namo Restaurant and the Dniepr movie theater. There were plenty of pedestrians. Unkempt young men, trying to pass for bohemian artists, walked stiffly down the street, their eyes glazed. Elderly couples moved at a dignified pace. Dandies, arms around their girl friends, headed for the park. Men with bangs over their shifty eyes darted in and out of the crowd-the kind who don't work anywhere but have connections. Girls carefully balanced their various hairdos, including such masterpieces of tonsorial art as "cavewoman," "after a ladies' free-for-all," and "let them love me for my mind." Young singles wandered around, torn between desire and shyness. Kravets first walked around circumspectly, but then he became angry. "Look at all of them walking around, to show themselves off and to see others. It's as though time has stopped for them, and nothing is happening. They used to stroll down this street when it was called Gubernatorskaya, before the Revolution-wearing out the wooden sidewalks, checking out fashions and each other. And they strolled after the war-from the ruins of the Dynamo Restaurant to the ruins of the Dniepr Theater under the lights hanging by a single wire, cracking their sunflower seeds. They've paved the avenue, dressed it in high rises made of concrete, aluminum, and glass, lit it up, planted trees and flowers-and they stroll around, sucking caramels, listening to their transistors, proving the indomitability of the consumer spirit! Show themselves off, look at others, look at others, and show themselves off. Take a walk, drop in at the automat, consume a meat pie, walk around, drop in at the well-tended toilet behind the post office, take care of their needs, take a walk, have a drink, meet someone, take a walk ... an insect's life!" He circumvented the crowd that had collected on the corner of Engels Street near the lottery ticket vending machine. The machine, made to look like a cyborg, played music, hawked customers with a recorded voice, and for two five-kopek pieces, after wildly spinning a wheel made out of glass and chrome, dispensed a "lucky" ticket. Kravets gritted his teeth. "And we, we idiots, decided to transform people with mere laboratory technology! What can we do with these consumers? What has changed for them is the fact that there are taxis instead of hackney cabs, semitransistorized tape recorders instead of accordions, telephones instead of "face-to-face" gossip, and synthetic raincoats to wear in good weather instead of new rubber galoshes? They used to sit around their samovars and now they spend evenings around the TV." He heard snatches of conversation from the crowd: "Just between us, I can tell you frankly: a man is a man, and a woman is a woman." "So he says 'Valya?' and I say 'No.' He says 'Lusya?' and I say 'No.' He says 'Sonya?' and I say 'No.' "Abram went oh a business trip, and his wife...." "Learn to be satisfied with the present moment, girls!" "And what will change as a result of progress in science and technology? So the store windows will overflow with polyester clothes, atomic wristwatches that never need winding, and with solid-state refrigerators and microwave ovens. Luminescent plastic moving sidewalks will transport pedestrians from the 3-D Dniepr Theater to the fully automated Dynamo Restaurant-they won't even have to use their legs. They'll take strolls with microelectric walkie-talkies so that they won't even have to turn to their friends or risk tiring their voices to exchange such brilliant gems as: 'Just between us, I can tell you frankly: a robot is a robot, and a mezzanine is a mezzanine!' 'Abram went off to an antiworld, and his wife....' Team to be satisfied with the present microsecond!' "And a vending machine made to look like a space ship will sell 'Greetings from Venus!' postcards: a view of the Venerian space port framed by kissing doves. And so what?" Harry Haritonovich Hilobok paraded past Kravets. A girl weak with laughter was hanging from his arm. The assistant professor was busy amusing her and didn't notice the fugitive student duck into the shadows of the lindens. "Harry has a new one," thought Kravets, laughing. He bought some cigarettes at a kiosk, lit one, and moved on. He was engulfed in such anger that he lost his appetite, and if he had fallen into the arms of the operatives, there would have been quite a brawl. There was no room at the Theater Hotel either. The arrival walked along the prospect in the direction of the House of the Collective Farmer, grumpily observing the people around him. Walk, walk, walk... every city in every country has a street where the populace walks in the evenings, back and forth, the crowd becoming a single entity. Show themselves, look at each other. Walk, walk, walk-and the planet trembles under their feet! It must be some collective instinct that lures them here, like the swallows to Capistrano. And others sit in front of the TV. How many of them are there, people who have relegated themselves to rot away? ('We know how to do something; we make good money; we have everything we need; we live no worse than others-so leave us alone!') Solitary people, afraid to be alone with themselves, confused by the complexity of life and unwilling to think about it. They remember the one rule of safety: to be happy in life you must be like everybody else. So they walk around and look to see how everybody else is. They expect a revelation. Overshadowed by the glowing glory of the avenue, the moon wandered behind the translucent clouds. But nobody had time to look at it. "And when they were young they dreamed about living exciting, interesting, meaningful lives, about discovering new worlds. Who didn't have that dream? And they probably still dream about it, passionately and impotently. What's wrong? They didn't have the spirit to follow their dreams? And what for? Why give free rein to your dreams and deepest feelings-who knows where it might lead!-when you can buy ready-made dreams and feelings, when you can safely party at a feast for invented heroes? And so they partied themselves sick, wasted their spiritual strength on trifles, and what they have left is enough power to muster a walk down the avenue." Hilobok walked past him with a young girl. "So Harry has a new one!" the arrival thought. He watched him walk on. Should he catch up with him and inquire about Krivoshein? "Nah, in any case it's best to stay away from Hilobok." The arrival and Kravets stepped onto the same block. "At one time the humanoid apes diverged: some picked up rocks and sticks and began working, thinking; and others stayed to swing in the trees. And now on earth another transition is beginning, more powerful and driving than the ancient ice age: the world is about to leap into a new qualitative state. But what do they care? They are willing to stay safe in front of the TV-it's easy to satisfy their simple demands through technology!" the angry Victor Kravets muttered to himself. "What do they care about all the new vistas opened up by science, technology, industry? What's our work to them? You can increase intelligence, cleverness, and work capabilities-so what? They'll learn something not for the pleasure of mastery and satisfying intellectual curiosity, but in order to earn more, to have easy work, and to get ahead of others. They will buy and hoard so that people will notice their success, to fill their empty lives with worries about their possessions. And about a rainy day. It might never come but because of it, all their other days are cloudy . . . boring! I'm going to go to Vladivostok, on my own, before I'm sent there officially. The project will die off naturally. It won't help them in any way: in order to take advantage of an opportunity like that you have to have high goals, spiritual strength, and a dissatisfaction with yourself. And they are only dissatisfied with their surroundings: the situation, their friends, life, the government-you name it, as long as it's not themselves. Well, let them walk around. As they say, science is helpless here...." They were separated only by the post office building. The angry thoughts ebbed away. There was only an inexplicable uneasiness before the people who walked past Kravets. "Someone said: no one despises the crowd more than the mediocrity who manages to climb above it. Who?" he frowned as he thought. "Wait a minute, I said that myself about someone else. Of course, about someone else, I wouldn't have said it about me...." He was disgusted. "In trampling them, I trample myself. I haven't come so far; I used to be just like them. Wait up! Does this mean that I simply want to disappear? And to keep from being terribly embarrassed and not to lose my self-respect, I'm trying to give this flight a philosophical basis? I haven't sold out anyone: everything is true; science is helpless, and that's how it should be. My God, an intellectual's mind is wondrously base and self-serving! (By the way, I've thought or said that about someone else, too; all of life's verities are nicer when applied to others.) And that intelligent one is me. All my gears are going full blast, contempt for the crowd, theoretical discursiveness.... Hmmmm!" He blushed and felt hot. "So this is where disaster can lead. Well, all right, let's see what else there is for me to do." Suddenly his legs were rooted to the pavement! Walking toward him with an easy stride was a young man with a backpack and a raincoat over his arm. "Adam!" Kravets felt a chill and his heart sank. It wasn't a man but a living pang of his conscience coming toward him on that street. Adam's eyes were thoughtful and angry, and the corners of his mouth drooped forbiddingly. "He's going to see me, recognize me...." Victor looked away so as not to give himself away, but curiosity won out: he stared at him. No, Adam didn't look like a "slave" now-that was a confident, strong, and decisive man. A memory floated up of a disheveled head against a background of dusky wallpaper, eyes wide with hatred, and a ten-pound iron dumbbell raised over his face. The arrival walked on past him. "Of course, how could he recognize me?" Kravets sighed in relief. "But why is he back? What does he want?" He watched the man disappear into the crowd. "Maybe I should catch up with him and tell him what happened? All the help that... No. Who knows why he's here." He was overwhelmed with despair again. "This is where all outwork and experiments have led. Damn it! We're afraid of each other. Wait... that is the other variant! But will it help?" Victor bit his lip, thinking hard. Adam had disappeared. "Well, enough self-torture!" Kravets said, shaking his head. "This isn't my work alone. And I can't escape-the work must be saved." He pulled out the change from his pocket, counted it, swallowed a hungry gulp, and went into the post office. He just had enough to pay for a short telegram: MOSCOW, MOSCOW STATE U., BIOLOGY DEPT. TO KRIVOSHEIN. FLY OUT IMMEDIATELY. VALENTIN. He sent the telegram and went out on the street. He turned down a street that led to the Institute of Systemology. After a few steps he turned to see if anyone was following him. The street was empty, and the only person watching was the pretty woman with the bankbook in the brightly lit ad on the department store that said, "Save your money at the bank" in foot-high letters. Her eyes promised to love anyone who saved. The sign over the administrator's window in the House of the Collective Farmer read: Room for a man-60 kopeks. Room for a horse-1 ruble 20 kopeks. The man who had arrived from Vladivostok sighed and handed his passport through the window. "Give me a sixty-kopek room, please." Chapter 4 The impossible is impossible. For instance, it is impossible to move faster than the speed of light. But even if it were possible, would it be worth the trouble? After all, no one could see it to appreciate it. -K. Prutkov-enzhener, Thought 17 The next morning the officer on duty in the city department handed Investigator Onisimov the report of the policeman on guard at the sealed laboratory. It stated that during the night, approximately between 1:00 and 2:00 A.M., an unknown man in a white shirt attempted to enter the lab through a window. The policeman's shout scared him off into the park. "I see!" Matvei Apollonovich rubbed his hands in satisfaction. "Returning to the scene of the crime...." Yesterday he had sent notice to citizen Azarov and to citizen Kolomiets. Matvei Apollonovich wasn't really counting on the academician's showing up in his office-but the stub of the notice would be handy to have around. Elena Ivanovna Kolomiets, an engineer at a construction design bureau near the Systemology Institute, showed up promptly at ten. When she entered his office, Hilobok's wavy hand gestures came to mind; she was a beautiful woman. "Isn't she just fine?" thought Onisimov. Any single feature of Elena Ivanovna's, taken out of context, was ordinary-her dark hair was like any hair, and her nose was only a nose (perhaps even too upturned), and the oval of her face was just an oval-but together they created such a harmonious picture, a picture that needed no analysis but simply called to be enjoyed and remarked upon as an example of nature's great sense of proportion. Matvei Apollonovich remembered what the late Krivoshein had looked like and he experienced typical male envy. "Hilobok was right; he's no match for her. What did she see in him? Was she looking for security? A husband with a good income?" Like most men whose looks and age left little hope of romantic conquest, Onisimov had a low opinion of beautiful women. "Please be seated. You are familiar with the name Valentin Vasilyevich Krivoshein?" "Yes." She had a throaty, mellifluous voice. "How about Victor Vitalyevich Kravets?" "Vitya? Yes." Elena Ivanovna smiled, showing her even teeth. "I didn't know his father's name was Vitaly, though. What's the matter?" "What can you tell me about the relationship between Krivoshein and Kravets?" "Well... they worked together. Victor, I think, is a distant relative of Valya... I mean, Krivoshein. I think they were good friends. What's happened?" "Elena Ivanovna, I'll ask the questions." Onisimov figured that she would reveal more if she were emotionally off balance, and he was in no hurry to clear up the situation. "Is it true that you and Krivoshein were close?" "Yes." "Why did you stop seeing him?" Elena Ivanovna's eyes became cold, and a blush came and went from her cheeks. "That has nothing to do with this!" "And how would you know what does and what doesn't have to do with this?" Matvei Apollonovich perked up. "Because... because this can't have anything to do with anything. We broke up and that's all." "I see... all right. We'll come back to that later. Tell me, where did Kravets live?" "In a dormitory for young specialists in Academic Town, like all the probation workers." "Why didn't he live with Krivoshein?" "I don't know. Apparently they both preferred it that way." "Despite the fact that they were friends and relatives? I see. And how did Kravets behave with you? Did he court you?" Matvei Apollonovich was milking his version for all it was worth. "He did,..." Elena Ivanovna bit her lip. But she couldn't control her tongue. "I think you'd do the same if I let you." "Aha, so you let him, eh? Tell me, was Krivoshein jealous of Kravets and you?" "Perhaps, he was... but I don't understand what all this is about." The woman looked at the investigator with great hostility. "All these innuendos! What happened, will you please tell me?" "Calm yourself, citizen!" Maybe I should tell her? Should I? Is she involved? She is beautiful, and a man could really fall for her, but... it's the wrong milieu for serious sexual crimes. The statistics are against it. A scientist wouldn't lose his head over a woman ... but Kravets.... The telephone interrupted Onisimov's ruminations. He picked it up. "Onisimov here." "We've found him, comrade captain!" the operative announced. "Do you want to participate?" "Of course!" "We'll wait for you at the airport, car license plate 57-28 DNA." "I see!" The investigator stood and looked merrily at Kolomiets. "We'll finish this little talk another time, Elena Ivanovna. Let me sign your pass. Don't be upset, and don't be mad: it's nerves-we're all like that, you and I, included...." "But what happened?" "We're investigating. I can say no more for now. Good day!" Onisimov walked her out, then got his gun from the desk drawer, locked the room, and hurried, almost at a run, to the parking lot. The snow white IL jet taxied up to the terminal exactly at 13:00. A light blue, elevated companion stairway pulled up at its door. A heavyset, short man in tight green pants and bright shirt was the first to run down the stairs, and, swinging his colorful traveling bag, he marched down the concrete hexagonal paving stones to the barrier. He kept looking around, seeking someone in the crowd of people greeting the arrivals, found him, and rushed toward him. "You look great! What's all the rush, the 'fly out immediately' during vacation? Let me get a look at you! You're better looking than ever, even taller! That's what a year away does for your looks! Your face seems noble and I can even look upon your jaw without irritation." "And you, I see, have gotten fat off the graduate land." The greeter looked him over with a critical eye. "Have you furnished yourself with socialist accumulations?" "Val, it's not simple accumulation-it's an informational material reserve. I'll tell you all about it later, even give you a demonstration. It's a complete turnaround, Val... but let's talk about you first. Why did you summon me before it was time? No, wait!" The recent passenger pulled out a notebook from his pocket and withdrew several ten-ruble notes, "Here's the money I owe you." "What money?" "Please, spare me the act!" The passenger raised his hand to forestall further protests. "We know; we're touched: the absent-minded scientist who can't be bothered with prosaic minutiae. Drop it. I know you better than that: you remember debts of fifty kopecks. Take the money and cut the bull!" "No," he replied, smiling gently, "you don't owe me a thing. You see-"He stumbled under the direct piercing stare of his companion. "Goddamn it! So you've started dyeing your hair? And the scar? Where's the scar over the eyebrow?" His voice dropped to a whisper. "Who are you?" Meanwhile the crowd of arrivals and welcoming friends and relatives had thinned out. Five men who had met no one and were in no hurry discarded their cigarettes and quickly surrounded the two men. "Keep quiet!" Onisimov hissed, squeezing in between the lab assistant and the passenger who was staring at him in disbelief; the second man had money in his fist. "We'll shoot if you resist." "Oh, boy!" the astonished passenger said, stepping back a pace; he was immediately grabbed by the elbows. "Not 'oh, boy!' but the police, citizen... Krivoshein, I believe?" The investigator smiled with maximum pleasantness. "We'll have to hold you for a while, too. Take them to the cars." Victor Kravets, seating himself in the back seat of a Volga between Onisimov and Gayevoy, had a tired and calm smile on his face. "By the way, if I were you, I'd drop the smile," Matvei Apollonovich noted. "You serve time for jokes like this." "Ah, what's time!" Kravets waved his arm. "The important thing is that I think I've made the right move." "I never thought that my return would begin with an episode from a detective story!" said the passenger as he entered the investigator's office. "Well, once in a lifetime this could prove to be interesting." Without waiting for an invitation, he sat down and looked around. Onisimov sat down opposite him in silence. Two feelings were battling within him: self-congratulation (What an operation! What success!! Caught two at once-red-handed, it looks like!) and worry. Up until now the case had been built on the fact that Krivoshein died or was killed in the laboratory. But.... Matvei Apollonovich took a hard look at the man sitting before him: a slanted brow with a widow's peak, ridges over the eyebrows, a purplish scar over the right brow, a freckled face with full cheeks, a fat nose with a high bridge, and short red hair. There was no doubt about it; Krivoshein was sitting in his chair! "Boy, was I off. So who was bumped off in there? I'm getting to the bottom of this right now!" "Is that a hint?" Krivoshein pointed at the barred windows. "To make even the innocent confess?" "No, this used to be a wholesale warehouse," the investigator explained, and remembering that the lab assistant had begun yesterday's interview the same way, chuckled at the coincidence. "It's a leftover... Well, how do you feel, Valentin Vasilyevich?" "Thank you-I'm sorry, I don't know your name and patronymic-I can't complain. How about you?" "Ditto. Though my condition has no direct bearing on the case." They smiled at each other broadly and tensely, like boxers before beating each other's faces in. "And mine, it would appear, does? I just thought it was standard procedure to enquire about the health of passengers that you grab for no good reason at the airport. So what does my condition have to do with your case?" "We don't grab, citizen Krivoshein. We detain," Onisimov corrected him. "And your health interests me in a completely legal way, since I have a doctor's certificate and several witnesses who say that you are a corpse." "A corpse?" Krivoshein examined himself with exaggerated playfulness. "Well, if that's your information, you might as well haul me off to the autopsy room." Suddenly he understood and his smile disappeared. He looked at Onisimov angrily and anxiously. "Listen, comrade investigator, if this is a joke, it's a lousy one! What corpse?" "Please, who's joking?" Onisimov gestured broadly with his hands. "The day before yesterday your body was found in a laboratory-I saw it with my own eyes-I mean not your body, since you are in good health, but someone who looked very much like you. It was identified as being you." "Damn it!" Krivoshein hunched over and rubbed his cheeks. "Can you let me see the body?" "Well, you know that we can't, Valentin Vasilyevich. It turned into a skeleton, you know. This mischief isn't a very good idea. It could be misinterpreted." "Into a skeleton?!" Krivoshein looked up and confusion showed in his brown-flecked green eyes. "How? Where?" "It happened there, at the scene, as if you needed any information on the matter from me," Onisimov stressed. "Maybe you'd like to explain?" "There was a body which became a skeleton," Krivoshein muttered, frowning. "Then... oh, then it's not so bad. He wasn't wasting time; it looks as if something went wrong. Damn it, look at me!" He cheered up and carefully looked at the detective. "You're mixing me up, comrade, and I don't know why. Bodies just don't turn into skeletons like that. I know a little about it. And then, how can you prove that it's my... I mean, the body of a man who looks like me, if you have no body? Something's wrong here." "Perhaps. That's why I want you to shed light on this yourself. Since all this happened in the laboratory you run." "That I run? Hm...." Krivoshein laughed, and shook his head. "I'm afraid nothing will come of this light shedding. I need someone to explain it all to me." "And this one is going to go mum, too!" Matvei Apollonovich sighed glumly, took a sheet of paper, and unscrewed his pen. "Let's do this in order. Your name is Valentin Vasilyevich Krivoshein?" "Yes." "Age thirty-five? Russian? Bachelor?" "Exactly." "You live in Dneprovsk and head the New Systems Laboratory at the Systemology Institute?" "No, that's the part that's wrong. I live in Moscow, and study in the graduate biology department at Moscow State University. Here!" Krivoshein handed him his passport and documents across the desk. The papers had a realistically weather-beaten look. Everything in them-including the three-year residence permit for Moscow-corresponded with his story. "I see." Onisimov put them in his desk. "These things are done quickly in Moscow, in one day!" "What are you trying to say?!" Krivoshein stared at him, one eyebrow arched aggressively. "Your documents are phony, that's what. Just as phony as your confederate's, to whom you were trying to pass money at the airport. Were you trying to guarantee an alibi? You needn't have bothered. We'll check it, and then what?" "Go ahead and check!" "We will. Whom do you work under at MSU? Who's your advisor?" "Professor Vano Aleksandrovich Androsiashvili, department chairman in general physiology, corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences." "I see." The investigator dialed the phone. "Operator? This is Onisimov. Quickly connect me with Moscow. I want this man on the videophone as soon as possible. Write it down, Vano Aleksandrovich Androsiashvili, professor, head of the physiology department at the university. Hurry!" He stared at Krivoshein triumphantly. "The videophone! Marvelous!" he chuckled. "I see that detective work is approaching science fiction. Will this be soon?" "It'll happen when it happens. We have things to discuss, you and I." Krivoshein's confidence, however, made an impression on Onisimov. He thought: "And what if this is some kind of crazy coincidence? Let me check." "Tell me, do you know Elena Ivanovna Kolomiets?" Krivoshein's face lost its calm expression. He sat up and looked at Onisimov angrily and questioningly. "Yes. So what?" "Very well?" "So?" "Why did you break up?" "This, my dear investigator, if you will excuse me, is absolutely none of your business!" Krivoshein was getting very angry. "I do not permit anyone to meddle in my private life-not God, not the devil, not the police!" "I see," Onisimov said calmly. And the thought: "It's him! No way out of it-it's him. Why is he covering up? What could he possibly be hoping for?" He continued the questioning. "All right, here's an easier question: who's Adam?" "Adam? The first man on earth. Why?" "He called the institute ... the first man. He wanted to know how you were, wanted to see you." Krivoshein shrugged. "And who is that man who met you at the airport?" "Whom you so cleverly branded as my confederate? That man...." Krivoshein raised and dropped his eyebrows meditatively. "I'm afraid he's not the person I took him for." "I don't think he is, either. Not at all." Onisimov perked up. "But then who is he?" "I don't know." "The same nonsense all over again!" Onisimov wailed, throwing down his pen. "Enough of this baloney, citizen Krivoshein. It's unbecoming! You were giving him money, forty rubles in tens. You mean you didn't know to whom you were giving money?" At that moment a young man in a white lab coat came in to the office, put a form on the table, and left, after giving Krivoshein a sharp, curious look. Onisimov looked at the form-it was a report on the analysis of the suspect's fingerprints. When he looked up at Krivoshein, his eyes had a sympathetically triumphant smile. "Well, that's it. We don't have to wait for the Moscow professor to give a visual ID-and he probably wouldn't anyway. Your fingerprints, citizen Krivoshein, correspond completely to the prints that I took at the scene of the crime. Here, see for yourself!" He handed the form and a magnifying glass to Krivoshein. "So let's drop the game. And remember that your flight to Moscow and the fake papers only make things worse. The court adds three to eight years to a sentence for premeditation and the attempt to confound the police." Krivoshein, his lip extended, was studying the form. "Tell me," he said, raising his eyes to the detective, "why can't you allow for the fact that there are two men with the same fingerprints?" "Why?! Because in a hundred years of using this method in criminology, such a thing has never happened once." "Lots of things have never happened before, like Sputnik, hydrogen bombs, and computers, but they exist now." "What do sputniks have to do with this?" Matvei Apollonovich shrugged. "Sputniks are sputniks, and fingerprints are fingerprints, incontestable evidence. So are you going to talk?" Krivoshein gazed deeply and thoughtfully at the detective and smiled gently. "What's your name, comrade investigator?" "Matvei Apollonovich Onisimov, why?" "You know what, Matvei Apollonovich? Drop this case." "What do you mean, drop it?" "Just like that, the usual way, cover it up. How do you phrase it: 'for insufficient evidence' or 'lack of proof of a crime.' You know, 'turned over to the archives on such and such a date....'" Matvei Apollonovich was speechless. He had never encountered such brass in all his years on the force. "You see, Matvei Apollonovich, you'll continue with the varied and, in usual cases, certainly useful activity of questioning, detaining, interrogating, comparing fingerprints, bothering busy people with your videophone." Krivoshein developed his thought gesturing with his right hand. "And all the time you'll keep thinking that any second now you'll have the truth by the tail. Contradictions will smooth out into facts, the facts into evidence; good will triumph, and evil will get a sentence plus time for premeditation." He sighed sympathetically. "The hell these contradictions will smooth out! Not in this case. And you will never hit on the truth for the simple reason that you are not ready to accept it at your level of reasoning." Onisimov frowned and his lips compressed into a huffy pout. "No, no!" Krivoshein waved his hands. "Please don't think that I'm trying to put you down, that I want to demean you, or cast aspersions on your qualities as a detective. I can see that you are a tenacious and hard-working man. But-how can I explain this to you?" He squinted at the sunny yellow window. "Oh, here's a good example. About sixty years ago, as you undoubtedly know, the machinery in factories and plants was powered by steam or diesels. A transmission shaft went through the workshops with driving belts running from it to the machine pulleys. All this spun, buzzed, and hummed, its wild noise bringing joy to the director or owner. Then electricity came on the scene-and now all that has been replaced by electric motors, built into the machines." Once again, like last night, when he had interrogated the lab assistant, Matvei Apollonovich was seized by doubts: something was wrong here! Quite a few people had been in his office, polishing the chair with their squirming: taciturn teenagers who had gotten into trouble through stupidity; weepy speculators; overly-casual accountants caught through a routine check of the books; and repeat offenders who knew all the laws. But all of them realized sooner or later that the game was over, that the moment had come for them to confess and hope that the record reflected their clean-breasted repentance. But this one . . . just sat there as though nothing had happened, waving his arms and explaining at a simple level why the case should be closed. "This lack of game playing is throwing me off again! But no, I'm not going to slip twice in the same place!" he thought. Matvei Apollonovich was an experienced investigator and knew well that doubts and impressions did not build a case-facts did. And the facts were against Krivoshein and Kravets. "Now imagine that in some ancient factory the changeover from mechanical power to electricity took place overnight instead of taking years," Krivoshein went on. "What would the owner of the factory think when he got there in the morning? Naturally, that someone had swiped the steam engine, the transmission shaft, the belts and pulleys. For him to understand that it was a technological revolution and not a theft he would have to know physics, electronics, and electrodynamics. And you, Matvei Apollonovich, figuratively speaking, are in the position of such an owner." "Physics, electronics, electrodynamics." Onisimov repeated distractedly, looking at his watch. Where was that call to Moscow? "And information theory, and the theory of modeling random processes, too?" "Aha!" Krivoshein leaned back in his chair and looked at the detective with undisguised pleasure. "You know about those sciences as well?" "We know everything, Valentin Vasilyevich." "I see there's no tricking you." "And I don't suggest you try. So, are we going to count on an illegal closing of the case or are we going to tell the truth?" "Hah." Krivoshein wiped his forehead and cheeks with a handkerchief. "It's hot in here. All right. Let's agree on this, Matvei Apollonovich. I'll find out what's going on, and then I'll tell you." "No," Onisimov shook his head. "We won't agree on that. It won't do, you know, to have the suspect conduct the investigation of the case. No crime would ever be solved that way." "Goddamn it!" Krivoshein began, but the door opened and a young lieutenant announced: "Moscow, Matvei Apollonovich!" Onisimov and Krivoshein went up to the second floor to the communications room. Vano Aleksandrovich Androsiashvili brought his face so close to the videophone screen that it seemed he wanted to peck through the tube with his hawklike, predatory nose. Yes, he recognized his graduate student Valentin Vasilyevich Krivoshein. Yes, he had seen the student daily for the last few weeks, but he couldn't give them dates of their meetings further back than that by heart. Yes, student Krivoshein had left the university for five days with his personal permission. His growling Georgian r's reverberated in the phone's speaker. He was very upset that he had been dragged away from examinations to take part in this strange proceeding. If the police-here Vano Aleksandrovich fixed his hot blue black eyes on Onisimov-stop believing the very passports that they themselves hand out, then, apparently he will have to change his profession from biologist to verifier of identity for all his graduate students, undergraduates, and relatives, as well as for all the members and corresponding members of the Academy of Sciences whom he has the honor of knowing personally! But in that case, the very natural question of his identity might come up. Wouldn't it be a good idea to have the university rector, or better yet, the president of the academy, come on the videophone to identify this suspicious professor? Having delivered this lecture in one long breath, Vano Aleksandrovich shook his head in farewell and added, "That's not good! You have to trust people!" and disappeared from the screen. The microphones carried the sound of a slamming door all the way to Dneprovsk. The screen showed a fat man with major's bars on his blue shirt; he made a face. "What's the matter, comrades? Couldn't get to the bottom of this yourselves? The end!" The screen went black. "Vano Aleksandrovich is still mad at me," thought Krivoshein as he went down the stairs behind the angrily puffing Onisimov. "It's understandable: he feels sorry for me, and I keep my back to him, hide things. If he hadn't accepted me, none of this would have happened. I barely made it in the exams, like a first-year student. I was okay in philosophy and foreign languages, but in my specialty.... But how could a quick reading of textbooks hide the absence of systematic knowledge?" That had been a year ago. After the entrance exams in biology, Androsiashvili invited him into his office, sat him down in a leather chair, stood by the window and looked at him, his large, balding head tilted to the right. "How old are you?" "Thirty-four." "On the edge. Next year you'll celebrate your thirty-fifth birthday among friends and kiss full-time schooling good-bye. Of course, there's correspondence graduate school. And of course, that exists not for learning, but to have a paid vacation. We won't even talk about it. I read your thesis synopsis. It's a good one, mature, with interesting parallels between the work of the nervous centers and electronic circuits. I gave it an 'excellent.' But..." the professor picked up a report and glanced at it,"... you did not pass the exams, my boy! I mean, you got a 'satisfactory' but we do not take students with a 'C in their major." Krivoshein's expression must have changed drastically, because Vano Aleksandrovich's voice became sympathetic: "Listen, why do you need this? Moving into graduate study? I've familiarized myself with your background-you work in an interesting institute, with a good position. You're a cyberneticist?" "A systemology technologist." "It's all the same to me. Then why?" Krivoshein was prepared for that question. "Precisely because I am a systemologist and a systemology technologist. Man is the most complex and most highly organized system known. I want to figure it out completely-how things are constructed in the human organism, what influences it. To understand the interrelationship of the parts, to put it roughly." "To use these principles to create new electronic circuits?" Androsiashvili screwed up his mouth ironically. "Not only that... and not even so much that. You see... it wasn't always like this. Once man was up against heat and frost; exertion from a hunt or from running away from danger, hunger or rough, unsanitary food like raw meat; heavy mechanical overloads in work; fights which tested the durability of the skull with an oak staff-in a word, once upon a time the physical environment made the same demands on man that... well, that today's military customers make on rockets. (Vano Aleksandrovich harrumphed, but said nothing.) That environment over the millennia formed homo sapiens-the reasoning vertebrate mammal. But in the last two hundred years, if you start from the invention of the steam engine, everything changed. We created an artificial environment out of electric motors, explosives, pharmaceuticals, conveyors, communal service systems, computers, immunization, transport, increased radiation in the atmosphere, paved roads, carbon monoxide, narrow specialization in work-you know, contemporary life. As an engineer, I with others am furthering this artificial environment that determines ninety percent of the life of homo sapiens and soon will determine it one hundred percent. Nature will exist only for Sunday outings. But as a human being, I am somewhat uneasy." He took a breath and continued. "This artificial environment frees man of many of the qualities and functions he developed in ancient evolution. Strength, agility, and endurance are now cultivated only in sports, while logical thought, the pride of the Greeks, has been taken over by machines. But man is not developing any new qualities-the environment is changing too fast and biological organisms can't keep up. Technological progress is accompanied by soothing, but poorly substantiated babble that man will always be on top. Nevertheless-if you talk not about man, but about people, the many and the varied-then that is not true even now, and it will only get worse. Many, many do not have the inherent capabilities to be masters of contemporary life: to know a lot, know how to do a lot, learn new things quickly, to work creatively, and structure one's behavior optimally." "And how do you want to help?" "Help-I don't know if I can, but I would like to study the question of the untapped resources of man's organism. For example, the obsolescent functions, like our common ancestor's ability to leap from tree to tree or to sleep in the branches. Now that is no longer necessary, but the cells are still there. Or take the 'goose bump' phenomenon-it happens on skin that has almost no hair now. It is created by a vast nervous network. Perhaps these old reflexes can be restructured, reprogrammed to meet new needs?" "So! You dream of modernizing and rationalizing man?" Androsiashvili stretched out his neck. "Instead of homo sapiens we'll have homo modernus rationalis, hm? Don't you think, my dear systemology technologist, that a rational path might lead to a man who is no more than a suitcase with a single appendage to push buttons? You could probably manage without that appended arm, if you use brain waves. "If you want to be truly rational, you can manage without the suitcase," Krivoshein noted. "That's true!" Vano Aleksandrovich tilted his head to the other shoulder and looked at Krivoshein curiously. They obviously liked each other. "Not rationalizing, but enriching-that's what I'm thinking about." "Finally!" The professor paced his office. "Finally that broad mass of technological workers, conquerors of inorganic matter, creators of an artificial environment are beginning to see that they too are people! Not supermen who can overcome anything with their intellect, but simply people. Just think of what we're trying to study and comprehend: elemental particles, the vacuum, cosmic rays, antiworlds, the secrets of Atlantis.... The only things we don't study and wish to comprehend are ourselves! It's, you see, too hard, uninteresting, not easy to handle. Hah, the world could perish if people only worked on things that were easy to handle." His voice was even more guttural than usual. "Man feels a biological interest in himself only when he has to go to the hospital... and you're right, if things go on this way, we'll be able to manage without the suitcase. As the students say: 'Machines will lick us before we can say boo!'" He stopped in front of Krivoshein, bent his head, and snorted. "But you're still a dilettante, my systemology technologist. You make it sound so easy: reprogram old reflexes. If it were as easy as reprogramming a computer! Hm, but on the other hand, you are a research engineer, with ideas, with a fresh viewpoint that differs from our purely biological one. What am I saying! Why am I building up hope, as though something will come of you?" He walked over to the window. "You're not going to write and defend a dissertation, are you? You have different goals, right?" "Right," Krivoshein admitted. "There you see. You'll return to your systemology and I'll hear from the rector about not training scientific personnel. Heh, I'll take you!" Androsiashvili concluded without any change in tone. He approached Krivoshein. "But you'll have to study, go through the whole course of biological studies. Otherwise you'll not find any potentials in man, understand?" "Of course!" he nodded joyously. "That's why I'm here." The professor sized him up and pulled him over by the shoulder: "I'll tell you a secret. I'm studying myself. In the evening classes of electronic technology at Moscow Engineering Institute, in my third year. I go to lectures, and do lab work, and I even have two incompletes-in industrial electronics and quantum physics. I, too, want to figure out what goes where. You can help me... only shhhhh!" They were back in Onisimov's office. Matvei Apollonovich paced from wall to wall. Krivoshein looked at his watch: it was after five. He frowned, regretting the wasted time. "So, Matvei Apollonovich, I have my alibi. Please return my documents, and let's say good-bye." "No, wait!" Onisimov paced, beside himself with anger and confusion. Matvei Apollonovich, as has been noted, was an experienced investigator, and he clearly saw that all the facts in this damn case were neatly turned against him. Krivoshein was very obviously alive, and therefore the certified and reported death of Krivoshein was a mistake. He did not ascertain the identity of the man who died or was killed in the laboratory and he didn't even know how to begin to establish the cause of death or means of murder. He did not know the motive for the crime-his version was shot to hell-and there was no body! The facts made it appear that the investigation conducted by Onisimov was just garbage. Matvei Apollonovich tried to collect his thoughts. "Academician Azarov identified Krivoshein's body. Professor Androsiashvili identified the live Krivoshein and confirmed his alibi. That means that either one or the other made a false statement. Which one is not clear. That means I'll have to see both of them. No ... to check up on such people, to put them under suspicion, and then to find out that I'm barking up the wrong tree again! I'll be destroyed...." In a word, Onisimov understood one thing: under no circumstances could he let Krivoshein out of his hands. "No, wait! You won't be able to return to your dirty work, citizen Krivoshein! You think that by... putting makeup on the deceased and then destroying the body, you can get off the hook? We'll still check up on who this Androsiashvili really is and why he's covering up for you! The evidence against you is still there: fingerprints, contact with the escaped suspect, the attempt to give him money...." Krivoshein, disguising his irritation, scratched his chin. "I just don't understand what you're trying to incriminate me with: being killed or being a killer?" "We'll clear it up, citizen!" Onisimov yelled, losing the last remnants of his self-control. "We'll clear it up. But one thing is sure: no way could you not be involved in this case. That's impossible!" "Ah, impossible! ?" Krivoshein came up to the detective, his face flushed. "You think that since you work for the police you know what's possible and what isn't?" And suddenly his face changed rapidly: his nose grew longer and fatter, turning purple and drooping; his eyes grew wider and their green turned to black; his hair fell back from his forehead, creating a bald spot; a mustache sprouted on his upper lip, and his jaw grew shorter. In the space of a minute, Onisimov was facing none other than the Georgian physiognomy of Professor Androsiashvili-with bloodshot eyes, a mighty nose with flaring nostrils and blue, shadowed cheeks. "You think, katso, that because you work for the police you know what is possible and what isn't?" "Stop it!" Onisimov backed up to the wall. "Impossible!" Krivoshein howled. "I'll show you impossible!" He finished the sentence in a mellifluous, throaty woman's voice, and his face began turning into Elena Ivanovna Kolomiets's face: the cute nose turned up; the cheeks grew pink and round; the dark eyebrows arched delicately, and the eyes glowed with gray light. "If anyone should come in now,..." thought Onisimov feverishly and rushed to lock the door. "Uh-huh, drop it!" Krivoshein, himself again, stood in the middle of the room in a boxer's stance. "No, you misunderstood, . . ." muttered Matvei Apollonovich, coming back to his desk. "Why get upset?" "Phew! . . . and don't even think about calling." Krivoshein sat down, puffing, his face glistening with sweat. "Or I can turn into you. Would you like that?" Onisimov's nerves gave out completely. He opened his drawer. "Don't... please relax... stop ... don't! Here, take your papers." "That's better." Krivoshein took his papers and picked up his travel bag from the floor. "I explained to you nicely that you should drop your interest in this case-but no, you didn't believe me. I hope that I've convinced you now. Bye!" He left. Matvei Apollonovich stood still listening to some sound reverberating in the room's stillness. A minute later he realized that it was his teeth chattering. His hands were also shaking. "What's the matter with me?" He grabbed the phone... and dropped it, sank into his chair and impotently laid his head on the cool surface of the desk. "The hell with this job." The door opened wide and the medical expert Zubato appeared on his doorstep with a plywood crate in his hands. "Listen, Matvei, this really is the crime of the century. Congratulations," he shouted. "Lookee here!" He noisily set the box on the table, opened it, and tossed out the straw packing. "I just got this from the sculpture studio. Look!" Matvei Apollonovich looked up. He was staring at the plaster cast of Krivoshein's face-with a sloping forehead, a fat upturned nose, and wide cheeks.... Chapter 5 The best way to disguise that you limp with your left foot is 'to also limp with your right. You will then walk with a sailor's swagger. -K. Prutkov-enzhener. Hints for the Beginning Detective "You sucker, show-off punk!" Krivoshein berated himself. "You found a wonderful application for your discovery-terrifying the police. He would have let me go anyway; there was no way out." His face and body muscles were exhausted. The painful ache was easing in his glands. "Three transformations in a few minutes is an overload. What a hothead. Well, nothing will happen to me. That's the beauty of it, that nothing can happen to me...." The sky was quickly turning dark blue over the houses. The neon signs announcing the names of stores, theaters, and cafes went on with a slight hiss. The graduate student's thoughts returned to Moscow business. "Vano Aleksandrovich passed with flying colors; he didn't even ask why I was being held. He identified me and that's all. I understand it: 'If Krivoshein is hiding his affairs from me then I don't want to know about them.' The proud old man is hurt. And he's right. It was in conversation with him that I zeroed in on my goals in the experiments. Actually, it had been no conversation-it was an agreement. But it isn't everyone with whom you can argue and come out with enriched ideas." Vano Aleksandrovich kept circling him, watching with ironic expectation: what earth-shattering ideas will the dilettante biologist come up with? Once on a December evening, Krivoshein found him in his department office and told him everything that he felt about life in general and about man in particular. It was a good evening: they sat and smoked and talked, while a pre-New Year's storm howled and whistled outside, pounding snow against the window. "Any machine is constructed somehow and does something," Krivoshein was expounding. "The biological machine called Man also has these two parts to it: the basic one and the operative. The operative part-organs of sensation, the brain, motor nerves, and skeletal muscles-is for the most part subservient to man. The eyes, ears, the binding parts of the skin, the nerve endings in the nose and the tongue, and the pain and temperature receptors react to external stimulation, turn it into electrical impulses (just like the mechanism for information input in a computer), while the brain and the spinal column analyze and combine the impulses according to the 'stimulation-braking' principle (similar to the impulse cells of a machine). The synapses join and separate, sending commands to the skeletal muscles, which perform various actions-just like the executive mechanisms of a machine. "Man controls the operative side of his organisms-he can even master reflexes, like pain, by will power. But with the basic side, which takes care of the fundamental process of life-metabolism-it isn't like that. That lungs suck in air; the heart forces blood into the dark crannies of the body; the gullet contracts and pushes pieces of food into the stomach; the pancreas secretes hormones and enzymes to reduce food to elements that the intestines can absorb; the liver excretes glucose into the blood. The thyroid and parathyroid produce wild things, thyroxin and parathyreodine, which determine whether a person will grow and mature or remain a cretinous dwarf, whether he will develop a sturdy skeletal system or whether his bones can be bent like pretzels. An inconsequential-looking growth by the base of the brain-the pituitary body-with the help of its secretions commands the entire mysterious kitchen of internal secretions as well as the functioning of the kidneys, blood pressure, and safe delivery in childbirth. And this part of the organism, which constructs man-his build, skull shape, psychology, health, and power-this part is not subject to the conscious mind!" "Correct," smiled Vano Aleksandrovich. "In your operative side I easily recognize the activity of the 'animal' or somatic nervous system and in the basic one, the realm of the 'vegetative' or sympathetic nervous system. These terms appeared in the eighteenth century; they used the Latin for animal and for plant. Personally, I don't think they're very apt. Perhaps your engineering terms will have greater success in the twentieth century. Well, continue, please." "Machines, even electronic ones, are constructed and made by man. Soon the machines will do it themselves; the principle is clear. But why can't man construct himself? Metabolism is subordinate to the central nervous system. The glands, blood vessels, and intestines are connected to the brain by the same kind of nerves as the muscles and sensory organs are. Why can't man control these processes the way he can wiggle his fingers? Why is man's conscious participation in this process limited to satisfying his appetite and thirst and several opposite needs? It's ridiculous. Homo sapiens, the king of nature, the crown of evolution, the creator of complex technology and art, is distinguished in the basic life process from cows and earthworms only in the use of knives and forks and alcohol!" "Why is it so important to be able to bring sugar, enzymes, and hormones into the blood through will power?" Androsiashvili's bushy eyebrows arched. "Please be so kind as to tell me why, on top of all my worries in the department, I have to also think every hour about how much adrenaline and insulin I should produce in the pancreas and where I should direct it? The sympathetic system takes care of it for me, without bothering man-and that's fine!" "Is it fine, Vano Aleksandrovich? What about disease?" "Disease... so that's your angle: disease as an error in the workings of the basic construction system." The professor's eyebrows turned into sinusoids. "The mistakes that we try to rectify with pills, compresses, vaccinations, and other operative interference, and usually without much success. But... disease is the result of those effects of the environment that the organism can't handle." "And why can't it? After all, we know in most cases what is harmful-that's the basis of disease prevention, epidemic control. We try, simply, to keep away from danger. But the environment keeps spewing out new mysteries: X-ray radiation, welding arcs, isotopes-" "Enough!" The professor raised both hands in surrender. "I have the feeling that you have a secret answer on the tip of your tongue and you just can't wait for your interlocutor to bulge his eyes and ask with timid hope: 'But why?' All right! Look: my eyes are open wide." The whites of his eyes, shot with red, sparkled. "And I am asking the long-awaited question. Why can't people control their metabolism?" "Because they've forgotten how it's done!" Krivoshein thundered. "Bah!" the professor slapped his knee in glee. "They used to know and forgot? Like a phone number? Interesting!" "Let's remember that the human brain contains a huge number of unactivated cells: ninety-nine percent, and in some, ninety-nine point something. It's unlikely that they exist just like that, for a backup reserve; nature doesn't allow excess. It's only natural to posit that those cells contained information that is now lost. Not necessarily verbal information-there is little of that in our organisms now because it's too crude and approximate-but biological information, expressed in images, feelings, sensations-" "Stop! I know the rest!" Androsiashvili shouted exultantly. "Martians! No, better than Martians. After all, they're going to get to Mars sooner or later, and then it could be checked. Let's say inhabitants of a planet that used to exist somewhere between Mars and Jupiter that has since disintegrated into asteroids. Highly intelligent creatures lived there. They had an artificial, varied environment, and they knew how to control their organisms to adapt to the environment and also for fun. And these inhabitants, sensing that their planet was about to die, moved to Earth." "Perhaps it was that way," Krivoshein agreed calmly. "In any case, we must assume that man had highly organized ancestors wherever they came from. And they went wild, finding themselves in a wild, primitive environment with harsh living conditions-in the Cenozoic Era. Heat, jungles, swamps, animals-and no conveniences. Life was reduced to the struggle for survival and all their refinements were wasted. Then over many generations it was all lost, from literacy to the ability to control metabolism. Really, Vano Aleksandrovich, put a city dweller in the jungle now, and see what happens to him!" "Very effective!" Androsiashvili smacked his lips in pleasure. "And the excess brain cells remained in the organism along with the appendix and hairy underarms? Now I understand why my dear colleague Professor Valerno calls science fiction 'intellectual decadence.'" "Why? And what does that have to do with this?" "Because it replaces sober discussion with effective games of the imagination." "Well, you know," Krivoshein countered, getting angry, "in systemology we don't put down working hypotheses with references to the ban mots of friends. Any idea is usable if it is profitable." "And in biology, comrade graduate student," Androsiashvili shouted, rolling his eyes, "we only use ideas that are based on a sober, materialistic approach! And not on the ruins of a fantasy planet! We deal with something more important than technology-we deal with life! And since you are now working in our field, I suggest you remember that! Any dilettante comes along . . . and, phahh!" He immediately cooled off and changed to a peaceful tone. "All right. Let's make believe that each of us has smashed a plate. Now back to the serious things: why is your hypothesis, to put it mildly, dubious? First of all, the 'unactivated' brain cell-technological terminology is not applicable to biological concepts. The cells are alive-therefore they are already activated. Secondly, why not assume that these billions of cells are there as a reserve?" Vano Aleksandrovich got up and looked down at Krivoshein. "My dear comrade graduate student, I do have a little knowledge of technology-after all, I am an evening student at MEI!-and I know that you, hmm, in systemology, you have the concept and problem of reliability. The reliability of electronic systems is guaranteed by a reserve of parts, cells, and even units. Then why not assume that nature has created in man the same kind of reserve for reliability in the brain? After all, nerve cells do not regenerate." "It's an awfully big reserve!" The graduate student shook his head. "The average man uses a million cells out of a possible billion." "And talented people use tens of millions! And geniuses . . . actually, no one's measured their cells yet-maybe they use hundreds of millions. Perhaps the brain of each of us is reserved for genius potential? I tend to feel that genius and not mediocrity is man's natural state." "Very effectively put, Vano Aleksandrovich." "I see you are a cruel man . . . but, think what you will, my reservations have as much value as your hypothesis about Martians gone wild. Hah, and if you take into account the fact that I am your advisor and you are my student, then they are even more valuable!" He sat down. "But let's get back to the major issue: why is present-day man incapable of controlling the autonomous nervous system and metabolism? You know why? Because it hasn't come to that yet." "So that's it!" "Yes. The environment teaches man in only one way: through conditioning drills. You know that in order to form a conditioned reflex the situation and stimulus must be repeated frequently. And that's just how life experience develops. And in order to form an unconditioned reflex that is inherited the drill must be repeated for many generations for thousands of years. You were right about the biological information in the organism; it is not expressed verbally, but by the reflexes, both conditioned and unconditioned. And it is man's will that controls reflexes, of course, in a limited way. You don't think through from beginning to end which muscle must contract how much when you light a cigarette, and you don't think through the chemical reactions of the muscle contraction. The consciousness gives the order to light up and the reflexes take over. Both the specific one that you acquired from practicing that filthy habit-crumple the cigarette, inhale the smoke-as well as the general ones passed on to you from your distant ancestors: grabbing, breathing, and so on..." Vano Aleksandrovich-it wasn't clear whether it was intended to be an illustration or not-lit a cigarette and exhaled a stream of smoke toward the ceiling. "I'm leading up to the fact that the consciousness controls when there is something to control. In the operative part of the organism, when the final action, as Sechenov noted long ago, is a muscular one ... remember?" Androsiashvili sat back in his chair and quoted:" 'A child laughing at a toy, Garibaldi smiling at the accusation of excessive love for his country, a young girl trembling at the first thoughts of love, Newton creating universal laws and writing them down-the final fact in all these instances is muscular action.' Ah, how brilliantly Ivan Mikhailovich wrote! So the operative part gives the mind something to control and lets it choose among its vast store of conditioned and unconditioned reflexes for each unique situation. And in the constructive part, where the body's chemistry takes place, there is nothing for the mind to do. Just think for a moment about what conditioned reflexes are involved in metabolism?" "Drink or not, give me a little more horseradish, can't abide pork, smoking, and...." Krivoshein got confused. "And well, I guess washing, brushing your teeth...." "There's a dozen more like that," nodded the professor, "but they are all minor, semichemical, semimuscular, superficial reflexes. And deeper in the organism there are definite reflex processes that are connected so unilaterally that there is nothing to control: oxygen leaves the bloodstream, breathe; not enough protein for the muscles, eat; excreted water, drink; poisoned yourself with things forbidden for the organism, be sick or die. And there are no variations. You can't say that life did not teach people about metabolic reactions-it taught them cruelly. Epidemics-how nice it would be to figure out through the use of your mind and your reflexes just which bacillus was destroying you and purge it from your body like fleas! Famines-just hibernate like a bear instead of puffing up and dying! Wounds and mutilations in fighting-regenerate your torn-off limb or gouged eye! And that's not enough. It would all be done at high speed. Muscular reaction happens in tenths and hundredths of a second, and the fastest of the metabolic actions-secretion of adrenaline into the bloodstream-takes seconds. The secretion of hormones by the glands and the pituitary is discovered only after years, and maybe only once in a lifetime. Thus," he smiled wanly, "this knowledge is not lost by the organism; it simply has not yet been acquired. It's too difficult for man to learn such a lesson." "And therefore mastery of metabolism could drag on for millions of years?" "I'm afraid that it could take dozens of millions of years," sighed Vano Aleksandrovich. "We mammals are very recent inhabitants of earth. Thirty million years-is that an age? Everything is still ahead of us. "There will be nothing ahead of us, Vano Aleksandrovich!" exclaimed Krivoshein. "The present environment changes from year to year-what kind of million-year learning process can there be, what kind of repetition of lessons? Man has stepped off the path of natural evolution, and now he must figure things out for himself." "And we are." "What? Pills, powders, hemorrhoidal suppositories, enemas, and bed rest? Are you sure that we are improving man's breed this way? Maybe we're ruining it?" ' I'm not trying to talk you into involving yourself with pills and powders if those are the terms you choose to use for the antibiotics our department is developing," Vano Aleksandrovich said, his face taking on a cold and haughty look. "If you want to study your idea-go ahead, dare. But explaining the unrealistic and unplanned aspects of this decision in graduate work and for a future dissertation is my right and my duty." He stood up and tossed the butts from the ashtray into the wastebasket. "Forgive me, Vano Aleksandrovich. I certainly didn't want to hurt your feelings." Krivoshein also stood, realizing that the conversation was over, and ending on an unpleasant note. "But. . . Vano Aleksandrovich, there are very interesting facts." "What facts?" "Well ... in the last century in India there was a man-god, Ramakrishna. And, if someone was being beaten nearby, he had welts on his body. Or take 'burns by suggestion': a sensitive subject is touched with a pencil and told that it was a lit cigarette. In these cases metabolism is controlled without a 'learning process,' is it not?" "Listen, you nagging student," Androsiashvili wheeled on him, "how many window bolts can you eat in a sitting?" "Hmmmm," Krivoshein said in confusion. "I don't think any at all. How about you?" "Me neither. But a patient I had in the dim past when I worked in the Pavlov Psychiatric Clinic swallowed, without any particular harm to himself, . . ." the professor leaned back, remembering, "five window bolts, twelve aluminum teaspoons, three tablespoons, two pairs of surgical scissors, 240 grams of broken glass, one fork, and 400 grams of various nails. Now these are not the results of an autopsy, mind you, but the history of a disease-I cut him open myself. The patient was cured of suicidal tendencies and is probably still alive today." The professor glanced down at Krivoshein from the heights of his erudition. "So in scientific matters it is better not to orient yourself by religious fanatics or secular psychopaths. No, no!" He raised his hand to stave off the obvious look of disagreement in Krivoshein's eyes. "Enough arguing. Go ahead, I won't stop you. I'm sure that you will try to regulate metabolism with some kind of machine or electronic method." Vano Aleksandrovich gave the student a thoughtful and tired look and smiled. "Catching the Firebird with your bare hands! What could be better? And you have a holy goal: man without diseases, without old age-age is a result of a breakdown in metabolism, too. Twenty years or so ago, I would have allowed myself to be fired up by this idea. But now... now I must do what can definitely be done. Even if it's only a pill." Krivoshein turned down a cross street toward the Institute of Systemology and almost bumped into a man in a dark blue cloak, much too warm for the season. The unexpectedness of the encounter produced further problems: Krivoshein stepped to the left to let the man past, while the man did the same to the right. Then both of them, letting the other go first, finally set off in opposite directions. The man stared at Krivoshein in amazement and stopped. "I beg your pardon," he muttered and went on. The street was dark and empty. Krivoshein soon heard footsteps behind him and looked back: the man in the cloak was following at a short distance. "That Onisimov!" thought the graduate student. "He's got a detective tailing me!" He experimented by going faster and heard the man's pace increase. "Ah, the hell with him! I'm certainly not going to cover my tracks." Krivoshein went on slowly, rambling. However, his back felt uncomfortable and his thoughts returned to reality. "So, I guess Val tried another experiment. Maybe he wasn't alone? It failed; that corpse turning into a skeleton. But why are the police involved? And where is he? Our Val must have blown town on his bike until things calmed down. Or maybe he's in the lab?" Krivoshein approached the monumental, cast-iron gates of the institute. The rectangular posts of the gates were so large that the left one easily contained the pass office and the right one the entrance way. He opened the door. Old man Vakhterych, the ancient guard of science, was nodding off behind the barrier. "Good evening!" Krivoshein nodded at him. "Good evening, Valentin Vasilyevich!" replied Vakhterych, obviously not about to ask him for his pass; they were used to visits by the head of the New Systems Lab at all hours. Krivoshein, inside the grounds, looked back; the creep in the cloak was stuck outside. There you go, chum," Krivoshein thought. "The pass system proves itself once again." The windows of the lodge were dark. A red cigarette light glowed by the door. Krivoshein crouched under the trees and made out a uniform cap on a man's head against the stars. "No, I've had it with the cops for one day. I'd better go home,..." he laughed. "I mean to his house." He started for the gates, but remembered the fellow in the cloak and stopped. "That's against all the rules, the suspect running into the detective's arms. Let him do some work." Krivoshein headed for the other end of the park-where the branches of the old oak hung over the iron pickets of the fence. He jumped from the branch onto the sidewalk and started for Academic Town. "But what happened with his experiment? And who was that guy who met me at the airport? The telegram really confused me: I thought he was Val! He does look like him-very much so. Could it be? Val obviously didn't sit around all year twiddling his thumbs! Too bad we didn't write. What petty fools we are: each one wanting to prove that he could do without the other, to astound the other a year later with his results. With his own results! The highest form of possession. And so we've amazed each other. We're destroying a major project with pettiness. With pettiness, lack of forethought, and fear. We shouldn't have scattered every which way, but tried to attract people who were worthy and real, like Vano Aleksandrovich, from the very beginning. Yes, but back then I didn't know him, and it won't help to try it now, when he storms past me and gives me dirty looks." It had all happened in the spring, in late March when Krivoshein had only begun mastering metabolism in his own body. Busy with himself, he hadn't noticed spring until spring made him notice: a heavy icicle fell on him from the roof of a five-story building. If it had fallen a half inch to the left, it would have been the end of the experiments on metabolism as well as the end of his organism. But the icicle merely ripped his ear, broke his collar bone, and knocked him down. "Disaster, disaster!" That's what he heard professor Androsiashvili saying as he came to. He was leaning over him, feeling his head, unbuttoning his coat. "I'll kill that janitor for not clearing the snow!" he said, angrily shaking his fist. "Can you walk?" He helped Krivoshein up. "Don't worry, your head is fairly whole. The clavicle will heal in a few weeks. It could have been worse. Hold on, I'll walk you over to the infirmary." "Thank you, Vano Aleksandrovich, I'll manage myself," Krivoshein replied as heartily as he could, even squeezing out a smile. "I'll make it, it's nearby." And he moved on quickly, almost at a run. He stopped the bleeding from his ear immediately. But his right hand was dangling loosely. "I'll call them to get the electric stitcher ready!" the professor called after him. "They'll be able to sew up the ear!" Back in his room, Krivoshein taped up his ear, torn along the cartilage, in front of the mirror and wiped away the caked blood with cotton. That was easy. Ten minutes later there was only a pink scar where the tear had been, and in a half hour, that was gone too. Mending the clavicle was a lot harder; he had to lie on his bed all evening concentrating on commanding the blood vessels, the glands, and the muscles. The bones had much less chemical solution than soft tissue. He decided to go to Androsiashvili's class in the morning. He got to the hall early to take an inconspicuous seat in the back and ran into the professor, who was instructing students about the hanging of posters. Krivoshein backed off, but it was too late. "Why are you here? Why aren't you in the clinic?" Vano Aleksandrovich went pale, staring at the student's ear and the right hand in which he was clutching his notebook. "What is this?" "And you said it would take dozens of millions of years, Vano Aleksandrovich." Krivoshein couldn't resist. "You see, it can be done without 'drilling.'" "You mean... it's working? How?" Krivoshein bit his lip. "Mmmm, a little later, Vano Aleksandrovich," he muttered awkwardly. "I still have to figure it all out myself." "Yourself?" The professor raised his eyebrows. "You don't want to tell?" His face grew cold and haughty. "All right, as you wish. Pardon me!" He went to his desk. From that day on he nodded icily to his student when they met, and never entered into a discussion. Krivoshein, to keep his conscience from bothering him too much, lost himself in his experiments. He really did have a lot more to learn. "Don't you understand that I wanted to demonstrate my discovery-relive my burning interest in it, your praise, fame, . . ." thought Krivoshein as he tried to justify himself before the invisible Androsiashvili. "After all, unlike the psychopaths I could have explained it all. Of course, this doesn't work with other people yet; they don't have the constitution for it. But the important thing is that I've proved the possibility of it, the knowledge. If only the discovery had been limited to the fact that I can heal my own wounds, breaks, and cure myself of diseases! The trouble with nature is that it never gives just exactly as much as is needed for the welfare of man-it's always either too much or too little. I got too much. I could, probably, turn myself into an animal, even into a monster. That's possible. Everything's possible. That's the scary part." Krivoshein sighed. The window and glass door that opened onto the balcony of the fifth floor glowed softly. It looked like the table lamp was on. "Is he home?" Krivoshein ran up the stairs, rummaged through his pockets from force of habit, remembered that he had thrown out the key a year ago, and swore at himself, for it would have been very effective to suddenly walk in: "Your documents, citizen!" There still was no doorbell, and he knocked. He heard light, quick steps-they made his heart beat faster-and the lock clicked. Lena was opening the door. "Oh, Val, you're alive!" She grabbed his neck with her warm hands, looked him over, smoothed his hair, hugged him, and began crying. "Val, my darling... and I thought... they've been saying such horrible things! I called your lab, and there was no answer. I called the institute, and when I asked where you were, what had happened, they hung up. I came here, and you were gone. And they told me that you were...." She sobbed angrily. "The fools!" "All right, Lena, don't. That's enough. What's the matter?" Krivoshein wanted very much to hold her close and he barely controlled his arms. It was as though nothing had happened: not discovery number one, not the year of mad, concentrated work in Moscow, where he cast away the past.... Krivoshein had tried more than once-for spiritual peace-to eradicate Lena's face from his memory. He knew how it was done: a rush of blood with an increased glucose level to the brain's cortex, small oxidations directed at the nucleotides of a certain area-and the information is removed from the cells forever. But he didn't want to... or couldn't. 'Wanting' and 'being able'-how do you distinguish them in yourself? And now the woman he loved was weeping on his shoulder, weeping from anxiety about him. He had to soothe her. "Stop, Lena. Everything's all right, as you can see." She looked up at him. Her eyes were wet, happy, and guilty. "Val... you're not mad at me, are you? I said all those horrible things to you then-I don't know why myself. I'm just stupid! You were hurt? I thought that it was all over, too, but when I found out that something had happened to you ... I couldn't. You see, I ran here. Forget it, please? It's forgotten, all right?" "Yes," Krivoshein said sincerely. "Let's go inside." "Oh, Val, you can't imagine how terrified I was!" She was still holding onto his shoulders, afraid to let go. "And that investigator... the questions!" "He called you in, too?" "Yes." "Aha, the old cherchez la femme!" They went inside. It hadn't changed: a gray daybed, a cheap desk, two chairs, a bookshelf piled with magazines up to the ceiling, and a wardrobe with the usual mirrored door. In the corner by the door lay crisscrossed dumbbells. "I cleaned up a little, waiting for you. The dust... you have to keep the balcony door shut tight, when you leave." Lena moved close to him. "Val, what did happen?" "If I only knew!" he thought with a sigh. "Nothing terrible... just a lot of brouhaha." "Why the police, then?" "The police? They were called, and they came. If they had called the fire department, they would have come too." "Oh, Val,..." she placed her arms around his neck and wrinkled up her nose. "Why are you like that?" "Like what?" he asked, feeling more stupid by the second. "Well, seemingly grown-up, but irresponsible. And when I'm with you I turn into a silly schoolgirl.... Val, where's Victor. What happened to him? Listen," she asked, her eyes growing wide, "is it true that he's a spy?" "Victor? What Victor?" "Are you joking? Victor Kravets, your assistant and nephew twice removed." "Nephew, lab assistant...." Krivoshein was momentarily confused. "So that's it!" Lena threw up her hands. "Val, what's the matter with you? You can tell me. What happened in the lab?" "Forgive me, Lena, I just got confused. Of course, old Peter, I mean Victor Kravets, my trusty assistant and nephew ... a very nice guy...." The woman still regarded him wide-eyed. "Don't be surprised, Lena, this is just a momentary amnesia, that always happens after... after an electric shock. It'll pass, it's not serious. So you say the rumor's begun that he's a spy? Ah, that Academy of Sciences!" "Then it's true that there was a catastrophe in the lab? Why, why do you keep everything from me? You could have been-no! I don't want to think about it!" "Stop, please God, stop!" Krivoshein said irritably, sitting down. "Could have, couldn't have, did, wasn't.... You see, everything is fine. (I wish it were, he thought.) I can't tell you anything until I've figured it all out myself." He moved into an attack. "And what's your problem? So, there's one Krivoshein more or less in the world-big deal! You're young, beautiful, childless-you'll find someone else, someone better than an aging codger like me. Take Peter, I mean, Victor Kravets: he's better for you?" "Again?" she smiled, came up behind his chair, and put his head on her bosom. "Why do you keep harping on Victor? I don't need him. I don't care how good-looking he is; he's not you, understand? That's it. And the others aren't you either. Now I know for sure." "Hm?" Krivoshein untangled himself. "What, 'hm'? You're jealous, silly. I didn't sit at home every night like a nun. I went out. I was courted, even seriously by some. And still, they were all wrong!" Her voice caressed him. "They're not like you-and that's it! I came back to you anyway." Krivoshein felt the warmth of her body with the back of his neck, felt her soft hands on his eyes and experienced an incomparable bliss. "I could sit like this forever. I've just come back from work, and nothing has happened . . . and I'm tired and she's here . . . but something did happen! Something very serious happened, and I'm sitting here stealing her caresses!" He got up. "All right, Lena. You'll excuse me, but I'm not going to walk you home. I'll just sit a while or go to sleep. I don't feel very well after all that." "I'll stay?" It was half question, half statement. For a second Krivoshein was overwhelmed with wild jealousy. "I'll stay?" she used to say and he would agree. Or maybe he suggested it himself: "Stay tonight, Lena." And she stayed. "No, Lena, you go home." He laughed bitterly. "That means you're still mad, right?" She looked at him and got mad. "You're a fool, Val, a real jerk! The hell with you!" And she turned for the door. Krivoshein stood in the middle of the room, listening: the click of the lock, Lena's heels on the stairs, the downstairs door slamming, quick light steps on the pavement. He ran to the balcony to call to her-and the evening breeze sobered him up. "So, I see her, and fall back in just like that! I wonder what she said to him? All right, the hell with last year's romances!" He went back inside. "I have to find out what happened here. Wait! He must have a diary! Of course!" Krivoshein pulled open all the drawers in the desk, tossing out magazines, folders, quickly glancing through notebooks. No, that's not it. On the bottom of the last drawer he found a cassette, a quarter filled, and for a minute he forgot about his search: he got the cassette player from the shelf, dusted it off, put in the cassette, and turned it on playback. "With the rights of the discoverers," a hoarse voice began, after some hissing, carelessly slurring the endings of words, "we are taking it upon ourselves to research and exploit the discovery to be called-" "The artificial biological synthesis of information," another voice (though remarkably like the first) added. "It's not particularly euphonious, but it's accurate." "Fine. The artificial biological synthesis of information. We understand that this discovery touches upon man's life like no other and is capable of becoming the greatest threat or the greatest boon for mankind. We swear to do everything in our power to use this discovery for the good of humanity." "We swear that until we have researched all the potentials of this discovery-" "And until it is clear to us how to use it with absolute reliability for the good of humanity-" "Not to turn it over into anyone else's hands-" "And not to publish anything about it." Krivoshein stood with his eyes closed. He was transported to that May night when they made that vow. "We vow not to give away our discovery for our well-being, or fame, or immortality until we are sure that it cannot be used to harm people. We will destroy our work rather than permit that." "We swear!" The two voices spoke in unison. The tape ended. "We were hotheads then. So, the diary must be nearby." Krivoshein dove into the desk once more, rummaged about, and a second later held a notebook with a yellow cardboard cover, as thick and heavy as a book. There was nothing written on the cover, but Krivoshein was certain that he had found what he was after: a year ago, when he got to Moscow, he had bought himself the exact same notebook in a yellow cover to keep his own diary. He sat down at the desk, moved the lamp closer, lit a cigarette, and opened the notebook. PART TWO * SELF-DISCOVERY Chapter 6 The relativity of knowledge is a great thing. The statement "two plus two equals thirteen" is relatively closer to the truth than "two plus two equals forty-one." You could even say that the move to the former from the latter represents an expression of creative maturity, scholarly courage, and unheard-of scientific progress-if you didn't know that two plus two equals four. We know that in arithmetic, but it's too soon to rejoice. For example, in physics, two plus two equals less than four because of a defect in mass. And in such fine sciences as sociology or ethics, not even two plus two, but even one plus one can be either a future family or a conspiracy to rob a bank. -K. Prutkov-enzhener, Thought 5 May 22. Today I saw him off at the train. In the station restaurant, the customers stared at two grown twins. I felt uncomfortable. He was happy. "Remember, fifteen years ago, I-no, I guess it was you-left for the exams at the physics-technological institute? It was all the same: a streak of alienation, freedom, uncertainty...." I remembered. Yes, it was the same. The same waiter with an expression of chronic dissatisfaction with life served tenth-graders who had escaped into life. Then we thought that everything was ahead of us; and so it was. And now there is quite a bit behind us: happy things, and gray things, and things that make it scary to look back, and yet it still seems that the best and most interesting is ahead. Then we drank the cheapest port. Now the waiter brought us fine cognac. We each had a glass. It was noisy and crowded in the restaurant. People were eating and drinking in a rush. "Look," my double pointed out, "a mother feeding twins. Greetings, colleagues! Look at their eyes. How do you think they'll turn out? For now their mother is taking care of them, and even so they managed to smear porridge all over their faces in the same way. But in a few years another bustling mother will take over-Life. One, say, will grab a chicken by the tail and pull out all the feathers. The first in a collection of unrepeatable impressions, since there will be no feathers left for the other to pull. But the other will get lost in a store with great weeping and wailing-another personal, unique experience. And a year later his mother will let him have it for the jam that his brother gobbled up. Again differences: one will sense injustice while the other is getting away without punishment. Oh, mama, watch it. If things go on like that, one of them will grow up to be a timid loser, and the other a sly fellow who gets away with everything. You'll cry then, mama. You and I are like those twins." "Well, at least an unfair spanking won't knock us off the track. We're at the wrong age." "I'll drink to that!" They announced the train. We went out to the platform. He went on talking. "You know what's interesting? What happens to that old saw about people being born with a destiny? Let's say that it was intended at your birth for you to move through space and time at a certain rate, to advance at work, etc. And suddenly-abracadabra!-there are two Krivosheins! And they lead separate lives in separate cities. Now what happens to the divine plan? Or did God write it in two variants? And what if we turn into ten? And what if we don't want to, and don't?" We both made believe that something ordinary was happening. "Friends, check to see that you haven't kept the departing passengers' tickets by mistake!" I hadn't. The train took him to Moscow. We agreed to write to each other when necessary (I'll bet that he won't feel that necessity very soon!) and to meet next July. We'll spend this year approaching the problem from two angles; he'll take biology, and I'll take systemology. We'll see.... When the train left I realized that I would miss him. I guess because this was the first time that I had felt as comfortable with another person as I do with ... with myself. There's no other way of putting it. Even between Lena and me there is always something left unsaid, misunderstood, strictly personal. But with him... but even with him, we each developed our own secrets over a month of living together. Interesting, that bustling mother life! I was high on cognac, and coming back from the station I stared at people and at life. Women with concerned, anxious faces entering stores. Guys riding on motorcycles with girls on the back seat. Lines forming by the newspaper kiosks, waiting for the evening papers. Human faces, how different they all are, how understandable and mysterious! I can't explain how it happens, but I seem to know about a lot of them. The corners of the mouth, harsh or fine wrinkles, the bearing of the head, and the eyes-especially the eyes!-they are all signs of preverbal information. Probably from the days when we were apes. Just recently I did not notice such things. I did not notice, for instance, that people waiting in line were ugly. The banality and meaninglessness of such an occupation, the worry that they will run out, that someone will sneak in ahead of them, leaves an ugly imprint on the face. And drunks are ugly, and brawlers are ugly. But take a look at a young girl, laughing at a joke made by the boy she loves. Or at a mother, nursing a child. At a master craftsman doing fine work. At a good man thinking about something. They are beautiful, despite pimples, wrinkles, and lines. I could never appreciate beauty in animals. As far as I'm concerned only man is beautiful-and then only when he is human. A toddler stared at me as though I were a miracle, tripped and fell, insulted by earth's pull. His mother, naturally, added to his pain. The little guy suffered for nothing. What kind of marvel am I? Just a man getting fat, with a round back, and a common face. But maybe the little fellow was right: I'm really a miracle? And every person is a miracle? What do we know about people? What do I know about myself? In the problem called life, people are a given that does not have to be proved. And everyone who uses that given comes up with his own theory. Take my double, for instance. He left and that was both unexpected and logical. But wait! If I'm going to get into this, I should start at the beginning. It's funny to remember. Actually, I began with the simplest of intentions. To do my dissertation. But creating something secondhand and compilatory (sort of like the topic recommended to me by my former chief professor Voltampernov, "Several Peculiarities in Projecting Diode Memory Systems") was boring and repulsive. I was human after all. I wanted an unsolved problem, to get into its soul and to investigate nature with the help of reason, machines, and apparatus. And to discover something that no one had ever known. Or to invent something that no one else ever had thought of. And to be asked questions at the defense that would be fun to answer. And then to be told by friends, "Well, you really let them have it! Terrific!" All the more because I can do that. It's not something you announce to people, but I can say it in my diary: I can. Five inventions and two completed research projects are proof of that. And this discovery... ah, no, Krivoshein, don't be in a rush to add this to your intellectual laurels. You're mixed up by this and still can't get it straightened out. In a word, my heart's desire is what led me into the thick of that tendency of world systemology where the fundamental operative function is not the formula, or the algorithm, not even the recipe, but mere chance. We, with our limited minds, love to make juxtapositions: lyric poets and physicists, waves and particles, plants and animals, machines and people.... But in life and in nature these things are not juxtaposed; they complement each other. Just as logic and chance complement each other in comprehension and solution finding. You can find much of the unproved, the capricious, in mathematical and logical constructions and you can find logical laws at work in random events. For example, the ideological enemy of random retrieval, Voltampernov, doctor of technological sciences, never missed a chance to parry my suggestion (to study modeling of random processes) with the quip: "But that will be modeling with, so to speak, coffee grounds!" Isn't this the best illustration of that complementary nature? And it was hard to argue. There was little achieved in this field, and many projects ended unsuccessfully, and ideas... ideas didn't have enough effect. In our department, like in the Wild West, they believed only in bare facts. I was thinking of following the example of Valery Ivanov, my friend and former head of the lab, and to call it quits with the institute and move on to another city. But-and here it was, the random chance!-the builders did not complete the new building for perfectly good reasons, and the money allotted in the institute's budget was not spent for good reason, and Arkady Arkadievich announced a "contest" to find the best way to spend eighty thousand rubles. I'm sure that the most virulent defender of determinism would have to be careful not to make a mistake here. I had formed my idea by then to research what a computer would do if it was fed not by a program that had been reduced to a binary system, but with ordinary-meaningful and random-information. Just that. Because when it is programmed it works with an amazing brilliance that stuns reporters. ("A new breakthrough in science: a machine can plan a shop's work in three minutes!"-because the programmers in their modesty usually fail to mention the number of months they prepared for that three-minute decision.) Naturally, my idea done in an elementary way was nothing more than delirium for any intelligent systemologist: the computer would not behave in any way at all; it would simply stop! But I wasn't planning on doing it the elementary way. To spend eighty thousand rubles to equip a lab in the five weeks left in a fiscal year, even a lab that was as flexible as one for pure research, was no snap. It's no wonder that the equipment genius of the institute, Alter Abramovich, still shakes hands respectfully whenever we meet. Actually, he didn't realize that an idea coupled with a burning desire to move into the operative expanses can work wonders. So, this was the situation: there was money and nothing else. Five thousand to the builders for the best lodge possible. (They tried all kinds of manipulation, like "Dear man! we'll fulfill the plan and even win a prize, you'll see!") Thirteen thousand for a TsVM-12 computer. Another nine thousand for all kinds of sensors and receivers: piezoelectric microphones, flexible strain gauges, germanium phototransistors, gas analyzers, thermistors, an apparatus for calculating the electromagnetic biopotentials of the brain using the SES-1 system with four thousand microelectrodes, pulsometers, semiconducting moisture analyzers, and photoelemental "reading" arrays . . . basically, everything that turns sounds, images, smells, small pressures, temperatures, weather changes, and even spiritual impulses into electrical impulses. With four thousand I bought various reagents, laboratory glassware, chemical equipment-in case I ever wanted to employ chemotronics, about which I had heard a little. (And if I'm going to be completely honest, because it was easy to buy this stuff by requisition. I don't have to mention the fact that I didn't use any of the eighty thousand for personal effects.) All this was fine, but the core of the experiment was still missing. I knew what I wanted: a commutator that could switch and combine random signals from the sensors in order to send them to a "reasoning" computer-a piece of an electronic brain with a free circuit of connections of several thousand switching cells. You can't get something like that even by written order-it doesn't exist. Buy the parts that make up the usual computers (diodes, triodes, resistors, condensers, etc.) and order one? It would take too long, and was completely unrealistic. I would have to supply a detailed blueprint for something like that, but what I wanted couldn't have a blueprint. It was really a case of not knowing where I would go or what I would find. And once more my friend chance gave me my "I don't know what" and Lena.... Wait. Here I'm not willing to put it all down to chance. Meeting Lena was a gift of fate, pure and simple. But as for the crystal unit... if you think about something day and night, you'll always come up with it, find or notice it. Here was the situation: three weeks left 'til the end of the year; fifty thousand rubles still unused; no hopes of finding the commutator; and I'm riding a bus. "They bought fifty thousand rubles worth of solid-state circuits and then they found out they don't fit!" a woman in a brown fur coat was exclaiming in front of me to her neighbor. "That's disgusting!" "Madness," she agreed. "Now Pshembakov is trying to blame everything on the supply department. But he ordered them himself!" "Just think of the gall!" The words "fifty thousand" and "solid-state circuits" had gotten my attention. "Excuse me, but what kind of circuits?" The woman turned to me, her face so beautiful and stern that I was sorry I had interrupted. " 'Not-ors' and flip-flops!" she answered hotly. "What parameters?" "Low-voltage-excuse me, but why are you butting into our conversation?" And that's how I met Elena Ivanovna Kolomiets, an engineer from the nearby construction design bureau. The following day, engineer Kolomiets wrote a pass for executive engineer Krivoshein to visit her department. "Savior! Benefactor!" cried the head of the department, Zhalbek Balbekovich Pshembakov, when engineer Kolomi