front-line
friends, we have experienced a lot together, and there is no need to look at
me so hostilely.
Colonel R. had grown very old, the hair on his elongated head had
become completely white, and in the deep folds of his cheeks the silver
stubble could no longer be shaved.
Looking at him, and at the baggy gray suit that did not go well with his
slender military figure, for some reason I remembered our first meeting,
when I had just been drafted into the army, and when he received me in his
grandiose office on Seven Moons Street.
It was not an office, but a huge hall, where at the very end, under the
bust of Alexander the Great, there was a small table, which could only be
conditionally called a desk. He had a table lamp with a blue shade and a
single telephone.
In this empty, spacious hall, Colonel R. seemed to be a completely lost
man, forgotten by the whole world. Later, when I remembered how I had
seen him for the first time, the thought occurred to me again and again that
it was precisely such tiny, lost, and inconspicuous personalities, hidden in
empty giant sheds, who ruled the world.
He would not allow me to come closer than twenty paces to his desk,
and we talked across a huge empty space paved with brown parquet

758
flooring and lit by the dim light of orange sconces.
"Are you Dr. Pei?" – "Yes." "Have you never been to war and have not
undergone military training?" "Excellent." He picked up the phone and
muttered, yes, muttered, sleepily and lazily, "If he survives, that's exactly
what we need after, if it's after."
Then he stared at me, hiding in his chair, and his hands, very nervously
(his hands were always nervous, even when he held a gun), fiddled with a
few pieces of paper lying on the table. "Pei, war is not a very pleasant thing.
People are killing each other there. Understand one very important paradox
for the future (he put special emphasis on the word "future"). In war, people
gather who, as a rule, speak different languages. But among them there are
almost always the same pairs - on both sides. I mean, on our side and on the
other side, there are those who love music, or those who like to sit in the park
in the summer with their children, or those who like to change women, or do
amateur radio at home. In general As people with intellectual interests, they
are all exactly the same. Moreover, Pei, both we and they have brunettes and
blondes, hook-nosed and snub-nosed, freckled and rosy-cheeked like girls.
And, nevertheless, if at the front the opponents were gathered against each
other in such a way that they were identical to each other in all human
qualities and appearance, they would still strive to kill each other." I listened
to this amazing speech with genuine amazement. I vividly imagined a tall
blond man with black specks of old freckles on his nose, loving his plump
wife and his lovely children, standing with a bayonet at the ready against a
tall blond with black specks of old freckles on his nose, loving his plump
wife and his lovely children, also with a bayonet at the ready, and hating each
other with fierce hatred. And in this struggle, one of them will die... And
Colonel R. continued. "Unfortunately, modern scientists do not study the
psychology of murder much. Do you know our slogan "Allways Ready for
Kill"? What guides people when they go to kill each other? What inhibits his
aspiration, and what stimulates him? This is a psychological problem. The
history of mankind knows many examples of individual atrocities, but no one
has understood the psychology of mass atrocities. And the one who gets to
the bottom of this will be the winner in any future war." "Psychologists are
called upon to study the human soul under normal conditions," I objected.
Can you tell me the periods in the history of mankind when there were no
wars? If we follow the precedent, then we need to recognize as normal what
is always there. So, wars have always been and always are. It's amazing that
scientists haven't tackled this question. I want you, working as an army
psychiatrist, to be interested in this. For the future, this is especially
important..."
Now R. and Professor Boller were standing before me, both of them, as
it were, following my memories and discussing what conclusion I had

759
come to or could come to.
- I vaguely suspect that now our conversation will be a continuation of
the one that was then, a long time ago, before the start of the war.
R. smiled and nodded.
"I hope you now have a lot of life experience and now you know
something that will help you come to the right conclusion.
— I can guess what conclusion would be desirable for you, but I am not
sure that this is the right conclusion.
Boller intervened in the conversation. He did not want to compromise
the military significance of his research.
"It's all about the human thinking apparatus, and that's what we're able
to control now.
I had been waiting for this, and therefore I was not surprised by what he
said. My answer was ready.
"Boller," I was not afraid to sound familiar now, in the presence of
Colonel R., "you told me the story of the confused artificial brains, the
information and summarizing parts of the electronic machine. I just had a
conversation with Sed in the guise of Queens, and he found a flaw in your
experiment. You had to have two machines with two different information
halves and adders organized according to the Selfridge method. When
they come to each other, then they need to be swapped. You did not make
this experiment.
Boller looked reproachfully at Colonel R.
"It doesn't matter," Colonel R. waved his hand. Moreover, the main
work is almost finished.
I guessedAt one time, Boller was not given money for the experiment
that we discussed with Sad, that is, with Queens. Of course, it is cheaper to
carry out experiments on people.
"I think, Colonel R., that the experiment is not over. You can try in any
way to instill another soul in a person, or, as they say here, consciousness,
but it is not so easy to adapt a new consciousness to the old stock of
knowledge in such a correspondence that only animal natures like Risder
Queens are obtained. You need just such people. And it is unlikely that
you will achieve the desired result, even if you learn to make copies of his
consciousness. For example, Sed in Queens' shoes defeated the owner of
the skin. There is no arithmetic substitution of one for the other. It's a lot
more complicated than that, and I'm not sure that if you in the military try
to make everybody selflessly brave, thoughtless, bestial, like this
one-eyed fighter, using Professor Boller's supreme science, you'll get
exactly what you're aiming for.
"Don't listen to him, Colonel!" Boller exclaimed suddenly. "You've
seen Sed beat up a man. He beat him well! So what's the matter?

760
 For the first time, I noticed a note of despair in Boller's voice. It did not
escape R. Looking at me inquiringly, he smiled and walked into the
clearing, from where he could see the plant with chimneys spewing smoke
into the air.
"It's like a sports competition, Pei. I appoint you as judge. And you,
Boller, will be the captain of the team, or rather, one captain for both
teams...

19
This was the same control room in which Boller conducted the first
experiment on me. Now, preparing for a mass experiment, he was
feverishly running from device to device, from remote control to remote
control, checking something, turning some handles and switches, and I
stood and watched a person who was clearly losing or had already lost
himself. I could hear him muttering:
"If you consistently and methodically tear off a fly's wings and legs and
tear out the hairs from its body, it will be cruel. But if a means of mass
destruction is used against flies, then everyone, on the contrary, will
believe that flies deserve only this. It's the same with humans. Do you, Pei,
think it was easy for me to experiment with individuals at first? Alas, no. I
had one guinea pig...
"Katharine, a film actress?"
"Yes," he ignored my knowledge. "I conducted experiments on it,
injecting sodium chloride and potassium with chlorine-thirty-seven into
the body. I myself was tormented, watching how she changed, and she,
Pei, did not suffer, no... In fact, the subject received the very table salt that
any person needs. But how it changed! And it was so scary because I loved
that other Katharine who was a movie actress, not this one, who was
becoming a smart, sensible bluestocking, nightmarishly capable of precise
logical thinking.
"And you still didn't stop?"
"And who can stop before searching for the truth?" I? You? It's
impossible, Pei. Who thinks of the cruelty of scientific inquiry when the
truth has dawned before you? He smiled bitterly. — If you had any doubts
about this, then they are lost in a heap of observations and records, figures
and graphs...
I could not agree with this. You cannot pay such a terrible price for the
truth. And it is even more terrible when the truth obtained in this way
serves base purposes. I wanted to contradict Boller, but he, who was busy
adjusting the instruments, had no time for me.
After adjusting the instruments, Boller came over to me and sank down
on the laboratory bench. When he lit a cigarette, his hands trembled. And

761
even in this dim light, there was a deathly pallor on his face, which had
aged for a few days.
"I loved her very much, Pei... Some kind of split feeling... I loved the
girl, but I could not tear myself away from the unique object of research.
Do you know how it is with women? Unlike us, men, they make any
sacrifices for love, even though it destroys them. So it happened with
Katharine. I remember that I was in a recklessly cheerful mood. We went
to a bar and drank a lot. A friend of mine, the administrator, when I came,
always arranged for me and my friends a cozy, quiet corner on the
mezzanine, and we could sit there, undisturbed, and look down and see
what was going on there. Then there was an orange light in this corner,
and Catarine sat on the green sofa in those cursed stockings of
indeterminate color, which make women's legs look beautiful in such a
monstrous way. She wore a light blouse and a dark green skirt, and she sat
with her hands around her knees. It seemed to me that for the first time I
saw her face, so infinitely dear and trusting... Do you understand, Pei?
"I see...
"And below, where there were many people who did not care about the
influence of neutrino radiation on the human self, the same sad modern
music was playing, the very melody of which without words asserted
powerlessness and doom. But I was in a great mood, and I loved
Katharine, and I told her about it, and about the fact that I will love her no
matter what, and the fact that she becomes different from time to time
does not frighten me at all, but rather the opposite... Katharine was very
happy, because that evening she was herself...
"And yet?..
"We were looking down at the platform where everyone was dancing
like somnambulists, and I said it was like a dance of death. I don't know
where I got this comparison from, but by that time it was already clear to
me that I did not belong to myself, that I was someone else's, that my
knowledge and my scientific interests were not mine, but were in the
possession of something huge, much larger than our country or even the
whole planet. That evening, for some reason, I thought that human
consciousness, its mind, is not at all the result of elementary evolution, but
something cosmic, connected with the fact that the entire Universe is filled
with neutrino radiation, which plays a fatal role in the formation of the
human thinking apparatus.
"Then you decided to give yourself to Colonel R. for good?"
— No, much later. Strangely, it was suggested to me by Katharine
herself. But I want you to understand the psychological atmosphere of that
evening, when everything was fine and when I saw only her. Kristol
brought us gin and lemon juice, and then the same thing again, and

762
suddenly Katharine told me that I was bad, that she wanted me to be a
great scientist like Newton or Faraday or maybe Einstein. I objected that
physics was now in its twilight and that I was thinking of doing something
in the field of the study of human consciousness. Then Katharine
whispered in love that she was ready to give herself to me for all my
experiments. It seems to me that it was at this moment that I lost both her
and myself. Anyway, that's the conclusion I came to later, and that
evening I just laughed, and we started dancing on a small patch of parquet
next to our table, and Kristol would appear from time to time and ask us
what more we wanted, smiling. The singer spoke sadly of the fallen
leaves, of the river, which is very muddy in autumn, and of a distant island
where palm trees used to grow, and now there is only a rusty iron tower
against which the waves of the poisoned ocean break. And the sadder the
words, the happier Katharine and I became, until we laughed like
madmen. She said through happy laughter: "I want to be your frog! Or
with a mouse! Or a rabbit! Anyone! We sat down at the table again, and I
looked down at the green youths and shouted at them to stop chattering,
because I couldn't hear what my girlfriend was saying. One of the big guys
threatened to rip my head off. I threw the plate on him, and after that he
consulted with his friends for a long time what he should do. They looked
up at us, and I looked defiantly at them, because I imagined myself
Einstein ahead of time. Then the big guy got up and went to the end of the
hall, where there was a staircase to our mezzanine, and Kristol ran up to us
and advised us to get away, otherwise there would be trouble, because
Risdair Queens himself was coming... I had no idea who Risdair Quins
was, but Catarine said it would be extremely interesting. She rummaged
through her purse and pulled out a piece of paper, and when the green
curtain swung open and a big man with the gait of an orangutan appeared,
Katharine rose from her chair and exclaimed, smiling, "Hello, Risder, I've
been wanting to meet you for a long time." The big guy was taken aback,
looking at her and then at me with his only eye. Before he knew it,
Katharine handed him a piece of paper and showed him a bloodstain on it.
"I I always carry your autograph with me. Remember how you beat Camp
Toren. It was a great fight. And this is my friend, Professor Boller. Have a
seat with us." Risder turned the paper around his only eye and chuckled
contentedly. Sitting down next to us, he growled that it was best to throw
down not plates, but something heavier, such as bottles or a silver bucket
of ice. Sometimes he gave me an unfriendly look, but his face warmed
with every glass of gin he drank. And Catarine began to talk about how
now, unfortunately, knights have disappeared and that everyone, with the
exception of Risdair Queens, is a decent coward. A drunken Risder
confided to us that he would like to destroy a man named Farkat, who is

763
hiding from him with the urn of his dead mother in Lenden, but he cannot
find him, and in order to crush him, he is ready to wipe out the whole of
Lenden with its half a million inhabitants.
Then I, still imagining myself Einstein and Fermi combined, said that
this was a trifling task for modern science, and if he wanted to destroy all
the inhabitants of Lenden because of Farkat, then let him come to me and I
would teach him how to do it. How could I have thought that this drunken
conversation would have any consequences? Imagine my surprise when
Risdair Quince came to my laboratory the next day. Since then, he has
been mine, like Katharine, like Goll and many others... Queens came to
see me on the very day that Lieutenant Vericor brought Goll. Experiments
on them, by a strange coincidence, showed that their consciousness is also
very sensitive to neutrino radiation, and I kept them with me, while
Colonel R. agreed with the Ministry of War on the construction of this
institution. Funds were released, and I went into organizational work for a
long time, creating a project of an underground laboratory in such a way
that neutrinos from the depths of space would not interfere with the purity
of the experiments, so that they would not interfere, so to speak, with the
direction of my experiments. By this time, I had learned to isolate the
neutrino structure from a person, which is responsible for thinking... And I
also fell in love with Goll, so to speak...
"Have you taken a liking to Goll?..
"Don't be jealous, Pei... Now I don't love anyone anymore and I never
will love anyone... Goll, Katharine, who else - what difference does it
make? All of them are just material for experiments. And when you begin
to understand that you can do anything with these human shells, you stop
loving them. Love ends where the mystery of life ends. As soon as this
mystery ceases to be a mystery, love is no more. There are only fields,
reactions, impulses, and waves. And everything else is ancient dust,
museum dust, what was once called fairy tales and what we believed in
when we were little. Add to this the consciousness of the possibility of
perishing at any moment, so, for no reason, suddenly and unexpectedly.
Here everything in the world is devalued, including what was previously
considered sacred. And to tell the truth, it is really important to analyze
what a person can know, what he should know, and what should be taboo
for him and for all future generations... Do you understand this
psychological crisis? It passed away a long time ago, especially after
setting up the first converter, which made it possible to send a neutrino
structure from one human shell to another. I amused myself by changing
Goll into Katharin, Katharine into Goll, Queens into Sed, Sed into myself,
and this continued until in a fit of jealousy, I don't know who, Katharine or
Goll, they did not burn my scientific diary. Now I don't know which of

764
them is which... I am very tormented by the thought that somewhere I
have lost the thread of my reckless experiments, and only the active
intervention of Colonel R., who clearly formulated the tasks of the
laboratory, returned me to my place. Now I have a goal to strive for. And I
don't know what happened before. And I don't want to know.

20
"Drink, don't fool around!" Do not try to prevent what is about to
happen! And if you bother me, I'll just remove you!
In front of me stood a woman with glasses, the same one who had once
met me and escorted me to my first visit to Professor Boller. I knew that
her name was Carroll and that she was not a minor figure here. Even
Colonel R. treated her with respect, and I had long understood that she
represented some higher spheres in the laboratory than the War Office.
On the day of the mass experiment, Carroll found me in the control
room at the moment when I wanted to smash with a hammer all the
devices designed to throw human consciousness from place to place or to
deprive a person of the ability to think altogether.

"That's mean!" I wheezed, handing her the hammer.

"Mean?" You are a dull, dilapidated, backward person who is fit only
for garbage. Get out of here, go out and become a preacher! Do you want
me to tell you what will happen if you become such a preacher? You'll be
considered crazy. They will laugh at you and, perhaps, even throw stones
at you. And the police won't stand up for you, don't get your hopes up! Or,
Pei, find some backwater for yourself and get out there. To the archive.
Forever.
Her once modest and closed face became hard and severe. I never
suspected that women could be like that, although I was always convinced
that they were more cruel and predatory than men.
"You'd better help me move this screen to the control rack." Well,
remember, finally, that you are a man and a scientist! You will now see
how interesting it will be.
We walked between the tables filled with instruments, and the two of us
dragged the heavy screen to the far corner of the control room.
"Where's Boller?" I asked, wiping the sweat from my forehead.
"He'll be with them."
"Why?"
She grinned, and her grin seemed sinister to me.
"To observe," she replied vaguely, "you will also go to observe them
later, and after the experiment you will write a report on your impressions,
a very detailed, professional report. This will be the most important result

765
of today's experiment.
The screen flashed, revealing the clearing in front of the building,
laboratories, slender rows of pine trees, and an asphalt road leading to the
left. The people wandering around the clearing seemed to be gathered for
a picnic. They laughed, danced, walked up and down, but their figures
were so small that it was impossible to recognize any of them.
Carroll turned the knob, and the focus of the device increased so that
the images of people were now large enough to make out individual faces.
Then "Countess" Pons flashed by, some bulky man hobbled behind her.
Then I saw the blonde, who then turned out to be Katharine when I met
me, a few more unfamiliar figures, until at last an invisible lens found
Professor Boller in the crowd.
He seemed to be watching the crowd like a referee on a football field,
trying to catch the slightest violation of the rules of the game. I don't know
if he felt at that moment that Carroll and I were looking at him, but when
he turned his face in our direction, his eyes were frightened and sad.
— Let's start with him.
The woman's voice sounded merciless. I shuddered.
"Why from him?"
"He is also a participant in the experiment.
"But he's notobserves...
— Yes, but not as an outside observer. That observer will be you. And
here is the object.
It was Sad. Carroll touched the switch, and the screen went dark for a
moment.
"Now go upstairs."
When I found myself in the clearing, there was carefree fun. I struggled
to find Boller, but he looked at me with the dull gaze of a man who had no
idea who I was or why I was here.
"Professor, don't you recognize me?"
"I think you're Pei..."
— How is the experiment going?
"What are you talking about, Pei?" Ah, about the experiment... To hell
with him! I don't care what they do to me. Someone is always doing
something to our souls.
"Pei, Pei, come here!" You must help me figure out who this lady is.
This lady had the image of Goll, but now she was talking in a language
I did not understand, and the one who wanted to understand the change
that had taken place had the appearance of Sad. But it wasn't Sed either. I
couldn't even guess who it was, because when I asked Goll what she was
talking about, he suddenly said that his financial affairs were no good and
that Professor Boller could get him out of debtors' prison.

766
 "Where is Professor Boller?" I thought anxiously, looking at the motley
crowd of people swarming in the vast green area.
I walked among them, peered into their faces, listened to their
conversations, which were sometimes meaningful, sometimes completely
incoherent, and gradually began to comprehend the terrible truth: I had
lost Goll, and Katharin, and Boller, and Sad, and all those I knew. They
had all become someone else, and those who had been them before did not
recognize me. And as a doctor, I noticed that this society consisted of
mentally defective people, and that none of them could be called
complete.
Then I started screaming.
"Boller, Goll, Risder, where are you?"
No one responded to my cry, and I walked in the crowd of people,
completely alone and lost. Nobody knew me, and everyone became
strangers to me.
"Goll!" Katharine! Sad!
A young young man who used to be a retired captain came up to me and
said rudely:
"Stop yelling, you brute, this is not a football field for you!
The buzz grew with every second, everyone was hammering their own,
no one listened to each other - just like in a restaurant, where everyone is
already completely drunk.
Time passed, transformations continued, intellectuals became
ignoramuses, policemen became ministers, football players became bank
directors, prostitutes became countesses, and countesses became
laundresses... And I could not find my old acquaintances, and with every
second my anxiety for them grew. Why did Carroll look at me so snidely
when I asked about Professor Boller? Why was Boller himself worried
about something before the experiment began?
A hideous suspicion crept into my mind, and I began to imagine that,
perhaps, representing the supreme power, Carroll had the task of getting
rid of those who knew too much about the transmigration of human
consciousness, about the mass destruction of the intellect and about this
experience.
"Entropy is growing... You can't deny the role of neutrinos... As for
Goll... Or, for example, this magnifier...
The "white noise" was made by a woman, the one who used to be a
chess champion. Fragmentary phrases still indicated some knowledge,
but, as Boller explained to me, the mechanism of thinking had been lost.
"Goll!" I cried out in despair, and on my sideA small, wrinkled blonde,
once a nurse, suddenly emerged from the crowd, I also met her in the
salon.

767
 "Did you call me, Pei?"
I staggered to the side, but she approached me and smiled, revealing
ugly pink gums.
"Do you still love me?"
"You... Gall? I whispered in horror.
— Yes. And I know that you are Pei who loves me.
"But... You know that now...
"What's the difference?.. Is that the only thing?" she looked down at
herself. "You love my soul too, don't you?"
"Where's Katharine?"
"Who is it?"
"The other one who... Well, how can I explain it to you...
"I don't know of any other. Tell me, Pei, that you love me.
"Yes, if it's you."
"And who?" Of course.
Then she came up to me and put the head with sparse dyed hair on my
chest. And for a long time I stood like that, not paying attention to the fact
that people passed by, touched us, pushed and chatted about anything.
With each passing second, I became more and more disgusted, and
indignation against the most inhuman inhumanity imaginable grew like a
snowball. I cursed science, civilization, knowledge, organizations,
institutions... I cursed those who needed this whole nightmare.
Or maybe I don't understand something, and it's really time for me to go
to the museum?
"Tell me you love me, Pei, and I'll go..."
"Where?"
"There, far away," she waved a thin hand in the direction of the forest.
"Better let's leave here together."
"I want to be a film actress, and until I get my way, I'll be here. Just
don't leave me, because I'll be very lonely, especially at night...
"You'll never become a film actress... Let's get out of here before it's
too late.
— No, I don't. I will not leave, and now I see that you do not love me.
She raised her eyes full of tears and began to move away, not taking her
eyes off me... I followed her until she disappeared into the crowd.
I have already lost all orientation in what was happening, and I have
long come to the conclusion that a person who has changed his spiritual
essence becomes a parody of a person. Now I was thinking not only of
myself, but also of the one who had just been with me, miserable and lost,
and of those who were not with me.
We need to run! Run at all costs, before it's too late. Run and fight. No,
not to the archives, but to the street! People will understand me. We must

768
understand! And they will not stone me, but her, Carroll, and all the vile
company she represents here.
With difficulty, I got out of the crowd, went to the edge of the forest
and stopped for a second to look at the nightmarish gathering of human
shadows for the last time.
"It's time...", whispered an inner voice, and at that moment someone
grabbed me by the arm.
A young, blond guy who had once been "Carmella" was looking at me
with blue eyes, childishly naïve and trusting. He looked no more than
twenty years old.
"Doctor, you promised to look at my eye..."
"An eye?" Oh, yes... However...
"Blue light... All the time... And more pain...
"Come with me, Risder, and I'll cure your eye—"
"Come along," he agreed. Then suddenly he came to his senses and
asked. "Where?"
"Home." There is nothing else for us to do here.
"I don't have a home. And Farcat...
"Forget Farkat. You are still young, you should not waste your energy
on senseless fights. They will come in handy for something more useful.
"Do you think so?" And what about the eye?
"I'll take care of him, don't worry.
I took the young man by the hand, and we quietly disappeared into the
forest, leaving behind us the ruthless science, its inhuman goals, and those
who had lost themselves in our world.

21
He settled with me in the Rue Unique and became a son to me for a long
time. At first, we had a very small room, and then I managed to save some
money, and we moved to Gniew Square, where I opened a more solid
practice. The young man became my assistant.
Once an elderly woman with an exhausted face made an appointment
with me and, entering the office, asked if I could visit her sick husband.
The Risder took my suitcase, and we went to a rather fashionable
neighborhood to the mansion of the one who came for us.
We were ushered into the bedroom, and in the chair I saw a man I had
known for a long time.
It was Colonel R.
"Pei, I'm glad you came to see me," he said quietly, without getting up
from his chair.
"I'm glad to see you too, Colonel," I replied, although I felt quite
differently.

769
 "Colonel?" What kind of colonel am I, Pei... Have you forgotten me?
It's all over with the colonel," he continued. "Now it's my turn.
I asked R.'s wife to come out.
"Who are you now?" I asked, sitting down next to him.
"Oh, Pei, how shameful you are. When I explained the neutrino theory
to you...
"Boller?"
"Well, of course! Finally, there was at least one person who recognized
me...
"How did it happen?" I asked.
Carroll is now in charge. I had no idea that she had been sent... Well,
you know by whom?.. They have organized a department of higher
scientific training of military personnel there.
"Oh, that's it.
I looked with disgust at the pathetic hybrid of Colonel R. and Professor
Boller.
"You, Pei, were damn right. With the army, nothing came of the
Risders alone, and we spoiled enough human material... Too many for it
not to become known.
"And what happened to you?"
"You see... My head is all mixed up, and I can't convince anyone that
I'm Boller and not Colonel R. That I've just been put in it. And this woman
is his wife... I know they're afraid I'll tell you a secret, even though I've
sworn an oath... As on a military oath... Oh, how dizzy!
I examined R. and found that he was physically completely healthy. As
for his psyche, this is evidenced by the following phrase he dropped:
"When you were with me at the front, I was always thinking about how
to adapt neutrinos or something so that my soldiers would fight like Risder
and hate like Katharin...
Everything is mixed up!
"Try not to think about anything and drink this, Boller. I told R.'s wife
that her husband's condition was not hopeless and that he only needed to
sleep.
I left him sleeping pills in sufficient quantities.

770
 TUSCARORA

Rain
Have you been to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk? No? In vain. Be sure to visit,
you will not regret it. Especially if, after exploring the city, you are not
lazy to climb the Rossiyskaya Hill, to the Mountain Air tourist center.
They say that it is best there in winter, in December or January, when
warm fluffy snow pours and the skis seem to roll downhill by themselves.
And if you happened to meet a girl named Maya in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk,
she would assure you that their Sakhalin snow would roll you up by itself,
contrary to all the laws of nature.
"If you only knew how good it is in winter!"
In May's voice there was a note of guilt. We stood on the balcony of the
camp building and looked at the rain. Rain and fog, because of which you
could not see anything for half a kilometer around. And we climbed here
in order to look at the Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk "Cheryomushki" from a height.
"They're over there, a little to the right," Maya said, pointing into the
impenetrable gray void.
"Hemingway's rain," I whispered dreamily.
— No, I don't. This is our rain.
Maya was offended.
I looked at my watch. The girl jumped up and grabbed my hand.
"Wait. It happens to us. Rain, fog, rain — and suddenly the sun. Really.
She really wanted to show me "Cheryomushki" from above.
"And if the plane doesn't want to wait for me, then how?"
"They don't fly in this weather...
"Well, yes, rain, fog, rain - and suddenly the sun. And my plane fumed
- and fluttered.
Maya coughed and, shivering funny, said in a boyish bass:
"Well, let's go, since you're in such a hurry..."
She accompanied me to the terminal and waited while I checked in my
luggage and checked in the ticket.
"Come in the winter.
"I'll be there if you pick up Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms from the
library and read it," I joked.
Then she pulled her hand away and ran to the exit.

771
 "Come!" She shouted and disappeared.
And it was still raining.
I sat down on a bench and began to look at the passengers.
All flights were delayed, so a lot of people accumulated. Some,
apparently having sat at the airfield since early morning, were dozing.
Others gathered in groups and chatted animatedly. On the bench, the guys
were loudly shooting dominoes. The "goat" had to shout at the top of his
lungs: "Koo-ka-re-ku!" "Goat" – and suddenly "koo-ka-re-ku"?
"You, Vitka, are screaming somehow silently! Persuasion - at the top of
your lungs!
"I have such a voice," the boy timidly justified himself. "I'd rather
scream as best I can, but three times..."
"Guys, shall we give him a discount?" The tall guy asked.
"All right, let him shout three. This will just correspond to the required
sound power. Fish! Come on, let's count!
"Aha, now it's your turn to scream, Bickford!"
A lanky blond man with a colorful handkerchief around his neck
cleared his throat and screamed so loudly that the windows rattled. From
all sides they shouted at the guys. I saw a stocky man in a green raincoat
enter the hall and, making his way among the passengers, went to the
guys. When they saw him, they shook up, stirred their knuckles, and stood
up.
"Let's go," the man said curtly. "I'll show you where the roosters
hibernate."
"In the barn, Lavrenty Petrovitch," the father triedBickford.
"In the barn?" No, my friend, roosters like you spend the winter on the
island of Iturup.
"Iturup, Iturup... It seems to be the largest island in the Kuril Islands,"
flashed through my head.
"Take your things," the man ordered.
His voice was stern and authoritative. You can't argue with that. I
noticed his crimson-brown face, like that of a fisherman who has stepped
off a seiner.
"What a boss!" I thought, not so much because I was justifying the
boys' manner of playing dominoes, but because of their somewhat
confused look.
I don't know why, but I followed them, left the terminal and began to
watch as the man scolded the domino team.
"They even managed to check in the raincoats!" Now stand like wet
chickens!
"May I go get my things?"
"Go."

772
 When the man lit a cigarette, I approached him and asked for a match. I
wanted to take a closer look at him. His face was covered with small sharp
wrinkles. Stiff graying stubble broke through his cheeks. He must have
shaved once. He looked at me with squinted blue eyes.
"It's okay, guys," I said in a conciliatory tone. "Young.
— In our work, the most important thing is discipline. Sometimes life
depends on it," he said in a calm, soft voice. "So I have to.
He struck a match and held it up to my cigarette.
"It's extinguished. By the way, what do you have? With a filter? How
long have you been from Moscow?
"Ten days ago."
"Come on! My interlocutor perked up. "How is it?" — Order. A
trolleybus was launched along Michurinsky Prospekt.
"Michurinsky?" Excuse me, where is that?
It always annoys me when someone doesn't know the avenue where I
live.
"This is where Stoletov Street is.
"Excuse me...
I looked up at him in surprise.
"Are you a Muscovite?"
— Yes, but I haven't been to Moscow for a long time.
"And these guys?"
— Graduate students from the Institute of Geology. We arrived in
March. Dissertations are prepared here. This means that there are many
changes in Moscow.
I began to explain to him where Stoletov Street was and where
Michurinsky Prospekt was. Graduate students came up loaded with duffel
bags.
"We are ready, Lavrenty Petrovich.
He looked at them scrutinizing and nodded. Then he suddenly turned to
me and asked:
"Do you have nowhere to spend the night?" After all, today all flights
have been canceled.
"It can't be...
— Of course. You don't need to hang around here. Let's go to the city, a
pickup truck is waiting for me, so we will all fit.
On the way, we met. "Lavrenty Petrovich Shiroky, Doctor of
Geological Sciences". "Very nice. Vitaly Alexandrovich Sushkov,
Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. At the invitation of the
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk Institute, he gave a series of lectures on electronic
measuring equipment." "That's right, it's interesting! And what are you
doing in Moscow now? Would you like..."

773
 In the end, I went not to the hotel, but directly to Shiroky's apartment.
"I won't let you go anywhere," he said in the same authoritative voice
that he had used to address his graduate students.
"My business trip is coming to an end.
"We will extend it as long as necessary.
"Yes, but...
"Married, do you have children?"
— No, I don't.
"Then the issue is resolved.
I have never regretted that the issue was resolved so...

Cheremnykh and his Idea

The rain was still rustling in the leaves of the trees outside the window.
There was yellow semi-darkness outside. We talked for a very long time,
probably three hours, and for no reason it seemed to me that the sudden
change in my life was only a dream.
"I see you're sleepy."
"No, what are you...
"Don't lie, I can see in your eyes. I'll go to bed now.
Shirokiy went out the door, took a fur coat from the hanger and threw it
on the floor. Then he fumbled in the closet and took out a sheet.
"You're younger than I am, so you'll sleep on the floor.
My eyes were glued together, and I began to undress obediently.
"By the way, Lavrenty Petrovich, I was somehow embarrassed to ask,
why, in fact, did you leave me here?
"Do you already regret it?"
"No, not at all! But still...
"Measuring equipment, my dear. I really need measuring equipment.
You are just a godsend for me.
— Do you want to make pocket voltmeters based on semiconductors? I
suddenly felt annoyed that I had agreed to work with this volcanologist
like this, from a floundering bay.
Without waiting for an answer, I lay down on my sheepskin coat. Wow,
I haven't slept on a hard floor for a long time! I remembered a Moscow
apartment with a sofa bed.
Shirokiy laughed. He came up to me, looked at me mockingly, and sat
down on the floor next to me.
"I suppose you remember the comforts of Moscow," he guessed.
"I remember," I muttered,
"and that's at your age!"
"Uh-huh...
"Do you want to have nothing left of your sleep in five minutes?"

774
 "Only, for God's sake, don't pour cold water on me." I don't like it very
much...
The broad one patted me on the shoulder.
- This will not happen. I just want to tell you a story. Small children are
always told fairy tales before going to bed.
"Let's tell me a fairy tale...
"Annoying uncle," I thought, and wrapped myself even more tightly in
the blanket.
"So, there is a city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk in the world, and in this city
there is Primorskaya Street. And on this street lives an ancient, pre-ancient
old man at the age of thirty-four. This is one of those amazing old men in
our time, who does not subtract, but adds years to himself. An old man
named Igor Filimonovich has grown a beard and walks with a stick. In this
form, the aforementioned Igor Filimonovich appeared three years ago at
the Institute of Energy of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
"Curious!" Is he crazy, this Igor Filimonovich of yours?
I turned to the other side and opened my eyes. "Don't be in a hurry.
— Why did he come to the Institute of Energy with a beard and a heavy
stick? I asked curiously.
He thought so...
"A curious guy... What idea did he bring to the Institute of Energy?
— You've probably heard that there are volcanoes on the Kuril Islands.
"Lavrenty Petrovich clearly mocked me. "How many do you think?"
"The devil knows. Probably five or six of them.
"Forty."
"What?"
— There are forty volcanoes in the Kuril Islands.
I began to vaguely guess where the author of the "fairy tale" was going.
Like, hot lava, heat sources, and so on. But I didn't really know how it
could be used for energy.
"What did he suggest, this phony old man?"
"Have you ever heard of Tuscaror?"
I thought about it. Something sometime somewhereo heard, Geographical
name. Either a mountain or a lake. In geography, there are words that "sing".
I have always been impressed by names such as Zaragoza, Kilimanjaro,
Tuscarora, but since I stopped being fond of postage stamps, the meaning of
the names has gradually faded. It suddenly dawned on me:
"This is some kind of tropical plant!
Lavrenty Petrovich smiled slyly.
"There is also a plant. Just not quite tropical. One of the varieties of rice
is called tuscarora.
"So, your friend suggested growing rice on the slopes of the Kuril

775
volcanoes!" A cheeky guy, this one with a beard!
The broad man laughed loudly.
— It feels like you had more than one A' in geography in high school.
In addition to rice, Tuscarora is a fairly deep hole in the Pacific Ocean.
I tried to remember the geographical map of the Sakhalin region, which
I had briefly looked through before leaving for the island.
"I don't remember something like that.
"It is now called the Kamchatka-Sakhalin depression.
Volcanoes. Kamchatka-Sakhalin depression. Curiously!
I sat down, clasping my knees in my hands. In the eyes of Lavrenty
Petrovich, cunning jumped. He really woke me up and was very pleased
with it.
"Good. It means that your thirty-four-year-old elder has entered the
bright building of the Institute of Energy. What happened next?
"When he entered the institute, he was only thirty-one years old.
"Citizen, where are you going?" his secretary asked. Igor replied sternly:
"Didn't Academician Panfilov warn you? I am Cheremnykh." "Ah...
Please, come in..."

Igor went to the deputy director of the institute, Academician Panfilov,

and, without waiting for an invitation, sat down at the table.
He took two pieces of paper out of his pocket, handed them to the
scientist and said: "Here is a relatively simple and cheap way to get five
billion kilowatts of free energy."
I jumped up.
"What an impudent fellow!" Five billion! Is he crazy?
"And you, Vitaly Alexandrovich, sit down, that is, lie down. If you like,
it is because of these billions of kilowatts that you have stayed here. Just
like that.
Silence reigned. Blinking, I looked at Shiroky, whose face took on an
unusually serious expression.
Quite imperceptibly, Lavrenty Petrovich and I found themselves at the
table and began to drink tea again. I forgot about the Moscow sofa and
about the rain outside. I listened to the doctor of geological spiders, afraid
to miss a single word. And what he told me seemed to me the most
audacious, although well-founded fantasy.
— A lot depends on how to communicate a scientific idea. In the first
version, Igor's report was drawn up on fifty pages. But this is not a report, but a
dissertation. Then he shortened it to twenty, to seven, then to five pages.
Finally, the idea was set out on two pages, one with a diagram and the second
with a calculation. The main idea. He prepared the development - another pile
of papers. When he showed the sheets to Panfilov, the scientist had nothing to

776
explain. He frowned. First I examined the scheme, then the calculation, then
the scheme again. Without saying a word, he pressed the bell button and called
the secretary. "Call me Professor Kurnakov." Kurnakov came. "How do you
like it?" asked Panfilov. Kurnakov looked at the diagram, at the drawing.
"Allow me, I'll call Professor Avgeev." Came Professor Avgeev. Then another
professor, then two doctors of sciences at once, and half an hour later all the
leading power engineers of the institute gathered in the office. They forgot
about Igor. Everyone squeaked with automatic pens, making calculations.
Occasionally one could hear: "So, the pressure is seven hundred atmospheres?
And the flow of water?" – "Well, it's easy to calculate." "The relaxation time
will be too long." "And here it is indicated, a week and a half." "Yes, that's
what I do." - "And the temperature?" - "About a thousand degrees, not bad..."
"Well, how is it? Academician Panfilov addressed everyone at once. —
Interesting. The way to solve the problem is interesting. But the project
needs to be finalized, and the data needs to be carefully checked. In
addition, it is not yet known how to get into Tuscarora."
"Diving into Tuscarora can be carried out on the underwater helicopter
of engineer Izmailov," Igor intervened in the conversation.
At that moment, Academician Panfilov came to his senses.
"By the way, comrades, allow me to introduce you to the author of the
project. Excuse me, your name and surname?.."
Igor introduced himself; The scientists shook his hand.
I was present at this unusual meeting. Igor Cheremnykh's project
stunned me. When it was decided once again to check the initial data, I
gladly agreed to lead the expedition.
— What is the meaning of the project, what is the main technical idea?
Lavrenty
Petrovich got up from the table and, patting me on the shoulder, said:
"Now go to sleep." Tomorrow you will hear everything from Igor
Cheremnykh.
Falling asleep, I saw how, like a serpentine ribbon, a flock of numbers
wriggled in the darkness: 5,000,000,000.

Primorskaya, 23
When we were walking along Kommunisticheskaya Street, someone,
passing by, shouted "hello", at the "Gastronome" the "gazik" squeaked on
the brakes, and the driver, opening the door in warning, suggested:
"Lavrenty Petrovich, shall we come?", but he only waved his hand.
"What do you think," he turned to me, "would the head of the personnel
department of, say, your research institute accept Faraday to work?"
Without a diploma. Without secondary education.
I laughed.

777
 "Those were not the times. The Faraday are now gone.
"Aha!" I see where you are going! They say that science is collective,
scientific discoveries are beyond the power of an individual! So?
I nodded. "No, my friend! Lavrenty Petrovich exclaimed cheerfully.
"It's not that simple. The main ideas that form the basis of new scientific
and engineering areas are still born from individuals, talented scientists,
engineers, and outstanding inventors. To generate scientific and technical
ideas is as much a gift of nature as a poetic or, say, musical gift. An
original scientific idea cannot be born in many heads at the same time, just
as the same musical theme cannot arise in the minds of many composers.
But, of course, a scientific idea born in one person is best implemented by
the power of a collective. That's why I think that research should involve
as many people as possible who have the ability to generate scientific
ideas. So to speak, fantasists from science. And here some special insight
is needed. Sometimes you need to distract yourself from diplomas and try
to guess Faraday in a person. Agree?
I nodded.
"Well, that's good. By the way, we approached the house of the
Sakhalin Faraday.
We were approaching an unsightly wooden building with a yellowed
sign "Primorskaya, 23".
Igor Filimonovich, despite his beard, seemed to me even younger than
his years. His cheerful light blue eyes betrayed him. There were clearly
not enough wrinkles on his face. In addition, he took a dashing drag on his
cigarette, and when we approached his desk, he kicked off his slippers
with such force that all his feigned solidity completely flew off. I could
not stand it anymore and burst out laughing.
"Meet Igor, this is our next victim.
We weeded each other's hands. Igor, giving his name, asked:
"So, do I have to tell you everything from the beginning again?"
Shiroki, lounging on a deep, old-fashioned sofa, nodded.
"A radiogram has come from Moscow to begin survey work, have you
heard?"
"Yes, I got a call yesterday. Are you a measurement specialist?
"Wow, they have information here. Everything is already known," I
thought and nodded affirmatively.
"Good. We'll need you. Very much.
"For what?"
Igor was in no hurry to answer me and, digging through the papers,
muttered:
"They offered to change the apartment, to move to Cheryomushki."
Near the television center. And I love my old house.

778
 Igor moved two chairs to the sofa, sat down on one himself, and laid out
a diagram drawn on graph paper on the second. It was some kind of
incomprehensible drawing for me, with wavy lines, with margins painted
with various colors.
"Do you know how the Earth works?" Igor asked me.
I coughed, then sneezed, trying to buy time to figure out what answer
was expected of me.
— What do you mean, geography?
— Not at all. Do you know how Is the land inside?
I shrugged my shoulders.
- No one knows for sure. It is not for nothing that after the end of the
International Geophysical Year...
"Quite right," Igor interrupted me. "After the end of the geophysical
year, it was decided to start a deep study of the Earth's interior. There are
projects for drilling the earth's crust for fifteen-twenty and even fifty
kilometers. But even without drilling, we know something.
He turned the drawing over and began to draw concentric circles on the
back side.
"Look. This is the core of the Earth. Probably, it is hard. The pressure
here is such that any substance must turn into crystallite. Here is a magma
layer. It is probably the thickest. Here the substance of the earth is in a
molten state. Where does the heat energy come from? No one knows.
Some argue that heat arose as a result of the decay of radioactive elements
and unstable isotopes. Others believe that the heat of the Earth's interior is
of solar origin, and still others talk about more complex processes of
transferring the Sun's energy into the Earth. One thing remains
indisputable. There is heat there. And there is a fantastic amount of it
there. Suppose we set out to extract energy evenly over the course of, say,
a million years. What do you think the capacity of the plant will be?
I shrugged my shoulders.
"With such a consumption of energy contained inside the Earth, the
capacity is equivalent to the capacity of ten million power plants, one
billion kilowatts each.
Ten million power plants! A billion kilowatts each.
"Please check.
The "old man" smiled and handed me a piece of paper and a pencil. I
began to calculate. And a few minutes later I came to the same figures...
"You understand what injustice exists," Professor Shiroky intervened
in the conversation. "Arctic and Antarctic ice - the permafrost region, cold
currents, the Sea of Okhotsk, winter, blizzards, the struggle for tons of
hard-to-extract coal, for oil, for hydropower, the most complex technical
problems associated with the extraction of nuclear fuel - and all this on the

779
surface of the planet, in the bowels of which are hidden almost
inexhaustible sources of free energy!
Whenever unexpected problems hit me, my head is incredibly
confused. It takes some time until everything falls into place. I looked at
the street along which people were walking, cars were passing, and
suddenly I imagined this wooden house, and the whole street, and the
whole city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk transported to those times when mighty
streams of intraterrestrial heat would flow through fields and valleys, over
oceans and rivers, and everywhere, even in the harshest lands, trees would
turn lush green, rivers of melted ice would flow.
Warmth! How it is needed by everyone! It is not for nothing that the
Swedish polar explorer Roald Amundsen once said that people cannot get
used to the cold...
We have countless amounts of heat under our feet. You just need to
take it. But how? I looked at Igor again.
"At first, like this...
Op unfolded the diagram and began to explain the essence of his
amazing project. At first he spoke slowly, languidly, like a man who is
tired of repeating the same thing, then he spoke with enthusiasm. We
didn't even notice how twilight thickened outside the window.
Yes, everything was thought out to the smallest detail. He took into
account the most recent research on the earth's crust. The fact that it does
not have the same thickness everywhere wasIt has been proved by
studying the orbits of artificial satellites of the Earth. It is known that the
bottom of the Pacific Ocean differs from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean
in the thickness of the layer of sedimentary rocks. Continents? Of course,
their surface is farther from the Earth's mantle than the ocean floor. But to
obtain magma, even from under the ocean floor, it would be necessary to
break a deep well. Yes, but you forgot about the hollows. You know, there
is the Philippine Depression eleven kilometers deep, the Japanese
Depression ten kilometers deep, and, finally, our Kamchatka-Sakhalin
Depression. About ten thousand meters. By the way, why drill? After all,
we will not scoop molten magma from a well and fill cisterns with it. What
are we going to do with it?
"Do you know what a direct-flow boiler is?" Professor Shiroky
suddenly asked me.
— Yes. I know the principle of its operation.
"So...
The room was completely dark when the door opened. On the foyer of
the dark rectangle, the figure of a girl appeared.
"Oh, Maika, is that you?" Why is it so late?
Igor got up and approached the girl.

780
 — Your project again? It is immediately felt. They even forgot to turn
on the light.
A switch flipped and the room was filled with a warm orange light. Out
of surprise, I jumped up from the sofa.
"Do you know each other?" Igor asked in surprise.
I nodded in confusion.
"And I thought you had been in Moscow for a long time. I was in the
library. That's how you advised, I took Hemingway...
"I don't understand anything," Igor muttered, glancing at me, then at
Maya.
"I showed a friend from Moscow the city... We were on the "Mountain
Air"...
"Oh, that's it! So, old acquaintances? Doesn't my sister look like me?
I sighed.
"Sister, that's good...
Professor Shirokiy looked at me in surprise. I felt the color flood my
face.
"He never left," I said, addressing the girl. — Weather. And then
Professor Shiroky... lassoed me. And now, after talking to your brother, I
will probably stay here. For long...
"Well, stay. And I went to the cinema.
The girl turned on her heel and disappeared. We were silent for a while. It
seemed to me that Igor and Lavrenty Petrovich were carefully examining me.
It was unbearable. I sat down noisily on the sofa and asked,
"So what did you want to say about direct-flow boilers?"
— My project is to create a once-through boiler operating on in-ground
fuel.
"How?"
"The fact is that, according to the research expedition of the
hydrological vessel "Oleg", there is one place in the Kamchatka-Sakhalin
depression where the thickness of the earth's crust does not exceed several
hundred meters... If you drill through this layer, then ocean water will pour
into it... And where can the steam be directed?
As I delved into the details, a fantastic picture loomed before me: a
mighty thermal power plant, powered by red-hot steam escaping from the
mouth of an almost extinct Kuril volcano.

Kurilelectroproekt
Igor Cheremnykh's report was brief. He did not need to expand on it,
because all the participants in the meeting - party workers, engineers,
builders, prospectors, geologists, business executives - were previously
distributed a detailed technical note prepared by the Academy. It followed

781
that the Academy of Sciences fully supports the project developed in
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, but insists that all data related to the geology,
oceanography and volcanology of the Kuril ridge be once again
confirmed.
"If everything is confirmed, what will we do?" Suskin asked in a raspy
voice. He was a small, chubby man with a pink smooth head.
"Then we'll start drilling the bottom of Tuscarora.
"Hm. Will we throw a few million rubles to a depth of ten thousand
meters? Boldly! And then what will happen?
"When the water bursts into the cavity where the volcanic trunk begins,
it will begin to evaporate rapidly, and the steam, having reached a pressure
of about seven hundred atmospheres, will escape through the crater of the
Pacific.
Igor showed the volcano on the map.
— Interesting. So what are we going to do with this steam?
"We will lower a giant turbine into the crater.
"A gigantic one?"
— Yes.
"And shall we sink it deeply?"
"Two or three kilometers. This needs to be clarified.
- I see. So, two million in the ocean and about the same, if not more, in
the crater of a volcano. This is the first time I hear about such a way to
spend state money...
— Yes, but you do not take into account the economic effect. The costs
will pay for themselves in no more than two or three years!
"The return on investment is still on paper, and real things need to be
thrown into the ocean and into the crater.
Grigoriev smiled and lightly tapped on the table with his pencil.
"Comrade Suskin, scientists are making very careful calculations.
"I'm not a scientist," Suskin said firmly. "And I don't mind. I'm all for it.
Only I am scared to imagine how drilling equipment will be lowered into
Tuscarora, and turbines will be stuffed into the volcano. Have you seen
volcanoes? I was in the Kuril Islands. I was on Shikatama. I was on Iturup.
I've seen a lot of volcanoes. I was approaching craters. A terrible, I tell
you, sight. Lava! Blast furnace in section. And that's how I imagine that
equipment is being pushed into the crater, and even to such a depth... You
know, you need to measure seven times here.
— Of course. The project needs very careful development. I am in
favor of immediately starting to organize an expedition," Grigoriev said.
"It must collect all the necessary data to draw up the final terms of
reference for power equipment and construction.
"The design will take at least two to three years," said Shumlin, chief

782
designer of Kurilelectroproekt. — According to preliminary plans. But we
will try to speed up the work.
The meeting ended, and people continued to walk along the spacious
corridors of the regional party committee. Geologists conferred with
oceanographers, volcanologists with builders, builders with designers.
It was felt that the project captured everyone.
"What are we going to do?" I asked Lavrenty Petrovich.
"Come to me now." My graduate students will gather there, and we will
draw up an action plan.
Saying goodbye to Igor Cheremnykh, I held his hand in mine.
"Do you have a phone at home?"
— Yes, there is.
"May I?.. Just in case.
"Please, twelve to seventy-five
As if by chance, he said with a sigh:
"Mikey won't be here again in the evening. They have a club evening in
the editorial office of the youth newspaper tonight. The club is called
"Scarlet Sails"...
At Lavrenty Petrovich's apartment, graduate students were already
waiting for us, the same guys I had seen at the airport. Now they were
wearing carefully ironed suits, white shirts and neat ties. When we
entered, they stood up in a dignified manner. It was hard to believe that
these were the same guys who crowed at the airport.
"Assembled?" In this case, get acquainted. This is our new employee
Vitaly Alexandrovich Sushkov, Candidate of Physical and Mathematical
Sciences, a specialist in measuring equipment.
"Victor," the youngest introduced himself, who crowed like a rooster
three times.
— Taperov, Alexander.
"I thought your name was Bickford," I remarked.
"We call him that because he's a master at lighting the Bickford cord.
We often have to blow up rock...
— Volodya Ivanov, geologist.
— Semyon Ivanov, geophysicist.
Lavrenty Petrovich explained that his graduate students are doing one
collective work and its topic is "Geophysical methods of deep exploration
of volcanoes".
"Now our work has been concretized, because we will take up the volcano,
which is named in Igor Cheremnykh's project. I want you to immediately
imagine the scale of the task. The profile of the volcano trunk must be traced all
the way to Tuscarora. That means for more than two hundred kilometers, of
which one hundred and ninety-five are under water.

783
 Vadim Ivanov, a squat, red-haired guy with glasses, whistled, scratched
his head, and looked at Bickford mockingly.
"Sashenka, get your scuba gear and fins ready. And also powder against
sharks.
"You're a gray man," Alexander Taperov remarked with dignity.
"Explosives can be detonated right on the surface of the water. Lavrenty
Petrovich, will we have hydroacoustics? And what kind of vessel will we
be given?
Shirokiy sighed.
"There is a suitable vessel. An old refrigerator. Displacement of two
hundred and fifty tons. But the equipment...
He looked at me inquiringly. At last I understood at what point my
work began.
"We can't do anything without an echo sounder," Vitya remarked.
"An ordinary echo sounder will not help. We need to register not a bottom
wave, but a secondary and, perhaps, tertiary wave. Otherwise, we will not be
able to plot a section of the earth's crust on the diagram layer by layer.
Everyone fell silent and looked at me, and I intensely remembered
everything I knew about the sound location. Of course, it costs nothing to
attach an additional amplifier to a regular echo sounder. But it will be of
no use - the sea itself is so noisy that a simple amplification can only
damage the deciphering of signals reflected from deep layers under the
ocean floor.
"I can't tell you anything yet. I need to look at the marine noise spectra
and find the frequency "window" to which the amplifier needs to be tuned.
Then you need to create a sonic pulse with the frequency of sends...
"The plan of work seems to me in the following form," Shiroky
continued. "After we develop a method for acoustic profiling of
volcanoes, our group will go to the port of Korsakov and from there on a
specially equipped vessel to the Kuril Ridge. There, in a straight line from
Cape Kasatka to Tuscarora, we will "ring" the crater of the Tikhiy
volcano, the trunk of which, according to Oleg, goes at an oblique angle to
The Tuscarora Depression.
Leaving Shirokoye, I went to the city center to find the editorial office
of the youth newspaper, where the Scarlet Sails club had gathered...

"Scarlet Sails"
In the conference hall of the youth newspaper for its next Wednesday,
the club gathered. There were a lot of people, mainly because, in addition
to the performances of novice writers and young artists of the local
theater, an advertisement placed in the newspaper reported something
unusual and even somewhat mysterious. I managed to squeeze into the

784
back of the hall.
A tall guy in a wide plaid jacket appeared on the stage. Before he began
to speak, he swayed slightly from side to side, raised both hands, and
everyone fell silent.
"And who is this?" "
Leva Fryazin, don't you know?"
Several people looked in my direction in surprise.
"Guys," Lyova began. "Any of you know what Tuscarora is, please
raise your hands!" One two three four... Who else knows? Be brave, be
brave! Clearly, four people know this. So, almost no one knows what
Tuscarora is. And this is the old geographical name of the
Kamchatka-Sakhalin depression in the Pacific Ocean. It means that we do
not know our land. Who has been to the Kuril Islands, please raise your
hands! One two three four... Four again. Well, well, guys. The regional
committee of the Komsomol makes the following proposal: the whole
club should go, say, on vacation or on vacation to the regions of our
wonderful region. Instead of skiing the snow where the bus route ends,
let's walk along the untrodden paths of our islands. There are uninhabited
islands in the Kuril Islands, do you know that?
"Are you writing it down for Robinson?"
"What does Robinson have to do with it?" Such uninhabited islands
may contain minerals, such as gold or coal. Or maybe there are crabs
swarming there? It's interesting and useful! We live in the most volcanic
region of the Soviet Union, and how many of you have seen a real
volcano?
— You've seen it in the movies, "Meeting the Devil"...
Fryazin straightened his long blond hair.
— Of course, not everyone is suitable for this kind of club work. Here
we need brave, hardy and smart guys. I propose to discuss. And now the
floor to Maya Cheremnykh...
Leva Fryazin's performance excited everyone. When Maya began to
speak, I could not hear the first words because of the noise. But gradually
the hall calmed down. — … My brother believes that some Kuril
volcanoes can be turned into sources of thermal energy. Volcanoes have
not been explored much, It is very difficult to get to them. And here we
could help scientists. I propose to create a section for the study of Kuril
volcanoes at our club. It will be exciting tourism and very useful work.
All.
Maya wanted to step aside, but someone from the audience shouted:
"No, not everyone! And how does your brother propose to use
volcanoes to generate electricity?
Maya sighed, thought for a while and said:

785
 "Of course, I'm not an expert. But the point is this. At the bottom of
Tuscarora, a well is drilled, through which water will pour into the bowels
of the earth, onto its red-hot mantle. There it will begin to evaporate, and,
as preliminary calculations show, the steam will go into the crater. Mighty
steam geysers will score. It is this steam that will rotate the turbines of
power plants. I will make an appointment in the volcanology section.
As the whole hall was willing, I hurried into the corridor and resolutely
took the first place at a small table. Maya was excited, her face was
aflame, her blond, almost white hair fell over her eyes.
She sat down at the table, took a notebook and a pen from her purse.
"So, the first one. Say your last name, first name, patronymico and
specialty. Industrial and sports.
— Vitaly Alexandrovich Sushkov. Candidate of Physical Sciences,
rowing on a pleasure boat.
Maya looked up at me.
"You?"
"Yes, I. As you can see, the first.
"Oh! But you're already ...
Maya hesitantly wrote me down in a notebook.
"I'll wait for you outside." Do you mind?
"All right," she said. — Next.
An hour later, Maya and I were walking along Lenin Street. A cool
damp breeze pulled right into my face from the hill, occasionally rain
drizzled Bright advertisements shone over the shops.
"Your brother is very talented. I only stayed here because of his project.
"Yes?"
There was a slightly mocking note in her "yes". I remembered how at
the airport our hands did not want to separate.
"Look," she said, "there are only wooden houses here. They say that
when our people came to South Sakhalin, there were only wooden
buildings here. In our city, the Japanese built only two stone houses.
Perhaps they did not hope to stay here for long.
"Now we will have time to look at your Cheryomushki from the
Mountain Air...
She laughed softly.

Liner "Boussol"
For several days in a row, I did not leave the library of the Institute for
the Comprehensive Study of Sakhalin, re-reading everything that I found
there about the volcanoes of the Kuril ridge. Catalogs with characteristics
of volcanoes, their photographs, aerial photographs of craters,
descriptions of the geology of individual islands, mountain ranges and

786
coastlines were collected here.
However, I could not find anything about the "sound" activity of
volcanoes. Studies of volcanoes began and ended on the surface of the
earth. Only a few researchers managed to get close to the mouth of the
volcano itself, but the work there was very dangerous.
I found only a report on the study of the seismic activity of the
basement of one of the volcanoes. The report contained seismograms of
ground vibrations, but these studies were carried out with low-frequency
equipment and did not give much for the solution of my problem.
It became clear that it was necessary to create a new device and develop
a new methodology. I had already begun to draw up an electronic diagram
of ultrasonic sonar, when I accidentally learned that a set of equipment for
the sound search for fish shoals had arrived at the institute.
The equipment operated in a wide range of frequencies, from five
thousand to five hundred thousand hertz. If volcanoes really "sing", it can
be easily detected by such a device... We would gain time.
Shirokiy returned from Korsakov, and at his request, the leadership of the
institute temporarily handed over the ultrasound locator to our disposal.
Finally, the long-awaited day came, when I, Professor Shiroki, and four
graduate students, loaded with boxes and duffel bags, gathered at the
railway station to go to Korsakov.
We were seen off by Igor, Maya and the chief designer of
Kuril-Elektroproekt, engineer Shumlin. A little later, out of breath, the
head of the economic department, Suskin, ran in.
"Do you know what happened?" The chief designer asked, slyly
smiling. "People have already begun to develop the terms of reference for
the design.
"How so?" Suskin was surprised. "I didn't sign any estimates!"
"And we don't need any estimates. Comrades work on a voluntary
basis.
Professor Shirokiy looked at the chief designer.
— It is not clear to me how you can draw up a design assignment if the
initial data are not known...
- I understand your question. First, we develop several of the most
likely options. And secondly, we do not yet indicate the exact standard
dimensions of the equipment.
Maya and I stepped aside.
— When do your club volcanologists gather on Iturup?
— In December or January. Most children have either vacation or
vacation at this time.
"Well, will you come?"
"I'll try," she smiled. "But I don't know what I'm going to do there yet.

787
 A motorbike came up - two diesel-powered wagons, and we began to
load.
We were driven to the refrigerated fleet headquarters by truck, and
there, right on the pier, the head of the department introduced us to the
captain of the refrigerated transport "Bussol" Anatoly Fedorovich Sidelin,
a stocky, burly man with intelligent blue eyes and a slightly ironic smile.
He was a Leningrader. His senior assistant, a cheerful, noisy guy, whose
patronymic was somehow immediately forgotten by everyone, also turned
out to be from Leningrad. For some reason, he was called "Uncle Kolya",
although the "uncle" was the same age as me.
"Here is our ship," said Uncle KOlya, when we approached a small,
unsightly-looking vessel.
The refrigerator, apparently, was in bindings... A wide white chimney
spewed clouds of black smoke...
"Liner!" Bickford exclaimed admiringly. "Queen Mary!"
Uncle Kolya ignored this.
"He has excellent seaworthiness. Our neighbor, also a refrigerator," he
pointed to a nearby vessel, "last year he coped with a typhoon with honor.
For seven days it chattered - and at least henna!
"Will he talk to us?" Senya Ivanov asked cautiously.
Uncle Kolya looked at the sky and answered:
"The sky is cloudless, so there will be a storm..."
The lighthouse at Cape Crillon winked at us goodbye, and the Boussole
left the La Pérouse Strait.
By nightfall, the wind increased. Senya Ivanov got up from his bunk
every now and then to get some air. I sat in the same cabin with Professor
Shiroky. We have been looking at the maps of the Kuril ridge and the
waters washing it for a long time.

Ocean
Grabbing the cables stretched along the deck, Bickford and Volodya
Ivanov dragged an ultrasonic locator to the stern. Viktor Zhukov and I
were setting up electrical wiring. The vessel was sailing along the Kuril
ridge at a speed of no more than five knots. Low gray clouds hung over the
ocean.
At the stern we fixed a metal box and put instruments in it. Bickford
screwed the amplifier frame to the bottom of the box for a long time,
quietly scolding the designers, who did not provide special fasteners for
this case.
Volodya went to get calcium chloride, which was to be used to
surround the equipment. Victor fixed the last insulator over the box and
put the ends of the wire through a rubber hose. The wiring was finished.

788
 "Will we hear anything in this chaos of sounds?"
I shrugged my shoulders. To be honest, I didn't really believe in it
myself.
"We will lower the magnetostrictive sensor to a depth of twenty-five
meters. Let's hope that it is quiet enough, at least quieter than on the
surface.
The wind was getting stronger, the waves were sweeping over the deck
more and more often, and we, putting the desiccant in a box and battening
down the lid tightly, returned to the cabins.
Professor Shirokiy made some calculations.
"I've come up with a formula here," he said. "Look... The speed of
sound propagation in sedimentary rocks is one and a half thousand meters
per second, in the secondary bottom layers - about five thousand, in
basalts - seven thousand, in the mantle matter - more than eight thousand
meters per second. If the trunk of a volcano is located inside multi-layered
shells, we must receive as many of them as there are layers instead of one
sound signal. By time stamps, knowing the speed of propagation, it is
possible to determine the thickness of each layer... This is exactly the
formula. It can be used to build an echogram.
The sonar recorder was installed in our cabin.
For several days we walked along the Kuril ridge. The weather was
bad.
Senya Ivanov turned completely green. The rest of the guys endured
the pitching tolerably well. Especially Bickford. He quickly got used to
the "liner". He really liked to spend time in the galley, where Galya
Martynova was in charge.
On the fifth day of our journey, the sky suddenly became crystal clear,
the clouds mysteriously disappeared.
"The strength of the wind has exceeded seven points," the captain said.
"Get used to it.
- The first course is canceled. "There is a complete correlation between
the strength of the wind and our diet," Bickford added. "The fact is that
with such a pitching, the first course spills out of the tank. The most stable
consistency for this weather is porridge.
For several days we ate porridge three times a day and caught empty
decanters jumping out of their nests.
The storm broke out on the seventh day.
Captain Sidelin himself stood at the helm, and Uncle Kolya clung to the
rack of the all-round radar, directing the radio beam at an acute angle into
the water. Our refrigerator was thrown like a splinter, and I realized that
not far from the ridge we could now and then run into an underwater rock.
I held on, then I climbed onto the bunk. Then I saw the head of

789
Professor Shiroky.
"It's time to begin!"
"What?"
"Measurements!" It's a good time to test the equipment and the
principle itself!
I began to carefully slide out of the bunk. And Lavrenty Petrovich,
resting on the door, explained:
"Now the maximum noise of the sea... You need to run through the
entire frequency spectrum... It will be great if somewhere on the eyeIn
high frequencies we will lasso the signals... According to Oleg, we are
walking over the trunk of the Tikhiy volcano.
"But it's a storm...
"If we hear anything now, we will surely hear it in all weathers.
"Critical decisions are checked at critical moments," I thought.
The corrugated box went up and down, and I could barely keep the
frequency switch in my hand. The drum of the recorder began to spin
slowly. It is surprising that he was spinning... It means that those who
created the fishing device have worked it! They knew that such a thing
could happen... How different it was from working in a laboratory! There,
you try not to breathe on measuring instruments. And here they fly over
your head or crawl somewhere under your feet. They shake and throw,
overturn and turn over, and they have to work!
"If you believe the indicator, everything is fine...
- Turn on a smooth change of frequency.
I turned it on. Through the storm roar right under my ear, I heard
the pen creak on the paper. Every now and then it hit the limiters,
trying to draw such an amplitude of oscillations that is not provided
for by the limits of the device's measurements. He recorded the
furious roar of the sea... It began to seem to me that the whole idea of
hearing what we needed in this stream of sounds was more than
fantastic. But then the frequency meter crossed the border of audible
sounds and the pen entered the tape. It shuddered sharply, then
subsided, the fluctuations became more and more frequent. Finally,
at a frequency of about seventy thousand hertz, the pen began to
write an almost straight line.
It was amazing! The ocean was raging overboard, and there were
almost no sounds at this frequency. Dead silence!
Looking at the instruments and at the slowly crawling tape with an
echogram, I forgot about the pitching. What will happen next? What will
the device record at higher frequencies? How do we make sure that the
recording corresponds to the ultrasonic vibrations of the ocean floor, and
not to some other vibrations?

790
 "Look, look!" Lavrenty Petrovich exclaimed.
The pen of the recorder suddenly began to oscillate more and more
amplitude. At a frequency of about two hundred thousand, the amplitude
became maximum and then began to decline.
"So that's it," said Shiroki. "It's either this or nothing...
— And how do we know that this is the "singing" of the volcano?
"We'll wait until the storm is over and anchor here." If it is the sound of
the ocean, then the "singing" will disappear with the storm. I'll go tell the
captain...
The next morning the sea began to calm down. A day later we went on
deck. The ship was returning to the ridge. From behind the crests of the
waves, an island appeared every now and then, smoking hills towered
above it.
At noon, the tugboat Arcturus moored to the Bussoli, which took
Viktor Zhukov, Senya and Volodya Ivanov to the island.
Our refrigerator headed for Tuscarora.

"Underground Teapot"
Delving into the measurements, I somehow completely forgot about
Sasha Taperov, that is, about Bickford. He seemed to me to be just a guy
who was bustling here and there at the Bussoli. True, several times I found
him talking to Professor Shirokiy and saw Sasha showing him some of his
notebooks and graphs.
But one day, when we put the batteries on recharge and the equipment
did not work, I left the cabin and decided to wander around the ship.
Walking along the narrow corridor past the galley, I heard the loud
laughter of the cook Galya Martynova and the edifying voice of Bickford.
Steam was pouring out of the galley. Interested, I looked through the
half-open door, but saw nothing. Steam! Everything was filled with steam.
He hissed from somewhere on the stove.
"That's how it's going to be," Bickford explained. "Water will flow in
here, and steam will come out at the back end.
For a moment, the following picture appeared before me. Bickford
stood by the stove with a huge aluminum mug and, slightly lifting the lid
of the kettle, poured water into it. The kettle was apparently empty and
very hot, and the water instantly evaporated with a hiss, and a thick stream
of steam burst out of the spout in a wide stream.
"Enough!" It makes sense! So my kettle will melt," Galya protested.
"But he, apparently, did not so much explain to the girl the principle of
operation of the direct-flow boiler, as he wanted to clarify something
himself, setting up this primitive experiment.
"If only you could make a hole in the lid..."

791
 "What else was missing! This is the only kettle on the ship and...
They both saw me at the same time and fell silent in embarrassment.
Sasha stomped at the stove, put a mug of water on the edge and went to
the exit.
"Intense research work," I remarked, not without snideness.
"I have an idea," he muttered.
"Melt the only kettle on the ship?"
"No, what are you... The matter is more serious...
"I see. James Watt came up with the idea for a steam engine while
observing a kettle.
The guy was completely embarrassed. For a few minutes we silently looked
at the sea. Low gray clouds ran from the west again. Sometimes a swarm of
large rare snowflakes pounced on the vessel. Bickford was standing in only his
jacket, and it seemed to me that he was shivering from the cold.
"Get dressed." You'll catch a cold again.
"Vitaly Alexandrovich, I wanted to consult with you... You know that
the professor instructed me to calculate the dynamics of this underground
cauldron.
I didn't know that.
"So what?"
— The theory of once-through boilers is quite well developed. But only
for the case when the steam pipeline is a pipe of constant cross-section.
Back in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, I watched the work on boilers... It's a
wonderful thing. Several tens of meters of thin tubes rolled into a coil.
They are washed by hot gas, and it turns out that the steam formed in the
tubes does not squeeze out the water entering them. And at the same time,
the steam parameters are very high...
"Because at the inlet end the water pressure is a little more than the
steam pressure," I
said. But what will happen here?
I stared at Bickford. He rummaged in the side pocket of his jacket and
pulled out a folded sheet of paper. The paper fluttered in the wind.
"Here is an approximate section of our steam pipeline... This is
according to your data...
"Wow! I wondered to myself. "It turns out that my data has already
been used!"
"Presumably, the pipeline ends with a huge polosomewhere in the
depths of Tuscarora. Look what happens...
Bickford turned the drawing sideways, and suddenly it looked like a
huge teapot! I could not stand it anymore and laughed.
"So that's it!"
"That's the point, Vitaly Alexandrovich. It turns out to be a natural

792
teapot with a spout about two hundred kilometers long. The volume of the
cavity is still unknown. We will clarify this in the coming days. According
to the project, we will make a hole here, and water will pour into the
cavity. The question is, why does steam have to go these two hundred
kilometers to the Pacific crater, and why doesn't it escape directly into the
ocean?
"The point is at what depth to make a hole in the cavity and how much
water will enter it," I said.
— Yes, and very accurate. In addition, one more thing is unclear,"
Sasha continued. "On a two-hundred-kilometer path, steam can lose its
qualities - pressure and temperature. And what will happen if, instead of a
powerful fountain of steam, we get a pathetic zilch? After all, there is no
guarantee...
— Indeed, there is no guarantee yet... Except that there is a high
temperature in the trunk of the volcano itself.
We returned to the cabin. I took Sasha's drawing and began to estimate
the calculation. The uneven cross-section of the volcanic shaft greatly
complicated the calculations. There were many unknowns.
Suddenly it dawned on me. I jumped up, but the idea immediately
seemed so unrealistic to me that I sat down again.
"Oh, if only it were possible...
Bnkford's eyes sparkled. "That's right, Vitaly Alexandrovich!"
"What?"
"If only it were possible to conduct at least one experiment!
I smiled.
"You can with a kitchen kettle, but here..."
We thought about it. That's when I became convinced that the cheerful
Bickford was a bold dreamer. He spoke softly and slowly:
"In Tuscaror, we're making a test hole... At a certain depth... We will
know the amount of water flowing into it... And then we measure the
parameters of the steam at the output... That is, on the crater... This data
would be sufficient to make a final calculation. We would know the
optimal capabilities of our giant underground boiler, its capacity and its
size... And only then it would be possible to start the main work. And how
can we do without such an experiment?
That day we were late for lunch, because we had a long conference with
Professor Shiroky.
— Perhaps this is the fastest and surest way to solve many unclear
issues. The fastest and the most faithful," he said.
And he went to the radio room to dictate a radiogram to Moscow and
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk...

793
 Before The Storm...
Two hundred kilometers. A negligible distance, and how painfully long
we covered it! A month, two, and the third began. Rolls of paper tape were
piled up in the cabin, written in the handwriting of a mechanical recorder.
Hundreds of kilometers of wavy red lines on graph paper. Bottles of ink
that I kept giving to the insatiable nib of the device. And Professor
Shirokiy repeated:
"There should not be a millimeter of doubt left...
Not a millimeter! Now the section of the Tikhiy volcano seemed to me
like home, I knew all its turns and descents, widening and bending. The
underground shaft looked like a long ugly pipe, which was laid under the
ocean by no one and for no one knows why.

The depth of the ocean increased, and Professor Shiroki, after a

thorough study of the echogram, more and more often ordered to go back
fifteen to twenty kilometers and repeat the measurements.
"I don't know where this notch came from," he muttered, pointing to the
curve of the boundary of the earth's crust.
"Maybe a shoal of fish passed under us.
"Maybe then the notch should disappear with repeated measurements.
We were coming back.
One day, Sasha Bickford burst through the door of our cabin.
At this time, Lavrenty Petrovich was looking through the fifth version
of the echogram of the ten-mile section of the track. Reluctantly, he
looked up at Sasha's pink face, blurring with joy.
"What's the matter?"
"And the thing is, Lavrenty Petrovich, that the seiner "Kezhuch" is
coming to us. And on the seiner - an underwater helicopter of engineer
Izmailov!
On this day, we did not take any more measurements. The Boussole
was bobbing on the surface of the ocean two miles from its intended
destination. After reading the radiogram, Lavrenty Petrovich for the first
time in a long time sprawled on his bunk and, covering his eyes with his
hand, seemed to be dozing.
"Will there be any instructions?" The captain of the refrigerator asked.
— No, I don't. We will stand still and wait for "Kezhuch"...
The Boussole was adrift again, occasionally working as a machine to
return to its former place.
Professor Shirokiy rose slightly.
"I've been to these parts before...
"That's right!" Where is?
— On the Kuril Islands. I was still a young graduate student when the

794
head of the Department of Volcanology, the late Vsevolod Demyanovich
Meyer, invited me to participate in his expedition. Me and a few other
young guys gave up here for the whole summer. The places here were
uninhabited, wild. There were many unexplored islands and islets. With
difficulty we managed to get a tiny sailing boat, a kind of wooden scow,
and we sailed on it along the ridge and admired the volcanoes, which we
had previously known only from textbooks... Once or twice we landed on
the shore and made various measurements - the height of volcanic cones,
the thickness of the foundations, determined the depth of calderas - hot
mountain lakes around active and extinct craters.
I sat down on the bunk next to Lavrenty Petrovich.
"Once," he continued, "our boat went to the island of Urup for fresh
water, and my friend Mitya Voronov and I were left on a tiny nameless
island, on which there was a small parasitic volcano. This is the name
given to small volcanoes that bud off from the main volcano, like a small
branch from a large one. It was a very funny tiny volcano. He was noisy,
crackling and gurgling like an angry dog. From the numerous wells
around the crater from time to time with a sharp hiss fountains of hot
steam were thrown out, and red-hot lava splashed over the edges of the
crater, This volcano was simply comical. We laughed as we watched the
vulcanic's attempt to imitate his great, formidable comrades-in-arms.
Since it was not listed on any maps, we decided to investigate it in more
detail. "A young volcano for novice volcanologists," my friend said at the
time. I still don't understand why Mitya called the volcano "young". After
all, the size of volcanoes does not say anything about their age...
Professor Shirokiy fell silent, slowly pulled out a cigarette and lit a
cigarette.
"So, we began to study this baby. The crater towered no more than forty
meters above the island, and it was hidden from the sea by a high, almost
sheer cliff. We walked around it and reached a place where the molten mass
was flowing down. It was a little strange that it always flowed in one
direction - there were no traces of lava flows around. Almost from the very
edge of the crater to the very base of the mountain, fir trees grew densely.
There were old trees among them, and it was as if they had never been
disturbed by the volcano. There were no traces of any rubble or forest fires.
After completing the detour and taking measurements, we decided that
we needed to dig the soil to hard rock. We had no doubt that the trees grew
on alluvial soil and that there must be solidified lava under it. By the
thickness of the soft cover, it was possible to approximately determine the
age of the volcano or at least the moment when the direction of eruptions
changed. We began to dig the ground in a place exactly opposite to where
the lava flowed. It was the southwestern slope of the hill.

795
 Shiroki extinguished his cigarette, pressing it against the ashtray.
"We thought that we would reach the goal in an hour and a half of work.
But two or three hours passed, and the ground remained soft. The pit had
to be expanded. The work was also slowed down by the fact that it was
often necessary to cut down the roots of trees that went deep down. When
it was completely dark, my shovel hit something hard. By this time, we
had dug a well about four meters deep. All that remained was to beat off a
piece of rock for analysis...
That's where it all started. No matter how much we hammered the rock,
it did not want to split. Then we cleared the bottom of the well so that we
could see what we were hammering. And then something white appeared
under his feet. Not black, not gray, as usual, but white. The white spot
stood out clearly against the black background. It was completely dark.
"Quartzite! The purest quartzite!" exclaimed Mitya.
I lit a match, and we began to examine the stain on our haunches. It was
a completely white stone. It did not resemble anything known to us from
mineralogy. I touched it with my hand and immediately pulled it away, as
if the stone were red-hot. No, it was just smooth as glass, like tile...
"Vitreous rocks," I prompted timidly.
Then we began to widen the bottom of the well, and no matter which
direction we dug in, eventually we got to a white, smooth surface. We
found that it lies at an angle, rising towards the crater. I lit the match once
more, and we both exclaimed in surprise. In the upper left corner of the
well, two black lines were clearly outlined, intersecting at right angles...
"Slabs! Artificial stoves!" shouted Mitya. We were stunned by the
surprise, but suddenly we heard one, and then several voices. We were
called. It was the guys who came back for us. We crawled out of the hole
and ran as fast as we could to the cove, where A ship was supposed to
come. To our surprise, there was no sailboat, and a small motor boat was
rocking on the waves near the shore, in which, in addition to our guys, two
military men were sitting. "Hurry! A typhoon is approaching from the
south!" they shouted. The motor boat carried us at full speed to the island
of Urup. "Say thank you to your comrades, border guards! It was they who
decided to take you off the island..."
When we landed on the shore, the sea around us was already shaking.
But we didn't notice it. We immediately ran to the hut, where all our
people were sheltered, and began to confused to tell Professor Meyer
about our find. We were very disappointed when, at the most dramatic
point in our story, he smiled condescendingly.
"Volcanoes do not even do such miracles... Wait and see. At what depth
did you come across hard rock? Four meters? Did you come across
boulders in the ground? Small. Clearly, your "tiled" floor is a little more

796
than eleven thousand years old..."
- And you did not return to this island? I asked.
"No," Shiroky answered. "The typhoon was followed by a period of
winds, fogs and rains. All our worries boiled down to not being late for
Moscow for the start of classes. Fortunately for us, we were picked up by a
trawler...
"Have you been here since?"
— Yes. And very often.
"Well...
"I couldn't find an island with a tiny volcano. I searched almost the
entire Kuril ridge. In vain. Maybe the island just sank. Or I was looking for
him in the wrong place... It's a very strange story.
"Why strange?" Do you think Professor Meyer was wrong?
"No, why not... Could be... Only I am very confused by these eleven
thousand years...
"Why?"
"This is the beginning of the Ice Age...

We Dive Into The Ocean

"Kezhuch" finally appeared. There was a large swell, and it took a lot of
work to put both ships side by side.
"We've brought you such a thing, gasp! shouted one sailor from the
Kezhuch. "An underwater taxi for two!"
A small guy in a fur leather jacket and a hat with earflaps moved to our
deck. He looked at us and immediately approached Professor Shiroky.
"Are you Professor Shiroky?" He asked, holding out his hand.
— Yes. Good afternoon.
"Allow me to introduce myself. Commander of the bathyscaphe
"Leningrad" Oreshkin Vasily Semenovich.
— Very nice. I have already been informed on the radio that you will
work with us.
"Here is a package and a letter from Comrade Grigoriev from the
regional party committee. And another letter from the director of the
Institute of Energy in Moscow.
"Oh, you've been there too?"
— Yes, I was. Academician Panfilov personally explained the task to
me. He and a young scientist with a beard...
— Igor Cheremnykh. Is he in Moscow?
— Yes. He clarifies some data there.
"That's right!"
— Three organizations are currently working on the engineering part of

797
the project: in Moscow, in Leningrad and in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. When
will we start diving?
This Oreshkin was surprisingly mobile, and his every movement was
confident and strong. And the face is the most ordinary, a little freckled.
But he immediately seemed to me an outstanding person.
"I have a personal interest!" Oreshkii smiled. "To test the car.
"Didn't you test it?"
— Of course, we did. But in the Baltic. Not the right depth!
"Well, there's plenty of depth here. Let's go to the cabin.
We followed the professor, and Oreshkin, a little behind him, turned
around:
"Guys, which of you is Vitaly Sushkov here?"
"A letter to you, too." From Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.
It was a letter from Maya. She wrote that she now understands how
girls feel when their friends are at sea... She is very sympathetic to the
wives of fishermen... How do you know if a person who is far away thinks
about you or not? She decided, together with a group of skiers from the
"Scarlet Sails", to soon go to the Kuril Islands. "I don't hope that we will
meet, but if thoughts overcome distances, then perhaps it is easier for them
to do so when the distance is shorter..." Further, she wrote that classes in
the volcanological club were going well. "By the way, the stone lions near
the museum were completely covered with snow. Two days ago they were
still visible, but today they are not..."
I hid the letter and, excited, ran into the cabin. Shirokiy looked at me
accusingly. He didn't like it when someone was late. I was confused, and
Vasily Oreshkin winked at me encouragingly.
"While you were away," said the professor, "I was talking about the results
of our work. I showed them where the trunk of the volcano rests on the ocean
floor. However, this is, so to speak, a flat projection of a complex picture. The
Kamchatka-Sakhalin depression is characterized by a very steep, almost steep
descent. Seven hundred meters of basalt thickness is not a very convincing
figure. I think that there is a place where its layer is thinner.
"Why do you think so?" Oreshkin asked.
"Look at the cut. "Oleg" passed through these places. He built
echograms based on underwater explosions. It is extremely difficult to
decipher sound waves reflected from the bottom, especially when the
bottom has a complex relief. This is the case in Tuscaror. However, the
logic of our cut shows that the bottom channel is trying to break out into
the ocean. Somewhere in the depths, it is separated from the ocean by a
thin layer of rock. "How are we going to find this place?"
"The bathyscaphe will slowly descend, and at the same time you will
continuously record the sound of the volcano at a frequency of two

798
hundred thousand hertz. You need to find a place where the intensity of
the sound will be maximum.
"Who will record continuously?" Bickford asked, rising.
Shirokiy looked at him a little mockingly.
- Not you, but Vitaly Sushkov.
My heart sank with excitement.
"Comrade Professor—" Bickford began in a displeased voice.
"You won't come up, just because you're very long."
This was said by Oreshkin. Bickford stood up sullenly and nearly hit
his head on the ceiling.
"You see.
"It's stupid to be a giraffe in the age of microminiaturization...
The bathyscaphe "Leningrad" aroused universal admiration. On board
the Kezhuch, he seemed to be an elegant toy. Four folding screws above a
steel cigar-shaped projectile gave it the appearance of a fantastic creature.
In the shell body, two wide sectors were made of thick crystal clear glass.
When Oreshkin climbed into the cockpit, he could be seen almost in full
height. He turned a knob there, and from the four eyes above each
porthole, beams of blinding light burst out.
"Why does he need propellers?" One sailor asked.
– For fast and stable diving and ascent. In the water, this machine
behaves like a helicopter in the air.
I took my place in the bathyscaphe.
I became a little scared only when Oreshkin battened down the second
hatch and made a sign to start the descent. The hoist hooked the projectile
to the ring and lifted it above the deck. Bickford waved to me.
— And what is provided in case of an accident? I timidly asked the
commander.
"Nothing," he replied cheerfully. "Accidents are excluded.
I breathed a sigh of relief. Then he asked again:
"Well, if there are any animals in the depths..." a monster that is
unknown to science...
"We will drive it away," he answered, "with light." Whoever it is, they
live in complete darkness. The light is more terrible for them than the
terrible one.
"It can be blind...
"Then let's slap him on the nose with an electric spark."
I sat down next to my recorder. What should be the glass from which
the cylindrical windows of the bathyscaphe are made!
"Our Leningrad has a triple margin of safety," Oreshkin remarked, as if
guessing my thoughts.
We were enveloped in darkness. It was thickening with every second.

799
Oreshkin turned on the light, and everything around sparkled around.
"Let's go!" He shouted cheerfully. "At a depth of five hundred meters,
I'll turn on the propellers.
Five hundred meters we "fell". During this time, I felt something
similar to a state of weightlessness...

Tuscarora
I was expecting to see the amazing underwater world that Captain Nemo's
captives observed on their fantastic journey, but I saw something strange...
Behind the porthole, dark stripes stretched vertically from top to bottom,
which occasionally broke and merged again. I did not immediately realize that
it was water, its jets, which arose as a result of the rapid movement of the
projectile. The water was muddy, and ahead, behind the striped curtain, there
was a thick yellowish-green veil. It was as if we were plunging not into the
ocean, but into a deep, narrow well filled with muddy water.
"It has been established that the clearest sea water is in the Bay of
Biscay. The visibility limit there is about twenty-five meters. Here it is no
more than five so far. But as you submerge, the water will become clearer.
After a few minutes, the striped mesh behind the porthole began to
dissolve, and the yellowish fog receded further and further.
"Sit down, I'll turn on the screws now."
Batimer showed a depth of four hundred and fifty meters.
"Turn on your sonar. It's one hundred and seventy-five meters to the
bottom...
The device started working, and I was seized with excitement that I had
not experienced for a long time. Despite the fact that the tuning frequency
was two hundred thousand hertz, the recorder pen rattled between the
limiters, just like when I first recorded the roaring ocean. I moved on to
sound frequencies and found that there were almost none here in the
depths. So the main voice here is the voice of the volcano!
"How is it?" Vasily asked.
"The volcano does not sing, but roars!" I just can't imagine what will
happen next!
"Look at the thermometer...
The thermometer looked like a semicircular luminous scale, along
which a bright green spot moved with a dark notch in the middle: 30.5
degrees.
"What does it show?" "The
temperature of the water outside."
"It can't be!"
"The deeper, the warmer it will be...
"Well, what if...

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 "Do you mean, what if a hundred?" Could be. But there will be no boiling.
There is very high pressure here... yes, look, here is the first meeting.
The bathyscaphe was now descending at an angle, and a huge big-eyed
fish was attached to it. It seemed to be cast of silver and completely
motionless. Only by the vibrations of the tail and fins could we understand
that the fish was sinking with us. Oreshkin flipped the switch, and
everything around him became completely black. A moment later, I cried
out with admiration: the fish was shining with a bright green light, and its
head and fins were surrounded by an orange halo. My eyes gradually
adjusted to the darkness, and soon I discovered that the water was not
completely black, but sparkled with myriads of greenish sparkles. The
commander slowed the descent speed, and the flickering effect
intensified. The sea lived a fantastic life of countless sparkling stars,
sometimes very tiny, sometimes large, having the outlines of fish,
jellyfish, pulsating anemones... The diversity of colors in this underwater
world was as necessary as sight for living creatures on earth. Green,
yellow, purple and red sparkles and dots, spots and clods approached,
scattered to the sides, flashed brightly, then suddenly faded away. It was a
stunningly beautiful sight, a whole symphony of colors and colors, which
became more and more dazzling with every meter of immersion.
"And here is the rock...
Indeed, a greenish-yellow shadow slowly moved forward in front of us,
shapeless but alive. Vasily stopped the bathyscaphe, and weThey turned to
the porthole.
"At this depth, even algae luminesce. Look at the orange bundles that
hang over the edge. The algae are covered with glowing plankton.
The propellers slowly rotated, scattering jets of water to the sides.
Shimmering underwater vines lazily stirred, swayed, stretched to the side.
We silently admired this dark-minded world. Fish often swam past us,
and some stumbled upon the porthole and did not swim away for a long
time, as if unable to understand why it was impossible to overcome an
invisible obstacle.
I was suddenly torn away from the porthole by a furious crack.
It turns out that the device has gone beyond the measurements again
because the ultrasonic "roar" has become even louder. We were at a depth
of fifteen hundred meters.
"We need to go further. Oreshkin sighed. "It's a pity.
"Why?"
"Soon this beauty will end...
Deftly maneuvering among the shimmering ledges, he led the
bathyscaphe along the rock, which sank steeper and steeper into the
mysterious darkness of Tuscarora.

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 At a depth of two and a half thousand meters, the colors noticeably
faded, the green colors were replaced by blue, and even deeper they
became barely distinguishable, purple... Vasily turned on the searchlight
again, and bright rays illuminated the completely black wall.
I have already reduced the sensitivity of the receiver several times,
because the volcanic sound increased by two or three times every hundred
meters. I glanced at the thermometer and exclaimed,
"Sixty! Sixty degrees!
Oreshkin only smiled. He nodded to the side, at the small glass
thermometer on the wall. He showed eighteen.
"Automatic air conditioning...
Four thousand, four and a half...
I was tired of looking at the shapeless hulk slowly floating past us. The
underwater world here seemed to be completely dead. The temperature of
the water was constantly rising, and it is unlikely that anything living can
exist in such a hot bath... Probably, this part of the ocean is a dead, sultry
desert for its underwater inhabitants...
"Stop!"
"Stop!"
Oreshkin and I shouted at the same time. I shouted because the needle
on the intensity device, having reached its maximum, shuddered, began to
wane. But why did Basil exclaim? I had to give the command to stop!
Raising my head, I saw that the commander was standing with his face
tightly pressed to the porthole. His figure curved in an unnatural, tense pose.
He did not move. He only signaled me with his hand to come closer...
"Look...
Blackness. A completely steep, barely distinguishable rock... I can't see
anything...
Suddenly I noticed something that struck me to the depths of my soul. It
was unnatural, ridiculous, senseless, incredible!
"It can't be," I whispered.
"Let's get closer.
Stepping back to the control panel, Oreshkin pressed the handle. The
bathyscaphe shuddered and began to approach the wall. I felt the hair on
my head stir...
"Stop!" Oreshkin commanded himself again and pressed the handle
again.
Now everything was clearly visible.
Right in front of us there was a gaping hole in the sheer rock. It seemed to
be located at the top of a cone sucked to the wall, which was surrounded on all
sides by rectangular white slabs... I suddenly remembered the professor's story
Broad about its discovery on one of the islands of the Kuril ridge ...

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 "This has already happened," I whispered.
Oreshkin threw a surprised look at me.
"Where was it?"
"The professor met with... such tiles...
The commander shrugged his shoulders uncomprehendingly and
brought the bathyscaphe closer to the wall.
Now you could see the shape of the hole. Its edges were melted, and
there was no doubt that it had once been the crater of a small volcano.
"This hole is located exactly in the place where the basalt layer is
thinnest...
"Maybe someone has been here before?" Oreshkin asked and laughed.
The bathymeter showed a depth of six thousand three hundred meters...
"No one could have been here before us... However...
Our bathyscaphe descended another hundred meters, to the place where
the tiles ended. Here the cone ended abruptly, and an underwater cave
went somewhere to the side. We stopped for a moment, watching small
bubbles of gas creep along the portholes.
"So, drilling will take place here," Oreshkin said.
I didn't answer. The machine began to gain altitude rapidly.

Final Preparations
"Dear Maya!
I am afraid to say anything about the possibility of my visit to Iturup
Island. Over the past day, everything has turned upside down. I was
once again convinced that new, incredible discoveries are made when
new technical means appear. The bathyscaphe "Leningrad" is an
amazing machine. This is an underwater spacecraft. With its help, no
less amazing discoveries can be made on Earth than in space. Of course,
I could have written to you how happy I was when Professor Wide
entrusted me with the descent to Tuscarora. I write so senselessly and
hastily, because a helicopter is hovering over the Kezhuch, which is
about to leave for the islands. We descended to a depth of over six
thousand meters. The devices worked normally. I had no trouble
finding the place where the power of volcanic "singing" was greatest.
And at this terrible depth, we saw that someone had been there before
us! And not only was, but also built a structure, like a cone-shaped
fireplace. Or rather, there is already a hole made in the trunk of the
volcano. It looks like someone has tried to implement our project
before! You don't believe it! But I saw everything with my own eyes!
After we got up, Professor Shirokiy was completely furious.
A million questions drill the brain. Radiograms flew to the

803
 mainland. Vasya Oreshkin was forced to dive again to take water
samples. By the way, the temperature there is about seventy degrees
above zero. My name is! I shake hands tightly! I have a lot to say! See
you soon!
Vitaly."

The helicopter roared and disappeared into the fog. Lavrenty Petrovich
did not even look after him. We returned to the cabin with him.
We worked in silence. I wielded a slide rule, and Lavrenty Petrovich
used a compass and a ruler to draw two complex curves on graph paper.
They stretch for two hundred kilometers, from the foundation of the Silent
volcano all the way to the mysterious wall in Tuscaror. The trunk of the
volcano narrowed, then widened, and at the very depression it turned into
a huge swollen cavity inside the basalt rock...
"A kettle," I thought, "and someone wanted to make a hole in it..."
The broad leaf ran quickly.
"Yes, I see. Well, let's say goodbye for now. We were ordered to sail to
the island of Iturup and urgently compare our data with the data of the land
expedition. The construction of the world's first geo-heating plant has
been declared a shock Komsomol construction project!
With a strong breeze, we left the deck of the Kezhuch and returned to
our native Bussol.
We were seen off by Vasya Oreshkin, to whom Lavrenty Petrovich said
at parting:
"Probably, the order to carry out an experimental explosion of the wall
will come soon. I recommend making two or three training descents and
checking the work of the manipulators, detonating small charges.
The radio room was located above our cabin. I couldn't sleep. Shiroky
did not sleep either. He smoked cigarette after cigarette, tossing and
turning restlessly in his bunk.
I closed my eyes and saw the phosphorescent water of the ocean, then
the stone lining of an underwater mine. In such a short time and so many
events! Working on the implementation of the experimental explosion
now became easier. One powerful cumulative explosion and water will
pour into the hole. And what if the bore of the barrel is filled with molten
lava? What if it was not the water that rushed into the volcano, but the
volcanic mass into the ocean? The fact that the density of matter in the
channel is very low does not prove that it is free. I knew that the same
questions worried Shiroky, and Cheremnykh, and Grigoriev. Will steam
go where it should go? This was the cardinal question of the entire project,
and only experience could answer it.
I dressed and went up to the captain's bridge. Uncle Kolya was at the

804
helm. Without turning to me, he asked,
"Are there intelligent beings living in the depths of the ocean?" Maybe
they lack heat?
I laughed.
"Except that these sentient beings live in boiling water. The
temperature there is seventy...
We walked in a thick fog, guided by instruments. I heard the radio
operator talking to "Kezhuch", then to some lighthouse, which called itself
"the fourth".
"What did you find there, at the bottom of the Sakhalin pit?" The
"fourth" asked.
"Reasonable life," the radio operator replied mockingly.
"What are they, watermen?"
— We don't know yet.
"How long will it take us to get to Iturup?"
Uncle Kolya glanced at the radio rangefinder.
"Something like a day." If the weather is like this. Now there is a
blizzard there.
In these latitudes, the winter months are the hardest. Storms, snowfalls,
thick, fogs. Our refrigerator honked pitifully, slowly cutting through the
waves running towards us. Work was in full swing on deck. The sailors
were constantly chipping the ice. The waves rolled over the side, and the
water instantly froze.
At dawn I returned to the cabin and instantly fell asleep.
Suddenly someone's hand shook me the shoulder... It seemed to me that
I wasI just closed my eyes. I jumped to my feet, not understanding
anything. The cabin was flooded with sunlight, everything around me
turned upside down, I fell back on the bunk.
"Get up, Vitaly Alexandrovich. An island is on the horizon!
On the deck, holding tightly to the handrails, stood Professor Shiroky.
Sailors crowded around him. They looked at the island, dazzling white
with lush snow cover. The sun was at the highest point of the firmament,
and there were almost no shadows. There are hills and hills all around...
Tall and short, slightly smoking and completely lifeless...
"There's our Quiet," said Shiroky, pointing to the high hill on the right.
"So what was it at the bottom of Tuscarora?" The captain of the Bussoli
asked Shiroki. Apparently, before I came, they had already talked for a
long time. The sailors surrounded the professor in a tight ring.
The professor smiled embarrassedly and waved his hand.
"Do you think it's some amazing secret?" Nothing much. It's just that
ancient people in search of heat and light knew how to create small artificial
volcanoes. They found places where the ground was hotter and the

805
underground rumble louder. There they dug their artificial small volcanoes,
having previously surrounded the place with stones... This was during the Ice
Age, when mighty ice moved from the north to these lands. I think that such
volcanoes were intended to heat a small community or village.
Unfortunately, these settlements sank to the bottom of the sea like Atlantis.
"Yes, but at a depth of seven thousand meters...
— This, of course, is the most surprising thing. But this is also
understandable, at least in principle. The artificial structure that sank to
the bottom of the ocean only proves that Tuscarora is very young. The
depression is no more than fifteen thousand years old. It can be thought
that in that distant period of the Earth's history some kind of catastrophe
occurred that caused a rapid tectonic activity of the Earth's crust. What
was that? There are many theories. One of them is related to the Moon. It
is assumed that the Moon is not of terrestrial origin, that it accidentally fell
into the Earth's gravitational field, so to speak, and turned from the eternal
wandering of the universe into our satellite. But its acquisition was
expensive... Maybe the sinking of a part of the land into the ocean, and
even to such a depth, is the result of the Moon's activity...
After a moment's thought, the professor added cheerfully:
"This theory can be confirmed or rejected after the first expedition of
people to the Moon!"

The Day Before

The first person I noticed on the island was the head of the economic
department of Kurilelectroproekt, comrade Suskin. He wore felt boots, a
wide sheepskin coat and a gray fur hat that had slipped down to one side.
He was waiting for us on the shore, bouncing in one place. The Bussol was
at anchor, and Captain Sidelin went ashore with us to find out what would
happen next around Tuscarora. "Kezhuch" received an order not to move
from the place and wait for further instructions.
"Hello, dear, hello," Suskin nodded. — How did you swim?
It was felt that this was not what our manager wanted to ask.
"Thank you, Tikhon Davydovich.
"Have you reached a great depth?"
— Quite a lot. Over six kilometers!
He winked slyly.
"Say thank you!"
"For what?"
"And for the fact that I personally flew to Vladivostok to deliver this
thing to you as soon as possible, it's called 'Leningrad'. He accompanied
her all the way to Kholmsk! Just like that.
Suskin demanded a detailed account of our discoveries and our plans.

806
He wrote something down in his notebook, muttered:
"Well, you can do it by your own means. And this will have to be
ordered...
We approached a small wooden hut, almost up to the roof covered with
snow.
The door opened, and clouds of steam burst out of it. Then, as if from a
snow hole, Grigoriev, Igor Cheremnykh and two other people appeared.
After a while, Vitya Zhukov and both Ivanovs appeared. The graduate
students immediately rushed ashore to help Bickford unload the boat.
One of the strangers, an elderly powerful man with a large
strong-willed face, seeing us, overtook his comrades and rushed to
Professor Shiroky.
"Lavrenty, my dear! He exclaimed, taking the professor in his arms.
"Mishka, damn you!" Are you here yet?
The men wrestled merrily for a while, then fell into the snow, and then
shook themselves off and laughed for a long time.
"And you've become a big man!" Wrestler of the first category. I didn't
think you were like that. Well, let's introduce me to your team.
"There you are. This is Vitaly, our specialist in measuring instruments.
The man introduced himself.
— Kurnakov.
"Professor Kurnakov? A well-known power engineer?"
"This is the captain of our oceanological vessel, Anatoly Fedorovich
Sidelin. And there is Alexander Taperov, nicknamed Bickford, a graduate
student. He has no time for us now. Look how he brags to his comrades! "I was
interested in the results of your island group. It turns out to be a very curious
thing. It turns out that the main channel of the Tikhiy volcano branches in three
directions right off the coast. The central shaft goes to the Pacific crater, and
the other two go to the craters of two long-extinct volcanoes.
"Curious.
"Maybe instead of one station, we will have to build three at once.
— Did you decide to build it? Shiroky asked.
"Well, my friend, it's still a long way off. But it was decided to carry out
a control launch of the water. I must say that while you were in the ocean,
a lot was done on Sakhalin. The design bureau proposed several
interesting options for future construction. Muscovites are rushing with
their filters for volcanic steam, proposing to create not only a combined
heat and power plant, but also a complex of chemical industry enterprises.
In Leningrad, sketches of turbogenerator equipment are ready in draft.
Tournakov, Shirokiy and Grigoriev returned to the hut. I was detained
by Leva Fryazin.
"I have something to do with you.

807
 At that moment, graduate students approached.
"By the way, I need you guys too. The point is this. The Komsomol
organization of our region decided to take patronage over the
construction. It is necessary that the guys are professionally managed. Of
course, people like Cheremnykh and Shiroky will be employed in the most
responsible areas. So we decided to contact you.
Vitya Zhukov winced and scratched his head irresolutely.
- You see, I am not averse, but the deadline for submitting the
dissertation is expiring. And we have more than enough material.
Senya Ivanov cast a reproachful glance at his comrade.
"No, guys, don't think, I'm like everyone else..." - Victor immediately
began to justify himself.
"And we don't think anything. Decided. We are organizing, so to speak,
a construction headquarters. Let's distribute ourselves among the sections.
And this case will be headed by Vitaly Alexandrovich Sushkov.
Then a thought struck him, and he exclaimed:
"Guys, what a great final chapter for a dissertation, eh! There, at the
institute, they gasp. Everything will be there: theory, experimental part,
conclusions and practical implementation.

The Island Sings

The motor ship "Yakutia" was in the roadstead two kilometers from the
coast. Passenger navigation ended long ago, and the ship temporarily
turned into a research laboratory: it was equipped with a special
observation point for the activities of the Tikhiy volcano. From here, from
the sea, the coastline of the island, mountain peaks and smoking hills were
visible in full view. In the south, along the shore, there is a small village
that looks like toy foam houses. Everyone was on board the Yakutka
today, and the tireless Tikhon Davidovich Suskin remained on the island
with a small group of people. He continued to bustle around the houses,
where they dragged folding furniture, beds and portable gas stoves.
On board the ship were representatives of regional party and
Komsomol organizations, scientists, engineers, journalists. The ship
hummed like an anthill. But when the long-awaited day finally came,
everyone gathered on the upper deck and fell silent. The secretary of the
regional committee Grigoriev told the young builders:
"An experimental explosion in the ocean was carried out a week and a
half ago. Ocean water under enormous pressure poured into the
underground tunnel and began to evaporate intensively. If the trunk of the
volcano is free along its entire length, then we will see it today.
The Tikhaya hill was calmly "smoking". A thin wisp of bluish smoke
rose above her, like over a long-extinguished fire.

808
 "I can't imagine what's going on there now, in the bowels of the earth,"
Maya said quietly. We stood side by side, leaning on the side. I don't know
where I looked more: at the hill or at the face framed by white fur, pink
from the frost. Sometimes she noticed my gaze, turned to me, and her pure
blue eyes scattered golden sparkles...
"Steam is making an unprecedented underground journey from the
depths of Tuscarora here, to us...
"I've heard that there have been fears that the trunk might be clogged
with molten lava.
Yes, recently such fears have been expressed more and more often.
Several projects were even proposed on how to fix the situation if the
canal turns out to be impassable.
"I wish I had," Maya said.
Graduate students appeared next to us. Bickford was armed with a
photographic camera.
"There will be gorgeous pictures!" If only the eccentric did not think of
roaring at night! By the way, just a second, Vitaly Alexandrovich, Maya,
allow me to capture you against the background, so to speak, of a
historical moment.
We looked at each other embarrassedly, and Bickford stepped aside
and flipped the shutter several times.
"Don't forget to print the film!" Maya shouted after him.
"To the wedding!" I will make an amazing family portrait!
It was absolutely unnecessary... Maya and I looked at each other and
fell silent in embarrassment.
Then Igor came up to us.
— Maika, why did you decide to build a village in the south? he asked.
"We have taken into account the prevailing winds. Otherwise, the guys
will live in the fog from your hill all the time... Do you know anything
about when it starts?
"We know. The spread of steam is accompanied by a very intense
underwater rumble. Our hydroacoustics register its approach. It is possible
that there will be a small earthquake.
"There are few of them here without us," Maya said.
Igor hugged me and her by the shoulders and said dreamily:
"Well, we've made a mess with you! Vitaly, was it scary in this sea
hole?
I laughed.
— Probably. I don't remember. There were too many friends impressions.
And I began to tell them about my journey to Tuscarora. Carried away,
I did not notice how Igor left, and came to my senses only when Maya
quietly put her hand in a green woolen mitten on mine. There was no

809
brother, she was the only listener. I have never told anyone about Tuscaror
with such inspiration...
"What a good job you are..
"Well, it only seems... It's all about technique... The bathyscaphe
"Leningrad" is really good!
She was about to say something, when suddenly we heard a distant and
then more and more distinct rumble. At the same time, the alarming voice
of the captain of the Yakutia was heard from the radio loudspeakers:
"Attention, attention! A wave nine meters high is approaching from the
east! Take shelter in the cabins immediately! Take shelter in the cabins
immediately!
The hum grew with every second, and, grabbing Maya's hand, I rushed
to the gangway.
"Stop!" she suddenly cried. "Nine meters is nonsense!" We may not see
the very beginning!
Clutching the railing with our hands, we remained on deck. A minute
later, the sea rumbled below us, as if we were standing on a bridge and a
mighty train rushed below us. The ship swayed, it lurched to one side for a
moment, rose up, and a wide, smooth wave emerged from under it.
"It's a harbinger of a moving force!" Watch the wave!
Here it came to the shore, here it hit the shore!
We looked at the top of the "Quiet" without looking up. For some time
the blue wisp of smoke did not change, and then suddenly it whistled
upwards, widened, small clods flew out of the crater, a distant crack was
heard, and suddenly a yellowish-white column soared into the sky, almost
to the clouds, with a deafening roar.
"What a miracle, look! Maya exclaimed.
Someone shouted "Hurrah!", then these words were repeated more and
more voices, until finally, they began to shout on the ship in such a way
that the roar and bubbling of the majestic geyser were drowned in this cry.
A strong wind was blowing from the west, but it was not strong enough
to bend the dazzling white steam fountain even slightly. Like a marble
column, it rose vertically upwards for several hundred meters and only
there it blurred, turning into a huge cloud, which quickly rushed into the
ocean to the east.
"Look, look, here's another one, and on the left too..
Before our eyes, the picture of the island began to change, like in a fairy
tale. The snow on the tops of the two hitherto silent hills suddenly stirred,
swelled, and jets of steam began to burst out from under it with a hiss in all
directions. Several dull explosions were heard, clouds of black slag burst
into the air, then bubbles of yellow smoke gasped, and, as if breaking their
way, two more geysers rushed into the sky one after another...

810
 "Wow, Maika, she's beautiful!" I couldn't stand it anymore and
squeezed the girl tightly in my arms. "So everything is right!
"Well, you're lucky, Vitaly Alexandrovich!"
It was Bickford who appeared again. Without looking up from the
camera, he took one shot after another.
I looked at him uncomprehendingly. He looked reproachfully at me and
at the girl.
"Oh, you! Today is the most opportune day.
I froze with my mouth open. So he photographed us two more times...
......................
"So, the beginning has been made. A good start, comrades. Ahead is a
grandiose pwork. We will follow the path already known. Now your word,
young researchers," Grigoriev addressed the guys and girls armed with
backpacks and skis for the first research trip to the tops of the revived hills...
They moved in single file through the deep blue snow. For a moment, the
group disappeared into a small valley, and then reappeared and began to slowly
climb the mountain, towards the hissing column resting directly on the sky.
I noticed how one person from the group stepped aside, stopped and
waved his hand.
Who it was, I knew...
......................
On the horizon, the windows of the departing Yakutia glittered like
golden stars. The first fires flared up on the shore and the first songs were
heard. The ocean tossed restlessly and intently by the rocky shore, as if
trying to hear better the sounds of the new symphony created by those who
were marching towards happiness.

<<<<>>>>

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