nd scale. Twenty-storey buildings of glass and plastic, all different, united into an ornamental rock canyon, along whose depths rolled a colourful stream of cars. The two-level pavements, like in a shopping centre, ran along the ground storeys and the upper levels, being connected by curved parabolic bridges over the street. Bridges also joined the buildings and formed auxiliary pathways at roof-top level. "For bicycles," explained Zargaryan, catching my glance. "There we have swimming-pools and landing strips for helicopters." He played the role of guide with a conscience, smacking his lips with satisfaction at my surprise. And our snubby dolphin had by this time crossed the boulevard, flown along an unrecognisable Chekhov Street, and was now floating along Sadovaya to the Sofia skyscraper. I recognized neither the square nor the restaurant. Mayakovsky, flashing in the sun as if poured of bronze glass, brooded over the square on a pedestal higher than the Nelson column in London. The parallelepiped-shaped restaurant Sofia was also flashing, dancing with reflected sunlight as if made of crystal and gold. The restaurant inside astonished me. The usual white tables under old-fashioned starched tablecloths stood cheek by jowl with strange geometric figures like marquee tents made of rain-like and argon strings. "What's this?" I said, almost struck dumb. Zargaryan smiled like a magician anticipating an even greater effect. "You'll see. Have a seat." We sat at one of the ordinary starched tables. "Would you like to be unseen and unheard to those around you?" He raised a corner of the tablecloth, pressed something and the room disappeared. We were separated from it by a tent of rain that had neither moisture nor damp. Through the curtain of rain were entwined shining threads that were neither of glass nor of wire. We were surrounded by the blessed silence of an empty cathedral. "Can one go through it?" I asked. "Why, it's only air, but not transparent. Light- and sound-proof. In our labs we use black ones. Absolute darkness." "I know," I said. Now it was his turn to be surprised, catching something in my answer quite new to his ear. I was fed up playing guessing games. "Is your name Zargaryan? Ruben?" I asked, though I was absolutely sure I wasn't mistaken. "Caught red-handed," he laughed. "So the beard didn't help?" "I knew you by your eyes." "By the eyes?" He was again surprised. "The eyes don't show up well in photos put in journals or newspapers. So where else could you have seen me? At the cinema?" "Are you engaged in the physics of biofields, the same as before?" I began carefully. "Then don't be surprised at what you're going to hear. I lied when I told you I'd not been in Moscow for twenty years. Actually, I've never been in this Moscow. Never!" I slowed down, waiting for his reaction, but he was silent and continued to examine me with growing interest. "On top of that, I'm not the person you are now looking at. I'm a phantom in his image, a visitor from another world. The phenomenon is probably very familiar to you." "Have you read my works?" he asked in unbelief. "No, of course not. You haven't published them yet in our world. You see, our time is twenty years behind yours." Zargaryan jumped to his feet. "Excuse me, I'm only beginning to understand. So you're from another phase? Is that what you're trying to say?" "Precisely." He was silent, blinking his eyes, and stepped back. The shining shroud of rain-air partly concealed him, ridiculously cutting off part of his head, spine and feet. Then he again dived out of it and sat opposite me, with great difficulty restraining his excitement. His face seemed to light up from within, and it held the shattering surprise of a man seeing a miracle for the first time, the joy of a scientist that the miracle had happened in his presence, the happiness of a scientist who had the power to control such miracles. "Who are you, then?" he asked at last. "Name and profession." I laughed. "Somehow it's amazing to answer for two people, but I have to. The name is the same here that it is there - Gromov. Here I'm a professor, there I'm without any title, a private person one might say. The professions differ - here a doctor and surgeon, famous in fact; there a simple newspaperman. Yes, and there I'm twenty years younger. Just as you are in that world." "Curious," said Zargaryan, still eyeing me with interest. "I might have expected anything but that. I myself have sent people out of our world, but to meet such a visitor here - I never dreamed of that! What a fool. All matter is one - along all phase trajectories. I am here and I am there: and now we're sending each other visitors," he laughed, suddenly asking me with a changed intonation: "Who carried out the experiment?" "Nikodimov and Zargaryan," I answered slyly, ready for a new explosion of astonishment. But he only asked, "What Nikodimov?" It was my turn to be surprised. "Pavel Nikitich. Wasn't it his discovery? Don't you work with him?" "Pavel died eleven years ago, and while he lived he never received the recognition he deserved. Factually, it is his discovery. I came to it by other ways, as a psychophysiologist." (I heard restrained grief in his words.) "To my sorrow, the first success with biofields came only afterwards. His son and I made the experiments." I hadn't known that Nikodimov had a son. Incidentally, maybe that was only here. "You're luckier than we are," said Zargaryan thoughtfully. "You began earlier. In twenty years you will be farther ahead than ourselves. Is this your first experiment?" "The third. First I went into adjacent, completely identical worlds. Then farther, into the past. And now further still - to you." "What do you mean by 'nearer' or 'farther'? And 'adjacent'!" he repeated sarcastically. "What naive terminology!" "I mean to suggest," I faltered, "that worlds or, as you put it, phases with other currents of time may be found farther away from us than the coinciding worlds...." He didn't conceal his laughter. "Nearer, farther! Is that how they explained it to you? Children." I was outraged for my friends' sake. All in all, I liked my Zargaryan more. "And hasn't the fourth dimension its own extension?" I asked. "Is the theory of the infinite plurality of its phases a mistaken one?" "Why the fourth?" seethed Zargaryan, flaming up as was his custom. "What if it's the fifth? Or the sixth? Our theory doesn't define its sequence or course in space. And who told you it was an incorrect or mistaken theory? It is limited, and only that. The term 'infinite plurality' simply cannot be taken literally. Any more than the infinity of space. Even your contemporaries knew that. Even then, relativity in cosmology excluded the absolute contraposition of the finite and the infinite. You must understand one simple thing: the finite and the infinite do not exclude each other, but are inwardly connected. Con-nec-ted!" He repeated the last word in syllables, and laughed, looking into my blankly staring eyes. "Complex, is it? And it's just as complex to explain to you what 'nearer' and 'farther' mean in this case. I can transfer your biofield into an adjacent world that outstrips ours by a century, but where it is, near or far, I am unable to define geometrically." He suddenly gave a start and stopped speaking, as if something had broken off his train of thought. For a second or two we were both silent. "You know, that's an idea!" he exclaimed. "What are you driving at?" "I'm thinking about you. Do you want to leap even farther into the future?" "I don't get it." "You will in a minute. I'll mix into your experiment. You go to my lab with me, I'll switch off your biofield and transfer it to another phase. What d'you say?" "Nothing, so far. I'll think it over." "Scared? But the risk is the same. There you are forty, and not sixty, with a strong heart ... otherwise we wouldn't risk it. I'd be delighted to change places with you, but I'm not a suitable subject. You know how hard it is to find a brain-inductor with such a highly active field?" "You found one before." "Three in ten years. You are the fourth. And consider yourself lucky. I promise you a trip more interesting than a flight to Mars. I'll find your descendant of the fifth generation with the same field. A hundred-year jump, eh? What are you worried about?" "My biofield. What if they lose it back there?" "They won't. First I'll send you back. Just a moment's walk in your time and space, and then you'll wake up in another. Don't be afraid, there'll be no explosion, no eruption, and no radiation. And your apparatus will fixate everything that's necessary. Well now, shall we fly?" He got up. "And dinner?" "We'll have dinner later. We - here, and you in the future." Actually, I thought, I had nothing to lose. "Let's fly," I said, and also stood up. OUTRAGING TIME When I repeated Zargaryan's words, I had no suspicion that we would really fly. First, we took the express-lift to the roof where speedway-taxi-helicopters landed. In two or three minutes' time, we were sailing over Moscow and headed south-west. To my dying day I shall never forget the panorama of Moscow at the end of the twentieth century. I kept assuring myself that it wasn't my Moscow, not the one I'd been born and brought up in and which was separated from this Moscow by an invisible border of space-time, as well as by twenty years of great reforms in building practice. I stubbornly told myself this, but my eyes convinced me that I must be wrong. You see, with us, in my world, this same construction went on at the same speed and along similar trends: the same forces inspired it, with the same aim in view. So, in our world, the city was, comparatively speaking, just as beautiful and perhaps more so. It was as if a magician with a camera was showing me an amazing picture of the future. I viewed it avidly, searching for remembered details, happy as a boy when I recognized the old and the new, familiar, though it had changed as a young man does when he reaches the prime of life. All that was familiar immediately hit me in the eye - the Palace of Congresses, the golden cupolas of the Kremlin cathedrals, the bridges over the Moskva River, the Bolshoi Theatre, all of them toys from this height. And there was the Luzhniki stadium and the university. I lost sight of other tall buildings of my day among the many-storey stone forest-like structures, and perhaps they weren't there at all. The city had overflowed far beyond the border ring of the circular highway: it ran in the same place, at least it followed the same curve, but was wider or seemed wider, and the ant-like cars crawled along it to form a similarly wide and rarely narrowing ribbon. The traffic's monstrous scale and colourful-ness astounded me most of all. Like rivers flowed the streets and alleys filled with iridescent automobiles. Bicycles and motorcycles on asphalt tracks criss-crossed the town over the roofs of the buildings. The centipede cars chased each other along the strings of monorail trestle-roads. And over all this, from landing-strip to landing-strip, flitted the black-and-yellow or blue-and-white dragon-fly helicopters. We dropped down on one such landing-strip on the roof of a huge tall building, and alighted from the cabin. I didn't manage to see the building itself during the flight, but the first thing that struck my eye on the flat roof, guarded by a high metallic netting, was a large swimming pool. The pool was filled with clear, pure water lit from below by greenish, scintillating lights. Around the pool were deck-chairs, rubber mattresses, tents and a canteen under a tightly stretched awning. "It's the dinner break," said Zargaryan, his eyes searching among the bathers and the half-naked people in swim-suits sitting in the canteen. "We'll find him in a moment. Igor!" he yelled. A tanned athlete in dark sun-glasses playing on the near-by tennis court now approached us, still holding his racket. "Is there somebody in the lab?" asked Zargaryan. "Why should there be?" the boy answered lazily. "They're all in the sixth sector." "And the apparatus hasn't been switched off?" "No. But what's up?" "I'd like you to meet this professor to start with, Professor Gromov." "Nikodimov," murmured the athlete removing his glasses. He was not at all like the longhaired Faust. "Has something happened?" he asked. "Something unforeseen and very curious. You'll know in a minute," said Zargaryan, not without a note of triumph in his voice. A man with a sense of humour would doubtless have found something in this situation that was common to my first visit to Faust's laboratory. Zargaryan pressed the lift button with the same sly, significant look and then turned on the escalator - before, a moving corridor had taken me to the entrance to the laboratory, now a stair escalator ran from the roof directly into the lab. It moved smoothly down, clicking on the turns. "With your permission," he smiled at me, "I'll explain everything to this child in the jargon of biophysics. It will be more accurate, and take less time." I tried hard to get something out of the conglomeration of unfamiliar terms, ciphers and Greek letters. I had never been so overwhelmed by the lexicology of my Zargaryan, even when he got carried away and forgot I was there. A few things were clear, at least. But young Nikodimov caught it all on the fly and looked at me with unconcealed curiosity. He didn't appear to me to be in the mental heavyweight class, and I was surprised at the ease with which he darted about among the 'maze of plugs, levers and handles' that I knew so well. Incidentally, I didn't know them so well, to tell the truth. Everything in this duplicate-world room was bigger, greater in scale, and far more complex than the equipment in the neat laboratory I had left somewhere in another space-time. Where one might be compared to a doctor's surgery, this one reminded you of the control-room of a large automated factory. Only the blinking control lamps, the tele-screens, the haphazardly hanging wires, and the chair in the centre of the room, of course, were somewhat familiar. Not more so, by the way, than a new Moskvich car reminds you of an old 'Emka'. I directed my attention to the arrangement of screens - they were built in an arc along panels curving around the room, something like the control panels of electronic BRAIN computers. The mobile control panel could, apparently, slip along the line of screens according to the observer's wish. And it was interesting to look at them, even now when they weren't in use. Now they would light up, now go out, now flash as if reflecting some inner lighting, now blindly freeze into a cold leadish dullness. "Well," laughed Zargaryan, "so it's not much similar? What differences are there, in particular?" "The screens," I said. "We have a different arrangement. And there's no helmet," I pointed at the chair. There actually was no helmet. And no pickups. I sat in the chair, as if in my own sitting-room, until Zargaryan spoke. "If you compare your adventures with a game of chess, you are in time trouble. You have played your opening move in the space of your world. In ours, you begin the midgame, without any hope of winning. You understand right away that you can't bring back any souvenirs with you except sporadic impressions. In other words, one more failure. How many times Igor Nikodimov and I have been in the same position. How many endless nights there were, errors in calculations, unjustified hopes, until we finally found a brain-inductor with mathematical development. He brought a formula back in his memory, one that set the academicians on their ears! Now it is known as the Janovski equation, and is used to figure out complex cosmic routes. To our great regret, your memory won't help here. But then appeared a saving variant - you met me. The candle of hope is lit again, a slender candle, but it's burning. Now we have to hurry, now the endgame is ahead of you, and you're in time trouble, friend. We are all in time trouble. The activity of the field is at its limit, is on the point of falling. Before you realize it, Ulysses will have to return to Ithaca. Igor!" he cried. "Finish up, it's time." At this point he sighed and added in a faint voice: "Time to say good-bye, Sergei Nikolaevich. Happy landings! We can't count on meeting again, I'm afraid." Only now the awesome thought got through to me of what was going on. A leap across a century! Not simply into an adjacent world, but into a world of absolutely different things-different machines, habits and relations. For several hours, or maybe twenty-four, Hyde would own Jekyll's soul, but could he deceive those around him if he wished to remain incognito? He would be hidden by Jekyll's face, Jekyll's suit - but would he be given away by his tongue, out-of-date ideas and feelings, conditional reflexes long unknown in that world? Had the terrible risk of the jump gone to my head? However, I said nothing to Zargaryan, did not reveal my sudden awareness of danger, did not even start when he gave the command to turn on the protector. Darkness, as before, again surrounded me. Darkness and silence through which as if from a distance - to be exact, through a thick grey fog - pierced scarcely discernible voices, also familiar but almost forgotten as if they were already separated from me by a hundred-year leap through time. "I can't understand it at all. What about you?" "It's disappeared. Something probed through, but there's no image." "But on the sixth there is. Only the brightness is weakening. Can you figure it out?" "There is something showing. Again it's out of phase. Like that other time." "But we haven't registered any kind of shock." "Nor did we then." "That time the encephalograph charted sleep. The phase of a paradoxical sleep. Remember?" "In my opinion, this is different. Take a look at Screen Four. The curves are pulsating." "Raise the power, perhaps?" "Let's wait." "Are you worried?" "So far there's no reason to. Check the breathing." "As before." "Pulse?" "The same. And the blood pressure hasn't gone up. Perhaps some change in the biochemical processes?" "So far, there's no proof. But I have the impression that there is outside interference. Either resistance from the receptor or artificial braking." "It's fantastic." "I don't know. Let's wait." "But I am waiting. Though...." "Look! Look!" "I don't get it. Where is that from?" "There's no use guessing. How's the reflection?" "In the same phase." "In the one we need?" And again silence, like ooze, swallowing all sound. I no longer heard, nor saw, nor felt. A LEAP ACROSS A CENTURY The transference from darkness to light was accompanied by a strange state of peacefulness. As if I were swimming in transparent cool oil or was in a state of weightlessness in milky-white space. The quiet of a sound-proof chamber surrounded me. There were no doors, no windows - light came from nowhere, soft and warm like sunlight through clouds. The snowy cloud of the ceiling invisibly fused with the cloudy swirl of the walls. The whiteness of the sheets dissolved in the whiteness of the room. I could not feel the touch of blanket or sheets; it was as if they were woven of air like the clothing of Andersen's naked king. Gradually I began to make out the things around me. Suddenly I saw the outline of a screen with white leather behind it. At first it was completely invisible, but if you looked at it hard it took on the appearance of a metal sheet, reflecting like a mirror the white walls, the bed and myself. It was facing me as if it were somebody's eye or ear, and it seemed to be listening and watching my every movement or intention. As it turned out later, I was not mistaken. Beside the bed floated a flat white pillow with a fine-grained surface. When I reached out to touch it, it turned out to be the seat of a chair resting on three legs made of thick transparent plastic material which was quite new to me. In addition, I noticed the same kind of table, and something like a thermometer or barometer under a glass-like dome, apparently an apparatus for registering air fluctuations. The snowy whiteness all around me created the feeling of peace, but alarm and curiosity were beginning to grow inside me. Throwing back the weightless blanket, I sat up. The underclothing I wore reminded me of a hunting outfit: it fitted snugly yet one wasn't aware of its presence. I gave a sudden start, though, when I noticed the blurred image of a person sitting up in bed reflected in the dim surface of the screen. He wasn't at all like me, seemed taller, younger and had a more athletic build. "You may get up and walk to and fro," said a woman's voice. I looked around involuntarily, though I realized I wouldn't see anybody in the room. "Don't be surprised at anything, not at anything!" I ordered myself, and obediently walked to the wall and back. "Once more," said the voice. I repeated the exercise, guessing that somebody, somewhere, was observing me. "Raise your arms." I obeyed. "Lower them. Once more. Now sit down. Stand up." I conscientiously did everything required of me, without asking questions. "Well, and now lie down." "I don't want to. What for?" I said. "One more check-up in a state of quiet." Some strange force lightly pushed me back on the pillow, and my own hands pulled up the blanket. Curious. How did my unseen observer manage that? Mechanically or by suggestion? The imp of protest inside me burst stormily out. "Where am I?" "At home." "But this is some kind of hospital room." "It's an ordinary revitalizing room. We set it up in your home." "Who's 'we'?" "GEMS. Of the thirty-second district." "GEMS?" I asked blankly. "Central Medical Service. Have you forgotten?" I fell silent. What could I answer? "A partial loss of memory following shock," explained the voice. "Don't try to make yourself remember. Don't strain yourself. Just ask, if you want to know something." "Then I'll do just that," I agreed. "Who are you, for instance?" "A curator on duty. Vera-seven." "What?" I asked in surprise. "Why seven?" "You sound odd with your 'why seven?' Because in our sector, besides me, there is Vera-one, Vera-two, and so on." "And your last name?" "I still haven't done anything remarkable enough for that." It was dangerous to ask more. A clearly risky turn of affairs had set in. "Can you show yourself?" I asked. "That is not obligatory." Probably she's an ugly, disgusting old woman. Pedantic and nagging. I heard laughter. "Nagging, that's true," said the voice. "Pedantic? Maybe." "Can you read the mind?" I asked embarrassed. "Not I, but the cogitator. A special apparatus." I did not answer, wondering whether the devilish apparatus could be deceived. "It can't be," said the voice. "It's not fair, or even respectable." "Wha-at?" "It's not res-pec-ta-ble!" I cried angrily. "It's not nice! Dishonest! To look and listen in isn't honest, and to crawl into a person's skull-box is very low." The voice was silent. Then it spoke severely and with reproach. "The first patient in all my practice to object to the cogitator. We do not tune it in to a healthy, sound person. But with a patient, we observe everything: the nervous system, the heart vessels, the breathing apparatus, all the functions of the body." "Then why do you use it on me? I 'm sound as a bell." "Usually observers do not meet their patients, but I am allowed to." Now I could see who the voice belonged to. The reflecting surface of the screen darkened like water in a muddy pool, and faded out. Looking straight at me was the face of a young woman with short wavy hair. She was dressed in white. "You may ask questions - your memory will come back." "What's the matter with me?" "You had an operation. A heart transplant. After an accident. Do you remember?" "Now I remember," I cried. "Is it plastic?" "Is what plastic?" "The heart, naturally. Or is it a metal one?" She laughed with the superiority of a school-teacher who receives a stupid answer from a pupil. "It's not for nothing that they say you live in the twentieth century." I was frightened. Could they know everything? But perhaps that was even better.... I wouldn't have to explain anything, not make up stories. But just in case, I asked: "Why?" "But don't you? Artificial hearts were employed very long ago. We changed that, and use organic material grown in a special medium. But you think in terms of the twentieth century: the usual thing with historians. They say you know all about the twentieth century. Even what kind of shoos were worn." "Heels on spikes," I laughed. "What's that?" "Spike-heel shoes." "I don't understand." I gave a start. The wide-spread, century-old daily word which had lived to the age of nuclear physics apparently had disappeared from the vocabulary of the twenty-first century. What do they use in place of nails or spikes, I wonder? Glue? "Look here, my dear girl..." I began. But she interrupted with a laugh. "Is that how they spoke in that century - 'my dear girl'?" "Absolutely," I assured her seriously. "I'm fed up lying here. I want to get dressed and go out." She frowned. "You may get dressed: clothes will be given you. But you mustn't go out yet. The process of observation is still not over. The more so after shock with loss of memory. We shall still check your organism as to the neuro-functions habitual to you." "Here?" "Of course. You will receive your 'mechanical historian', the best and latest model, by the way. Without any button controls. Fully automatic, responds to your voice." "And will you look and listen?" "Certainly." "Then it's no go," I said. "I'm not going to get dressed and work in front of you." A merry surprise was reflected in her eyes. She had difficulty in muffling her laughter. "Why not?" she asked, her hand covering her mouth. "Because I live in the twentieth century," I snapped. "All right," she said. "I'll turn off the video-graph. But the inner organic processes will remain under observation." "All right," I said. "You may be the seventh, but you're smart." Again she failed to catch my meaning, but I only waved good-bye. Either she had never read Chekhov or had forgotten. Her sweet face had already disappeared from the screen. Suddenly, part of the wall melted away, letting into the room something resembling a radiator made of interlaced right-angled pipes. The 'something' turned out to be an ordinary mobile wardrobe hanger, on which my proposed clothes were conveniently hung. I chose narrow, light-coloured trousers, which fastened at the ankle like our ski-pants; then a sweater to match that reminded me of our familiar West-Side style. The reflection in the mirrored surface of the screen was not much like me, but quite respectable and nice to look at. It wouldn't do to meet the people of this new century in underclothing! I turned round when I heard a noise behind me, as if someone was tip-toeing in. However, it wasn't a person, but an object somewhat reminiscent of a refrigerator or a fire-proof safe. How it came in I don't know: it seemed to appear out of the air in place of the disappearing mobile clothes hanger. It came in and stopped, winking the green eye of its indicator. "I wonder," I said aloud, "if this could be my 'mechanical historian'?" The green eye turned red. "Mist-12 for short," said the safe in an even, hollow voice lacking all richness of intonation. "I'm at your service." MIST'S GLOSSARY I was long silent before I opened the conversation. I trusted the girl: she wouldn't eavesdrop or watch. But what could I talk to this mechanical Cyclops about? Couldn't carry on social talk. "How great is your information?" I asked carefully. "Encyclopaedic," came the quick answer. "More than a million references. I can name the exact figure." "No need of that. And the subjects of the references? " "The limit of the glossary extends to the start of the twentieth century. The nature of the references is unlimited." I wanted to check up on it. "Give me the name and surname of the third cosmonaut." "Andriyan Nikolaev." It was quite correct - the answers coincided with the facts. I pondered, and asked another question. "Who won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1964?" "Sartre. But he refused it." "And who is Sartre?" "A French writer and an existentialist-philosopher. I can formulate the essence of existentialism." "No need for that either. When was the Aswan Dam built?" "The first part was finished in 1969. The second...." "Enough," I interrupted him, thinking with satisfaction that we had built it five years earlier. Apparently, not everything in this world coincided literally with ours. The Mist was silent. It knew a great deal. I could begin a conversation about our experiment, the next important topic for me. But I couldn't decide to approach it directly. "Tell me what the biggest scientific discovery was in the early part of the century," I began, choosing my way carefully. "The theory of relativity," it replied without hesitation. "And at the end of the century?" "The scientists Nikodimov and Janovski discovered the phase trajectories of space." I almost jumped up on the spot, ready to kiss this impassive Cyclops with the winking eye-it winked at me every time he rapped out an answer. But all I did was ask another question. "Why Janovski and not Zargaryan?" "At the end of the eighties, the Polish mathematician Janovski brought out additional corrections to the theory. Zargaryan did not take part, save in the early experiments. He died in a motor accident long before the success of the first cross-world traveller permitted Nikodimov to publish the discovery." I understood, of course, that it wasn't my Zargaryan, but just the same my heart missed a beat. "Who was the first cross-world traveller then?" "Sergei Gromov, your great grandfather," rapped out the Mist in its hollow, metallic voice. It was not at all surprised at the stupidity of my question. Who should know all about the doings of his forefather if not his descendant? But surprise had not been programmed into the crystals of the Mist's cybernetic brain. "Do you need the bibliographic references?" he asked. "No," I said, and sat on the bed gripping my temples. However, my invisible Vera-seven hadn't forgotten me. "Your pulse is fast," she said. "That's possible." "I'll turn on the videograph." "Wait," I stopped her. "I'm very interested in working with the Mist. It's an amazing machine. Thank you for sending it." The Mist waited. Its red eye was again green. "Did Nikodimov have scientific opponents?" I asked. "Even Einstein had them," said the Mist. "Who pays them any attention?" "What were their objections?" "The theory was completely refuted by the church. A World Congress of Church Organizations, held in Brussels in the eighties, looked upon the theory as the most harmful heresy to be proclaimed over the last two thousand years. Three years before that, a special Papal Bull had declared it a blasphemous perversion of the teachings of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and a return to the pagan doctrine of many gods. As many Christs for as many worlds. This could not be endured by either bishops or patriarchs. And an eminent scientist, the Italian physiologist Pirelli, called the phase theory the most effective scientific discovery of the century as far as its anti-religious trend went which was absolutely incompatible with the idea of one God. It is true, however, that something was done to make it compatible. The American philosopher Hellman, for instance, explained that the Berkeleian 'thing in itself ' was a phase movement of material." "Ravings of the Old Grey Mare," I said. "I do not understand," responded my Cyclops. "A mare is a sexual gender of a horse. Grey is a colour. Ravings are disconnected speech. A crazy horse? No, I do not understand." "Simply an idiom of speech. The approximate idea is absurd, below normal. Comes from 'The old grey mare, she ain't what she used to be' - a song." "I shall programme it," said the Mist. "Correction of Gromov to idiomatic speech." "All right," I stopped him. "Better tell me about phases. Are they all similar?" "Marxist science affirms they are. By way of experiment, it has been shown that many are similar. Theoretically, it relates to all of them." "And were there any objections to the idea?" "Of course. Opponents of the materialistic conception of history insisted that similarity was not obligatory. They proceeded from the premise that chance plays a role in the life of man and society. If it weren't for the crusades, they said, the history of the Middle Ages would have been different. Without Napoleon, the map of new Europe would have differed. And if Hitler had been absent from German political life, the world would not have been led into World War Two. All this has long been disproved. Historical and social processes do not depend on chance which changes one or another individual destiny. Such processes are obedient to the laws of historical development that are common to all." I remembered my argument with Klenov and my question: 'But, you see, there is such a possibility - there is no Hitler. He was never born. What then?' And the Mist repeated Klenov's answer almost word for word: 'There would have appeared another fuehrer. A little earlier, or a bit later, but he would have appeared. You see, the deciding factor is not a matter of personality, but the economic situation of the thirties. The objective chance of the appearance of such a personality obeys the law of historical necessity.' "So everywhere it is one and the same thing?" I asked. "In all phases, in all worlds? The same historical figures? The same crusades, wars, revolutions? The same changes of social formations? " "Everywhere. The difference is only in time, but not in development. The changes of the social and economic formations in any phase are akin. They are dictated by the development of the productive forces." "So they thought last century. But now?" "I don't know. I am not programmed on that. But my design conforms with the probability theory and I can make conclusions independent of programming. The laws of dialectical materialism remain true not only for the past." "Another question, Mist. Is the mathematical expression of the phase theory very complicated?" "It includes the general formulas, the calculations of Janovski and Shual's system of equations. There are three pages on it in the textbooks. I can recite them." "Only orally?" "I can give them graphically." "Will it take long?" "One minute." I heard a slight noise, like the buzzing of an electric razor, and the front panel of the machine lowered to become a shelf on metal hinges. On the shelf lay two white accurate right-angled cards, closely covered with certain ciphers and signs. When I picked them up, the panel closed so tight I could not see any line of demarcation. Behind me came a thin, childish voice. "I'm here, Pop. Are you angry?" I turned. A boy of six or seven years stood by the white wall. He wore a sky-blue suit tightly outlining his body. He looked like a picture from a children's fashion magazine where they always draw such handsome, athletic-looking boys. A FATHER'S RIGHT "How did you come in?" I asked. He walked backward and disappeared. The wall was as even and white as before. Then a cunning face peeked through it, and the boy appeared in the room like 'the man who walked through walls'. "Light and sound protectors," I remembered. Here they used white to give a complete illusion of walls. "I sneaked in secretly," admitted the boy. "Mom didn't see, and Vera turned off the eye." "How do you know?" "The eye looks in here through the gym. When you run in there, she cries out: 'Go away, Ram. You're in the field of vision.'" "Where does she cry out from?" "From far away. In the hospital." He pointed off somewhere as if pointing to it. I didn't say the probably expected 'Clear enough' because it wasn't clear at all. "And Julia's been crying," Ram informed me. "Why is that?" "Over you. You objected to the experiment. That's bad, Pop. That's no way to act." "What experiment is it?" I asked out of curiosity. "They want to turn her into an invisible cloud. Like in a fairy story. The cloud will fly and fly away, and then return. And it will become Julia again." "And I wouldn't give my permission?" "You refused to. You're afraid the cloud won't come back." Now I was completely lost. Lost in the woods. Vera came to my rescue by reminding me of my pulse again. "Vera," I begged, "can you clear this up? Why did I refuse to let Julia become invisible? It's all my rotten memory!" I heard a familiar laugh. "How oddly you talk. Rot-ten.... It sounds so funny. As for Julia, you must decide that for yourself - it's a family matter. That's why Aglaya tries to get in to see you. I wouldn't let her, afraid of exciting you. But she insists." "Let her in," I said. "I'll try to keep calm." I couldn't risk asking who Aglaya was. I'd get by somehow. I looked at the place where Ram had just vanished, but Aglaya came in from the opposite side. She came in as if she had every right to be here, and sat across from me. She was a tall woman, under forty, and wore a dress of marvellous cut and colour. She would have looked just right in our world on the platform at any kind of international festival. "You look well," she remarked, looking at me closely. "Even better than before the operation. And with a new heart you'll probably live to a hundred." "But what if I won't live to a hundred?" "Why shouldn't you? Biological incompatibility was frightening only in your favourite century." I hesitantly shrugged, leaving the conversation in her hands. A game of surprises was beginning. Who was she to me? And I to her? What did she want of me? The ground was getting slippery, every step called for a quick wit, and fast thinking. Our talk began at once. "So you've agreed?" she asked unexpectedly. "To what?" "As if you don't know. I spoke with Anna." "About what?" "Don't pretend. You know what I'm talking about. You agreed to the experiment." What experiment? And who was Anna? Why must I agree or disagree? "Did they force you to?" she asked me. "Who?" "Don't mention names, the child will hear. And after such an operation. Before you're yourself again. A new heart. Blood vessels with cosmetic seals! And they come to you with an ultimatum: agree, and that's all!" "There's no need to exaggerate," I said, feeling my way. "I'm not. I know all about it. And Anna supports it because she's all wrapped up in science. She simply has no biological feelings! Julia's not her daughter. But she's yours. And she's my granddaughter." I thought that for a father and grandmother, we were too young-looking to have a grown-up daughter who was going in for some kind of complex scientific experiment. I remembered Ram's story and smiled. "And he can still smile!" cried out my companion. I had to tell her the story of the invisible cloud, as Ram had interpreted it. "So Anna hasn't told her. That was wise. Now you can withdraw your permission." "Why should I?" "And you will permit them to turn your daughter into some kind of cloud? What if it melts away? Or the atomic structure cannot be restored? Let Bogomolov experiment on himself! They won't let him, d'you see. Too old, they say, and weak. Is it any easier for you and I that she is young and strong?" Aglaya paced around the room like an angry Brunhilda. "I don't understand you, Sergei. You were so hotly against it." "But I agreed, you see," I objected. "I don't believe there was an agreement!" she screamed. "And Julia doesn't know anything about it. You tell her they'll have to cancel the experiment ... she'll be here in a minute. A person is not the sole master of his fate when he has a mother or father." I had a flash of hope: "Maybe the experiment won't take place very soon?" "It's arranged for today." I thought it over. Julia, apparently, was around twenty, maybe a bit younger or older. She was the assistant of a professor, or something like that. They were going to carry out an experiment which to us would seem utterly fantastic. And here, too, it was apparently associated with mortal danger. A father had the right to interfere, and not permit the risk to be taken. Now I had been handed this right. And I couldn't even refuse to use it without giving myself away and creating a far more critical situation. Aglaya's eyes stared at me with unconcealed anger but I could not answer her at once. To say 'no' to the experiment and eliminate the alarm of those people to whom the girl's fate was so dear? But her place would be taken by another, I was sure of that. Somebody else would just as readily take the risk as Julia. So how could I take away from her the right to do this brave act? But to say 'yes' and perhaps deal a death blow to the person who was unable now to interfere and correct me? "So man is not the sole master of his fate when he has a mother or father," I repeated thoughtfully. "Such is the tradition of this century," she snapped back. "A good tradition when the risk is merely a foolhardy one. But if not? If a man or a girl takes the risk in the name of a higher interest than the happiness or grief of his or her dear ones?" "Whose interests are higher?" asked Aglaya. "Those of one's native land, of course." "It is not threatened with danger." "Then those of science!" "It doesn't need human lives. If somebody dies, the scientists are to blame who permit death to occur." "And if there's no blame, if the risk was a brave act?" 'Brunhilda' again rose to her feet, magnificent as a monument. "They did not only transplant your heart." Without another glance at me, she swept through the wall which parted before her like the obedient Red Sea in the Bible. "You did right," said Vera. I sighed. "But if not?" "One more talk, and then we'll take off the observation." The person I was to talk with was already in the room. It is difficult to describe her appearance, for men usually don't understand all the fine points about hair-do and dress. The latter was severe in cut, bright, and not so far in advance of our styles. The face had something in common with the photographs in my family album - the Gromov look. I automatically studied the purity of her features, her discreet charm. "I'm waiting, Daddy," she said dryly. "And they are waiting to hear at the institute." "Didn't they tell you?" I asked. "What?" "That I'm no longer against it." She sat down and got up again. Her lips trembled. "Daddykins, you dear..." she sobbed, and buried her face in my sweater. I was aware of a faint, strange scent. Like flowers on a meadow after rain when all the dust is washed away. "Have you a bit of time to spare?" I asked. "Tell me about the experiment. After the shock, I seem to have forgotten things." "I know. But it will pass." "Of course. But that's why I ask. Is it your discovery?" "Well, really," she laughed. "Naturally it's not mine, nor Bogomolov's either. It's a discovery from the future, from some adjacent phase. Just picture any object in the shape of a rarefied electronic cloud. The speed of displacement is terrific. No obstacle can withstand it, it goes through anything. As the experiments have shown, you can throw anything you wish for an unlimited distance - transmit pictures, statues, trees, houses. By this means a day or so ago, they transmitted from near Moscow a single-span bridge right across the Caspian Sea, setting it down right on the spot between Baku and Krasnovodsk. And now the experiment is to be made on man. So far, only within the city limits." "All the same, I don't see how...." "Of course you wouldn't understand, Daddy, my dear old historian. But, roughly speaking, schematically, it's about like this: in any solid body the atoms are packed tight. They cannot spread out, nor do they penetrate each other because of the presence of electrostatic forces of attraction and repulsion. Now imagine that a way has been found to reconstruct these inner connections between the atoms and, without changing the atomic structure of the body, to reduce it to a rarefied state in which, let us say, atoms are found in gases. What do we get? An atomic-electronic cloud which one can again condense into the molecular-crystalline structure of a solid body." "But if...." "What 'if? The technological process was mastered long ago." She rose. "Wish me good luck, Daddy." "One question, child." I took her hand. "Do you know the phase theory?" "Of course. It's taught in school now." "Well, but I never had it. And I need to memorize everything about it, even if I do so mechanically." "There's nothing simpler. Tell Eric, he's Mother's chief hypnotist. You've forgotten everything, Dad. We have a suggestion-concentrator and a dispersion unit." She raised her wrist to her face and spoke into a tiny microphone on a bracelet. "In a minute... just a minute. Everything's ready, and it's all right. No, that's not necessary, don't send for me ... I'll come by the movement. Of course, it's simpler. And more convenient. No rising, no landing, no noise or wind. I'll stand on the pavement ... and be there in two minutes." She hugged me and, saying good-bye, added: "Only no watching. I've turned off the super. You'll be kept regularly informed and in good time. And tell Eric and Dir no tricks, and not to switch into the network." And all in flight, tense and ethereal, as if skimming over waves, she disappeared through the white swirling wall which closed after her. I walked over to what looked to me like a wall. Vera never raised her voice. Glancing over my shoulder like a thief, I walked through the wall. Before me stretched a long corridor leading, apparently, to a verandah. Through the glass door, if it was glass, I saw a twilight-darkened sky and the rather distant outline of a skyscraper. When I came closer, there was neither glass nor door. I just walked through. A woman and two men sat at a low table. Ram was hopping on one foot along the verandah which was guarded by low, clipped bushes in place of a railing. They were covered by large creamy flowers, gleaming with evening dew, that reminded me of bright Christmas tree ornaments. "Daddy's come," cried Ram, hanging on my neck. "Leave Daddy alone, Ram," said the woman severely. A soft light, falling from somewhere above, slipped past and left her in the shadow. "Probably Anna," I thought. "Observation has been removed," she continued. "So now you've complete freedom to move about," laughed the older man, who must have been Eric. "Not complete," corrected the woman. "No farther than the verandah." The younger man, Dir apparently, jumped up and walked along by the bushes, not glancing at me. Long-legged, dressed in shorts that fitted his waist snugly, he looked like an athlete in training. "Julia just left," I said. "You shouldn't have given permission," snapped Dir over his shoulder. "We all heard it," explained Anna. I was annoyed. Everybody in this house hears and sees all. Just try to be alone. Like living on a stage, I thought. "But you really have changed," smiled Anna. "Only I can't put my finger on just what it is. Perhaps it's for the better?" I was silent, meeting Eric's attentive and observant glance. "Gromova has entered the eino-chamber," said a voice, but where it came from I couldn't make out. "Do you hear that?" Dir turned to us. "All the time it was Julia-two, and now she's already Gromova!" "Glory begins with a surname," laughed Eric. I reminded him that the super was turned off, adding that Julia had asked the guests not to tune into the network. "WHAT did you say - guests?" asked Anna in surprise. "So what?" I asked guardedly. "There certainly is something wrong with your memory. We haven't used the word 'guest' in its former meaning for half a century. Are you so buried in history that you've forgotten?" "Now we use the word 'guests' only for visitors from other phases of space and time," explained Eric in a rather odd tone. I didn't manage to answer - the voice again interrupted. "Preparations for the experiment are proceeding in cycles," he rapped out. "No deviations have been observed." "In twenty minutes," said Dir. "They won't begin earlier." Everybody was silent. Eric did not take his attentive curious gaze off me. There was nothing unpleasant in his look, but it aroused my involuntary alarm. "I heard your request about formulas, when you were speaking with Julia," he said suddenly, with a quite benevolent intonation. "I'd be glad to help you. There's plenty of time, so come along." I got up, glancing down past the green border. The verandah hung at skyscraper height. Beneath were the dark crowns of trees, probably the corner of a city park. I went out with Eric. "Light!" said Eric as we entered a room, apparently not addressing anyone in particular. "Only on our faces and on the table." The light in the room, as if compressed, was condensed into an invisible projector that picked out of the darkness my face and Eric's, and a small table I found beside me. "Have you the formulas with you?" asked Eric. I gave him the cards from the Mist. "I don't need them," he laughed. "This is your lesson. Put them on the table and give them your complete attention. Only the upper rows, the lower ones aren't necessary. Those are calculations which are filled out by the electronic computer. Now read the upper rows line by line." "I shan't remember them," I protested. "That isn't necessary. Merely look at them." "For very long?" "Until I tell you not to." "Somewhere you have a suggestion concentrator," I remembered Julia's words. "What for?" laughed Eric. "I work by the old methods. Now look at my face." I saw only the pupils of the eyes, as big as burning icon-lamps. "Sleep!" he cried. Exactly what happened after that I don't remember. I think I opened my eyes and saw an empty table. "Where are the formulas?" "I threw them away." "But look here, I remember nothing." "It only seems that way. You'll remember later when you get home. You are a guest, aren't you? Am I right?" "Quite right," I said decisively. "From what time?" "From the last century, in the sixties." He laughed softly in delight. "I knew it from the results of the medical observations. Both the shock and loss of memory looked very suspicious. I studied you by videograph when Julia was speaking to Bogomolov. You had such a look on your face, as if you were seeing a miracle. When she said that she'd go by the 'movement', I realized you had never once stepped on a travelling panel-pavement. And we've had them for half a century. You had forgotten all that has come into being in our times, right up to the semantics of the word 'guest'. You might deceive surgeons, but not a parapsychologist." "All the better," I said. "Lucky for me that I met you. I'm only sorry I must leave without seeing anything, neither the houses nor the streets, neither the travelling-panels, nor your technology, nor even your social system. To be on the heights of communist society - and not see anything but a hospital room!" "Why on the heights? Communism isn't stationary, it's a developing system. We have to go far yet before we reach the heights. Now we are making a gigantic leap into the future ... with the conclusion of Julia's dream. Your world will do the same after you take back the formulas of our century that are imprinted in your memory. Although only minds meet so far, all the same these meetings of worlds enrich us, and advance the dreams of mankind." I wanted to leave a remembrance behind me in this world, to a man whose brain I had usurped. "May I leave a note for him?" I asked Eric. "Why a note? Simply tell him. It will be his voice, but your words." I looked around, perplexed. "You're looking for a tape-recorder? We have another and better means of reproducing speech. Too long to explain. Simply talk." "I beg you to forgive me, Gromov, for usurping your place in life for these nine or ten hours," I began hesitantly, but a sympathetic nod from Eric urged me on. "I am only a guest, Gromov, and I'm leaving as suddenly as I came. But I want to tell you that I've been very happy living these hours of your life. I interfered in it by giving Julia my blessing and letting her do this brave deed. But I couldn't do otherwise. To refuse would have been cowardly, and to stop her - obscurantism. I regret only one thing: I cannot wait for the victory of your daughter, nor for the victory of your science and system. That great happiness will belong to you." "Sergei, Eric!" cried Dir, running in. "It's starting!" "Too late," I said, feeling the familiar approach of the dark, soundless abyss. "I'm leaving you. Good-bye." IN PLACE OF AN EPILOGUE Outside my window lies the street lashed by wind and rain. The electric lamps in the murky rain-curtain are like spiders lost in their own webs. A bus goes tearing through the gloom of the slanting shield of water. It is an ordinary autumn evening in Moscow. I have finished the last lines of the essay or memoirs, or perhaps personal diary - I don't know what to call it - which I shall not risk publishing. But it had to be written. Klenov rang up early this morning, stating the exact number of lines for the column. By the way, he immediately made a reservation; it all depended on the reaction of world scientific societies. Maybe I'd be given a whole page. The Academy of Sciences starts its session tomorrow at ten in the morning, and nobody knows when it will end. There will be Nikodimov's report and Zargaryan's, then my speech and those of foreign scientists and ours. According to Klenov, more than two hundred people have arrived. All the stars of our physico-mathematical galaxies, not counting visitors and correspondents. I shall not cite the government's communique, for everybody knows it. After it came out, not only my scientific friends but reporter Sergei Gromov woke up famous. More than two months have passed since my return, but it seems like it was only yesterday that I woke up in Faust's laboratory in the familiar chair with its electrodes and pick-ups. I woke up tired and with a feeling of bitter, almost unbearable loss. Zargaryan was asking me something, but I answered unwillingly and uncertainly. Nikodimov silently looked at me, studying the oscillograph results. "We began at 10.15," he said suddenly, "and at one o'clock we lost you." "Not completely," said Zargaryan. "Right. Brightness fell first to zero, then it revived but was very faint, and rose to the supreme point. Even with a more exact direction sighting. To tell the truth, I was all at sea." "At one o'clock," I repeated thoughtfully, looking at Zargaryan, "at exactly one or a bit earlier, I was with you in the Sofia restaurant." "Are you delirious?" he asked, after a moment's silence. "Yes, with you older by twenty years and wearing a 'Kurchatov' beard that covered half your chest. In a word, it was Moscow at the close of the century. In that same Sofia. By the way, it's quite different from ours. And Mayakovsky, too. He stands taller than the Nelson column." I drew in a whole lungful of air, and blurted out: "And you got hold of me and threw me ahead by a whole century. That's when you lost me ... during the second transmission." Now they were both looking at me, not so much with distrust as with sharp suspicion. But I went on, not even leaving the chair for I hadn't the strength to rise. "You don't believe me? It's hard to believe, naturally. Fantastic. Incidentally, the screens in their lab are in one line forming a parabola, and with a mobile control panel. And on the roof there's a swimming pool...." I swallowed, and was silent. "You need some doping," said Zargaryan. He mixed two egg yolks with half a glass of cognac and gave it to me, almost spilling it his hands were so shaky. The drink revived me. Now I could go on.... And I talked and talked without stopping for breath, and they listened as if bewitched, with the reverence of habitues of premiere performances at the conservatoire. Then they interrupted, shooting questions like machine-gun bursts. They questioned and cross-examined me. Zargaryan cried out something in Armenian, and over and over again I had to repeat my recollections: now about the monorail track, now the gold and crystal Sofia, now the chair without the helmet or pick-ups, now the white revitalizing room and the unseen Vera-seven, then about the Mist with its glossary and the story of Julia in which the mysterious image of a century was reflected as in frosted glass. I still could not bring myself to describe the most important thing of all - my meeting with Eric. And when I got to it, something suddenly erupted in my memory like a blinding flash of magnesium. "Paper," I cried out hoarsely. "Quickly! And a pencil." Zargaryan handed me a fountain pen and pad. I closed my eyes. Now I saw them absolutely clear-cut, as if held before my eyes - all the rows of ciphers and letters expressing the formulas on the Mist's cards. I could write them one after another without missing a thing, without getting mixed up, reproducing exactly everything engraved in my memory in that other world, all of which appeared with indelible vividness. I wrote blindly, vaguely hearing Zargaryan's whisper: "Look, look ... he's writing automatically with closed eyes." And that is how I wrote, not opening my eyes, not stopping, with feverish swiftness and clarity until I had reproduced on paper the last concluding equation of mathematical symbols. When I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was Nikodimov's face leaning over me, whiter than the sheet of paper I'd been writing on. "That's all," I said, throwing down the pen. Nikodimov took the pad and raised it close to his short-sighted eyes. Then he froze motionless - it was as if a cinema reel had suddenly been brought to a stop in the middle of a film showing. "This needs a wiser mathematician than I," he said finally, passing the pad to Zargaryan. "And he won't manage without an electronic computer. It will have to be computed." It took Nikodimov and Zargaryan one and a half to two months to do it, working in Moscow and the Brain centre in Novosibirsk. Academicians and post-graduate researchers worked with them. The baffling calculation secrets of the mathematics of the future were finally solved by Yuri Privalov, the youngest Doctor of Mathematical Science in the world. The phase theory of Nikodimov-Zargaryan was now firmly established on a sound mathematical basis proved by experiments from the future. The equations translated into mathematical language became the Shual-Privalov equations. And tomorrow they would be made available to all mankind. Olga's asleep, faintly lit by a pencil gleam from my lamp. She doesn't seem very content, in fact there is a slightly frightened look on her face. She already told Galya and me of her fear that fame and popularity, all this sensational excitement that awaits me tomorrow, will become a barrier between us that might break up our life together. Of course, the talk of a barrier is nonsense, but even now my life is beginning to look like an idiotic Hollywood true story. Foreign correspondents, who earlier sniffed out that something was brewing, follow me through the streets. The telephone rings all day and we have to smother it with a pillow at night, so that the sound of its ringing doesn't awaken us. Already a certain American publishing house has made me a wild offer for my impressions. And I, parrot-like, have to repeat over and over that no impressions are to be printed as yet; and when they are they can be read in Soviet publications. And Klenov chaffs me in a friendly way that all the same I shall have to write about my JOURNEY ACROSS THREE WORLDS. I don't agree - not three! Many more. And among them there will definitely be the one that I never really saw - that wonderful, inimitable world of Julia and Eric.