Monday Begins on Saturday

Chapter 1

Eighty-three percent of the days in a year begin the same way: the alarm clock rings. This clamor intrudes into the final dreams sometimes as the frenetic clatter of the paper perforator, sometimes as the angry rolling of Feodor Simeonovich’s basso, or, again, as the scrabblings of basilisk claws frolicking in a thermostat.

On that particular day, I dreamed of Modest Matveevich Kamnoedov. He had become the director of the computer center and was teaching me to operate the Aldan. “Modest Matveevich,” I kept saying, “everything you are telling me is a sick delirium.” And he thundered back, “You will note that down-n-n for me! Everything you have here is j-u-n-k, bru-m-magem!” At last I realized that it was not Modest Matveevich I heard, but my alarm clock, Friendship, with eleven jewels and a picture of an elephant with upraised trunk. Mumbling, “I hear you, I hear,” I banged my hand on the table in the vicinity of the clock.

The window was wide open to a bright blue spring sky and its sharp coolness. Pigeons were strutting and pecking on the cornice. Three tired flies were buzzing around the glass shade of the ceiling light, apparently the first arrivals of this year. From time to time, they suddenly went berserk and flung themselves about from side to side. Into my sleepy head came the brilliant thought that they were surely trying to escape from this plane of existence, and I felt a deep compassion for their hopeless endeavors. Two of them sat on the shade and the third vanished, and that woke me completely.

First thing, I threw off the blanket and attempted to soar over the bed. As usual, before my setting-up exercises, shower, and breakfast, this led only to the reactive component driving me forcefully down into the mattress, causing springs to twang and creak in complaint below me. Next, I remembered the previous evening and felt very chagrined because all day I would not have any work to do. The night before, at eleven o’clock, Cristobal Joseevich had come to Electronics and, as usual, had connected himself to the Aldan in order to solve the next problem in the meaning of life, jointly with it. In five minutes, Aldan was on fire. I didn’t know what could burn in it, but it had gone out of commission for good, and that was why, instead of working, I, like those hairy-eared loafers, would have to wander aimlessly from department to department, grousing about my circumstances and telling jokes.

I made a wry face, sat on the bed, and breathed in a chestful of prahna mixed with the cool morning air. For the required time I waited until the prahna was assimilated and thought happy and radiant thoughts, as recommended. Next I breathed out the cold morning air and started on the complex of moming gymnastics. They tell me that the old school prescribed yoga exercises, but the yoga-complex and the now-almost-forgotten maya-complex took up fifteen to twenty hours a day, and the old school had to give in when the new president of the U.S.S.R Academy of Sciences was appointed to the post. The young people of SRITS broke old traditions with relish. At the hundred and fifteenth leap, my roommate, Victor Korneev, fluttered into the room. As usual in the morning he was brisk, energetic, and even good-natured. He slapped me on my bare back with a wet towel, and went flying around the room making breaststroke swimming motions with his arms and legs. While so doing, he recounted his dreams and simultaneously interpreted them, according to Freud, Merlin, and the maid Lenorman. I went to wash; then we straightened the room and set off to the dining room.

In the dining room, we took our favorite table, under the large but already faded banner Bravely, comradesl Snap your jaws! G. Flaubert, opened bottles of yogurt, and set to eating while lending an ear to the local gossip and news.

The previous night, the traditional spring fly-in had taken place on Bald Mountain. Participants had deported themselves most disgustingly. Viy and Homa Brutus went arm in arm, cruising the town streets at night, accosting passersby, foulmouthed and drunk, and then Viy stepped on his eyelid and went totally ape. He and Homa had a fight, turned over a newspaper kiosk, and landed in the police station, where they were given fifteen days each for hooliganism.

Basil the tomcat had taken a spring vacation—to get married. Soon Solovetz would be graced by talking kittens with ancestralarteriosclerotic memory.

Louis Sedlovoi had invented some kind of time machine and would be reporting on it that day at the seminar.

Vibegallo again appeared at the Institute. He went everywhere and bragged that he had been illuminated with a titanic idea. The speech of many apes, you see, resembles recorded human speech played backward at high speed. So he recorded the conversations of baboons at the Sukhumi preserve and, having heard them through, played them in reverse at low speed. Something phenomenal had been produced, he declared, but what exactly he did not say.

In the computer center, the Aldan had again been burned, but Sasha Privalov was not at fault; Junta was the guilty one, as he had been interested lately in only those problems having been proved to have no solutions.

The elderly sorcerer Peruhn Markovich Chimp-Oafus, from the Department of Atheism, had taken a leave of absence for his regular reincarnation.

In the Department of Perpetual Youth, after a long and extended illness, the model of an immortal man had died.

The Academy of Science had allotted its nth sum to the Institute for the improvement of the grounds. Modest Matveevich was planning to use it for an ornate cast-iron fence to surround the Institute, with allegorical decorations and flowerpots on the pillars. The backyard was to have a fountain with a forty-foot jet, between the substation and the fuel dump. The sport bureau had requested money for a tennis court, but Modest refused this, declaring that the fountain was needed for scientific meditations, while tennis was nothing but leg-kicking and arm-swinging.

After breakfast, everybody scattered to their labs. I, too, looked in on my place, and sorrowfully ambled around my Aldan with its exposed circuitry in which dour technicians from Engineering Maintenance were poking their instruments. They were in no mood to talk to me and suggested sourly that I go somewhere else and mind my own business. I shuffled off to visit friends.

Victor Korneev threw me out because I hampered his concentration. Roman was lecturing to undergrads. Volodia Pochkin was conversing with a correspondent. Seeing me, he was delighted and cried, “A-ah, here he is. Meet our director of the Computer Center. He will tell you how—“ But I very cleverly pretended to be my own double, and having thoroughly frightened the correspondent, ran off. At Eddie Amperian’s I was offered some fresh cucumbers, and a very animated discussion was in the making about the advantages of a gastronomic view of life, but suddenly their distillation polyhedron blew and they forgot about me at once.

In complete despair I went out into the hail and bumped into Janus-U, who said, “So,” and hesitating, inquired whether we had a talk yesterday. “No,” I said, “regretfully we didn’t.” He went on and I heard him ask the same standard question of Gian Giacomo.

Finally I drifted over to the absolutists, arriving just before the start of the seminar. The colleagues, yawning and cautiously stroking their ears, were seating themselves in the small conference auditorium. The head of the department of All White, Black, and Gray Magics, magister-academician Maurice Johann Lavrentii Poopkov-Lahggard, sat in the chairman’s post, his fingers calmly intertwined, and gazed benevolently at the bustling lecturer, who, together with two badly executed hairy-eared doubles, was installing on the exposition stand some sort of contrivance with saddle and pedals, resembling an exerciser for the overweight. I sat down in the corner, as far as I could from the rest of the audience, and, taking out pen and notebook, assumed an interested mien.

“Now then,” emitted the magister academician, “do you have everything ready?”

“Yes, Maurice Johannovich,” responded Sedlovoi. “All set, Maurice Johannovich.”

“Then, we might begin? It seems I don’t see Smoguli…

“He’s away on a trip, Johann Lavrentievieh,” someone said from the auditorium.

“Oh yes, I remember now. Exponential investigations? Aha…… Well, all right. Today our Louis Ivanovieh will make a short report regarding certain possible types of time machines. -. Am I correct, Louis Ivanovich?”

“Eh… as a matter of fact… as a matter of fact I would title my report in such a way, that—”

“Ah, well then, that’s fine. Please do title it.”

“Thank you. Eh… I would title it as “The Feasibility of a Time Machine for Motion Through the Time Dimensions, Constructed Artificially.’”

“Very interesting,” voiced the magister-academician. “However, I seem to recollect that we already had a case when our associate—”

“Forgive me. I was about to start with that.”

“Oh, so that’s it… then please do proceed, please.”

At first I listened quite attentively. I was even interested. It seemed some of these fellows were occupied with the most intriguing projects. It appeared that some of them, to this day, were attacking the problem of moving in physical time, though admittedly without success. However, someone, whose name I forgot, someone of the old ones, the famous, had proved that it was possible to achieve the transfer of material bodies into the ideal worlds, that is, worlds created by man’s imagination. Apparently, besides our customary world with Riemann’s mensuration, the principle of indeterminacy, physical vaccuum, and the drunk Brutus, there exist other worlds, possessing strong characteristics of reality. These worlds were formed by man’s creative imagination, over our entire history. For example, there exist the world of the cosmological structurings; the world created by painters; and even the half-abstract world impalpably constructed by the generations of composers.

A few years ago, the pupil of that same famous one assembled a machine on which he set out on a voyage into the world of cosmological constructs. For some time, unidirectional communication was maintained with him and he had time to transmit that he was on the edge of a flat earth, and could see below him the upreared trunk of one of the Atlas-elephants, and that he was about to start his descent toward the turtle. No further messages were received from him.

The lecturer, Louis Ivanovich Sedlovoi—obviously not a bad scientist and magister, though suffering badly from certain paleolithic throwbacks in his consciousness, and forced for this reason to shave his ears regularly—had constructed a machine for traveling in this subjective time. In his words, there really existed a world in which Anna Karenina, Don Quixote, Sherlock Holmes, Grigory Melikhov, and even Captain Nemo, lived and acted. This world exhibited its own very curious properties and laws, and the people inhabiting it had the brighter personalities and were the more real and individual, as a function of the talent, the passion, and the truthfulness with which their authors described them in their corresponding works.

All this interested me greatly because Sedlovoi, carried away by his subject, was lively and picturesque in his presentation. But then he brought himself up short, thinking that it was all rather unscientific, and hung various schematics and graphs all over the stage, and started to expound in dull and extremely specialized terms on conical decremental shafts, polyvelocity temporal transmissions, and some type of space-piercing steering. I lost the thread of the discussion very quickly and turned my attention to the audience.

The magister-academician slept majestically, occasionally and purely in reflex raising his right eyebrow as though to signify a certain doubt in the lecturer’s words. A hot game of functional naval warfare in transcendental space was going on in the back rows. Two lab-technician day students were copying down everything in sequence, hopeless despair and total submission to fate congealed on their faces. Someone lighted a cigarette surreptitiously and was blowing smoke between his knees and under a table. Magisters and baccalaureates in the front row listened with accustomed attention, preparing questions and comments. Some smiled sarcastically, others displayed expressions of puzzlement. Sedlovoi’s scientific adviser nodded approvingly after each of the lecturer’s sentences. I tried looking out the window, but there was nothing there except the same old warehouse and an occasional boy running by with his fishing rod.

I came to, when the lecturer declared that the introductory portion of his presentation was completed and that he would next like to demonstrate the machine in action.

“Interesting, interesting,” said the awakened magisteracademician. “Now then, will you take a ride yourself?”

“You see,” said Sedlovoi, “I would like to remain here, to provide a commentary on the progress of the journey. Perhaps one of those present?”

Those present exhibited a retiring attitude. They all must have remembered the mysterious fate of the voyager to the edge of the world. One of the magisters offered to send a double. Sedlovoi replied that that would not be of interest because doubles had a low sensitivity to external excitation and would make poor transmitters of information for this reason. What sort of external excitations could be expected? they asked from the rear row. All the usual, Sedlovoi replied: visual, acoustic, odoriferous, tactile. Again someone asked from the rear row: What type of tactile sensations would be the most prevalent? Sedlovoi spread his arms in disclaimer and said that it would depend on the conduct of the traveler in the places where he would find himself. “Aha…” they said in the rear row and didn’t ask any further questions. The lecturer glanced here and there helplessly. In the auditorium everyone also looked here and there, but always to the side. The magister-academician repeated good-humoredly, “Well? How about it? My young ones! Well? Who?”

So I stood up and went to the machine. I just can’t stand an agonized lecturer; it’s a shameful, pitiful, and tortured spectacle.

The back row yelled, “Sasha! Where are you going? Come to your senses!” Sedlovoi’s eyes glittered.

“Permit me,” I said.

“Please, please, of course!” lisped Sedlovoi, seizing me by a finger and dragging me to the machine.

“Just one minute,” I said, pulling away decorously. “Will it take long?”

“Any way you like!” cried out Sedlovoi. “I’ll do just as you tell me…. But you’ll be steering yourself. It’s all very simple.” He seized me again and again drew me toward the machine. “Here’s the wheel. Here is the pedal for coupling into reality. This is the brake. And this is the gas pedal. You drive a car, don’t you? Wonderful! Here is the push button… Where do you want to go? The past or the future?”

“The future,” I said.

“Ah,” he enunciated, in disappointment, it seemed to me. “Into the described future. … That means all those fantastic novels and utopias. Of course, that’s interesting, too. But take into consideration that the future is probably discrete; there must be tremendous gaps, not covered by any authors. However, it’s all the same. -. OK, then, you will press this button twice. Once, now at the start, and the second time when you wish to return. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” I said. “And what if something should malfunction?”

“Absolutely safe!” He windmilled his arms. “The instant anything goes wrong, even a speck of dust on the contacts, you will immediately be returned here.”

“Be audacious, young man,” continued the magister-academician. “You’ll be telling us everything that is going on in the future. Ha, ha, ha…

I climbed ponderously into the saddle, trying not to look at anyone and feeling exceedingly stupid.

“Press it, press it!” the lecturer whispered passionately.

I pressed the button. It was obviously something similar to a starter. The machine jerked, wheezed, and settled down to a regular vibration.

“The shaft is bent,” Sedlovoi whispered in disappointment, “but it’s all right, it’s nothing… put it in gear. That’s right. Now give it some gas, more gas.

I fed it gas, at the same time smoothly letting out the clutch. The world began to darken. The last I heard in the auditorium was, “And how are we going to keep track of him…

Everything vanished.

Chapter 2

At first the machine moved in jumps, and I was hard put to stay in the seat, wrapping my legs around the frame and clutching the steering wheel with all my strength. Out of the corner of my eye I could see fuzzily some kind of magnificent ghostly structures, muddy green plains, and a cold luminary in a gray fog somewhere near the zenith. Then I figured out that the jerking and jumping were the consequence of my having taken my foot off the accelerator and (just as in a car) the power feed was insufficient so that the machine moved unevenly, bumping now and then into the wins of ancient and medieval utopias. I fed it more “gas,” and the motion at once became smooth, so that I could settle myself more comfortably and look around.

I was immersed in a ghostly world. Huge structures of multicolored marble, embellished with colonnades, towered over small houses of rural aspect. All around wheat fields swayed in the complete calm. Herds of plump, transparent cattle grazed on the grass and handsome gray-haired herdsmen sat on hillocks. Everyone, without exception, was reading books and ancient manuscripts.

After a time two translucent individuals appeared nearby, assumed poses, and began to converse. Both were barefooted, draped in chitons, and crowned with wreaths. One held a spade in his left hand and a parchment scroll in his right The other leaned on a mattock, and absentmindedly toyed with a vast copper inkwell hung on his belt. They talked strictly in turn and to each other, as it first appeared to me. However, I quickly realized that they were really addressing me, although neither one of them even glanced in my direction. I listened hard. The one with the spade expounded monotonously and at length on the foundations of the political order of the beautiful country of which he was a citizen. The arrangement was unimaginably democratic, there could be no possibility of any constraint on the citizens (he underlined this several times with special emphasis), everyone was rich and free of care, and even the lowliest farmer had at least three slaves. When he stopped for breath, and to lick his lips, the one with the inkwell would pick up his part. He bragged that he had just finished his three hours as a ferry man, hadn’t taken a penny from anyone because he did not know what money was, and was now on his way to enjoy rest and recreation.

They talked for a long time—for several years, judging by the odometer—and suddenly disappeared, and all was empty again. The motionless sun shone through the transparent buildings. Unexpectedly, some heavy flying machines with membranous pterodactyl wings swam slowly across at a low height. For a moment I thought they were on fire, but then I noticed that the smoke issued from large conical funnels. They flew overhead, ponderously flapping their wings. Some ashes fell and someone dropped a knobby log on me. -. Subtle alterations began in the magnificent buildings around me. The number of columns did not diminish and the architecture remained as magnificent and unique as before, but new coloration appeared and the marble seemed to be replaced with some other, more modern material. Instead of blind busts and statues, glittering arrangements resembling antennas and radio telescopes arose on the roofs. There were more people in the streets, and huge numbers of cars. The herds and herdsmen vanished, but the wheat continued to wave, though as before there was no wind. I pressed on the brake and stopped.

Looking about, I discovered that I stood with my machine on the surface of a moving sidewalk. The people swarmed around me, and it was a most variegated crowd. Mostly, however, the people were rather unreal, much less real than the powerful, complex, and almost silent mechanisms. Consequently, when one of these machines collided with a person, there was no crash. I had little interest in the machines, probably because on top of each one sat, inspired to semitransparency, its individual inventor, engaged in voluminous exposition of the configuration

and purpose of his brainchild. No one listened to anyone else and no one seemed to be addressing anyone, either.

The pedestrians were more fun to watch. I saw big feb lows in union suits walking about arm-in-arm and belting out some unmelodious songs in bad verse. Over and over strange people appeared dressed only partially: say, in a green hat and red jacket and nothing else; or in yellow shoes and a loud tie (but no pants, shirt, or even underwear); or in elegant footwear on bare feet. The others reacted calmly to them, but I was embarrassed until I remembered that certain authors have the habit of writing something like “. . The door opened and an erect muscular man in a furry cap and dark glasses stood on the threshold.”

Fully clothed people also appeared, though in rather strangely cut clothes, and here and there a sunburned bearded male would push through the crowd, dressed in a spotless white chlamys with a horse collar or some implement in one hand and a palette or pencil box in the other. The chlamys wearers had a lost look, and they shied from the many machines and kept glancing about like hunted animals. Disregarding the mumbling of the inventors, it was reasonably quiet. Most people were generally keeping their mouths shut.

On the corner, two youths were struggling with a mechanical contrivance. “The developer’s thought cannot stand still. That’s a law of societal evolution. We will invent it. We will definitely invent it. Despite bureaucrats such as Ingrade or conservatives such as Hardbrau.” The other youth carried on with his own line. “I found out how to apply nonwearing tires here, made of polystructural fibers with denatured amino-bonds and incomplete oxygen groups. But I don’t know as yet how to employ the regenerative subthermal neutrons, Misha Mishok! What to do with the reactor?” After a closer look at the contrivance, I easily recognized a bicycle.

The sidewalk carried me out on a huge plaza, packed with people and liberally emplaced with spacecraft of the most varied designs. I walked off the sidewalk and hauled the time machine after me. In the beginning I couldn’t comprehend what was transpiring. Music played, speeches were made, here and there rosy-cheeked, curly-headed youths—barely managing to control their unruly locks, which cohstantly kept falling on their foreheads—were reading verses soulfully. The verses were either familiar or plain bad, but tears flowed abundantly from the eyes of the listeners. The tears were hard to extract from the men, bitter from the women, and pure from the children. Stern-looking men embraced each other, and, playing their jaw muscles, slapped each other on the back—inasmuch as many were not dressed, the slaps sounded like hand-clapping. Two spare lieutenants, with tired but kind eyes, dragged by me a dandy of a man, twisting his arm behind him. The man thrashed about and yelled something in broken English. I thought he was exposing everybody and recounting how and for whose money he had put a bomb in the starship’s power plant. A few youngsters, clutching small volumes of Shakespeare and glancing around stealthily, were sneaking up to the exhaust port of the nearest astroplane. The crowd did not notice them.

Soon I understood that one half of the crowd was saying good-bye to the other half. It was total mobilization. From the speeches and conversation it became clear that the men were departing into the cosmos—some to Venus, some to Mars, and some, with completely hopeless faces, were getting ready to go to other stars, and even to the galactic center. The women were staying to await their return. Many took their place in a line to a vast, ugly building, which some called the Pantheon, and the others, the Refrigerator. I thought that I’d arrived at a good point in time. Had I been even one hour later, there would be none but the women left in the city, frozen for a thousand years. Later my attention was attracted by a high gray wall, fencing off the plaza to the west. Billows of black smoke rose behind it.

“What is that over there?” I asked a beautiful woman ambling listlessly to the Pantheon-Refrigerator.

“It’s the Iron Curtain,” she replied without stopping.

With each passing minute I was becoming more and more tired of the whole thing. Everyone was crying; the orators had grown hoarse. Next to me a young man in a light blue one-piece suit was saying good-bye to a girl in a pink dress. The girl monotonously intoned, “I would like to become a cloud of stardust. As a cosmic mist I would embrace your ship….” The youth harkened. Then orchestral music broke out over the crowd, and my nerves could not stand any more and I jumped onto the seat and fed the machine some “gas.” I still caught the sight and the roar of the planetary ships, the starships, the ion ships, the astroplanes, the photon flyers, and the astromats leaping up over the city, and then everything but the gray wall was enveloped in a luminescent fog. After the year 2000, rifts in time started to appear. I flew through times devoid of matter. In such spots it was dark, and only occasionally explosions flared and fires cast a glow into the sky behind the gray wall. Now and again the city crowded back around me, and each time, the buildings were taller, its rounded domes more transparent, its parked spaceships fewer in number. Smoke rose from behind the wall without interruption.

I stopped for the second time when the last astromat disappeared from the plaza. The sidewalks were moving. There were no noisy stalwarts in union suits. No one swore. Some colorless individuals diffidently strolled about the streets in twos and threes, dressed either weirdly or poorly. As far as I could tell, they were all talking science. Someone was about to be revived and the professor of medicine—an athletic intellectual, looking most uncommon in his lonely vest—was explaining the procedure to a giant of a biophysicist, who was introduced to all comers as the author, initiator, and main implementer of this undertaking. Somewhere they were going to bore a hole right through the earth. The project was being discussed right on the street with a considerable gathering of people, drawings being made with chalk on the sidewalks and walls. I thought I might listen in, but it became so boring, including sallies against an unknown conservative, that I heaved the machine on my shoulders and moved away. I was not surprised that the discussion of the project stopped at once and everyone got down to business. But as soon as I stopped, some citizen of indefinite profession began a discourse. For no apparent reason he carried on about music. Listeners converged from all sides. They looked totally absorbed and asked questions attesting to a hoary ignorance. Suddenly, a man ran screaming down the street. He was being pursued by a spiderlike mechanism. Judging by the cries of the pursued, it was an

autoprogramming cybernetic robot with trigonic quoators with inverse feedback, which were malfunctioning, and… oi-oi, he is going to dismember me.

Strange, no one as much as lifted an eyebrow. Obviously no one believed in machine mutiny.

Two more spiderlike mechanisms of smaller size suddenly jumped out of an alley. Before I could begin to react, one of them quickly shined my shoe and the other washed and pressed my handkerchief. A large white tank on treads drew up and, blinking with numerous lights, sprayed me with perfume. I was about ready to move on when a thunderous crash sounded in the plaza as an enormous rusty rocket fell from the sky. At once the crowd started commenting.

“It’s the Star of Hope.”

“Yes, that’s it.”

“Of course it is. That’s the one that left two hundred and eighteen years ago, and has been all but forgotten. But due to the Einstein time-contraction brought on by sublight speeds, the crew is only two years older!”

“Due to what? Oh, Einstein…. Yes, yes, I recollect I covered that in my second year at school.”

A one-eyed man, without his, right leg and left arm, struggled out of the rocket.

“Is this Earth?” he asked irritably.

“Earth! Yes!” responded the crowd.

Smiles began to bloom on their faces.

“Thank God,” said the man, and everyone exchanged glances. Either they did not understand him or pretended that they didn’t understand.

The amputee astronaut took up a pose and launched into a speech in which he called on all humanity, each and every man, to go to the planet Willy-Nily in the Aeolian star system, in the Minor Magellanic Cloud, in order to free their brothers in reason, groaning under a bondage to a fierce cybernetic dictator. (He said this groaning with emphasis.) The roar of exhausts drowned him out. Two more rockets, also rusty, were descending on the plaza. Frosted women ran out of the Pantheon-Refrigerator. A crush ensued. I knew I had landed in the epoch of returns and hurriedly pressed the gas pedal.

The city vanished and did not reappear for a long time. Behind the wall, blinding flashes and sky-lighting fires continued with depressing regularity. Then, finally, the world became brightly illuminated and I stopped immediately.

A blooming, unpeopled landscape stretched around me. Wheat fields waved. Fatted herds grazed, but cultured herdsmen were not in evidence. Familiar transparent cupolas, viaducts, and helical ramps glimmered on the horizon.

Quite nearby, to the west, the wall continued to tower over me.

Someone touched me on the knee and I jumped. A small boy with deep-set eyes stood alongside.

“What is it, little boy?” I asked.

“Apparatus busted?” he inquired in a melodious voice.

“You should address your elders politely,” I said tutorially.

He was very astonished, then his face cleared.

“Ah, yes, I remember. If my memory does not betray me, that was customary in the Epoch of Compulsory Politeness. If to tutoyer is disharmonious to your emotional rhythm, I am prepared to address you in any manner you find in consonance with your inner equilibrium.”

I was at a loss to answer, so he squatted by my machine and touched it here and there, commenting in terminology with which I was totally unfamiliar. A nice youngster, very clean, very well groomed, healthy, but a bit too serious for his age in my opinion.

“Listen, young one,” said I. “What wall is that?”

He turned his attentive, shy eyes on me.

“It’s called the Iron Curtain,” he replied. “Unhappily, I am not versed in the etymology of both these words, but I am informed that it divides two worlds—the World of Humanist Imagination and the World of Fear of the Future.” He was quiet and then added, “The etymology of the word ‘fear’ is also unknown to me.”

“Curious,” I said. “Would it be possible to see? What is that World of Fear?”

“Of course it’s possible. Here is the communication port. You may quench your curiosity.”

The communication port had the appearance of a low arch closed with an armored door. I approached and grasped the bolt with some trepidation. The boy followed up on his comments.

“I cannot refrain from warning you. If some misadventure should befall you there, you will be required to present yourself before the United Council of One Hundred and Forty Worlds.”

I pushed the door ajar. Crash! Bang! W-o-o-w! A-y-i-i! Toot-toot-toot! All of my five senses were instantly traumatized. I saw a good-looking blond with an indecent tattoo between her shoulder blades, all nakedness and long legs, firing two automatics into an ugly brunette, who showered red drops with each shot. I heard the thunder of explosions and the soul-rending cries of monsters. I smelled the indescribable stench of rotting and burned nonprotein flesh. The searing wind of a proximate nuclear explosion burned my face and I felt on my tongue the repulsive taste of pulverized protoplasm scattered through the atmosphere. I shied back and shut the door in haste, almost slamming it on my head. The air now seemed sweet and the world beautiful. The boy had disappeared. I was slowly reconstituting myself and then became concerned that the pest might have run to his United Council to complain. I ran to my machine.

Once more, the dusk of dimensionless time closed over me. But I did not take my eyes off the Iron Wall, as my curiosity was aroused. In order not to lose time for nothing, I jumped a whole million years into the future in one leap. Jungles of atomic mushrooms grew behind the wall and I was overjoyed when light again glimmered on my side of it. I braked and groaned in disappointment.

The vast Pantheon-Refrigerator towered not far away. A rusty spaceship of spherical shape was descending from the sky. There was no one around; wheat fields waved. The sphere landed and the erstwhile pilot in blue came out. The girl in pink appeared at the door of the Pantheon. She was covered with the red spots of bedsores. They ran toward each other and clasped hands. I turned away, feeling ill at ease. The blue pilot and the pink girl started a dreary dialogue.

I got off the machine to flex my legs and only then noticed that the sky behind the wall was unprecedentedly clear. There were no roars of explosions nor cracks of shots. Emboldened, I went to the communications port.

A perfectly flat field extended on the other side of the wall, cleft all the way to the horizon with a deep ditch. There was not a living thing to the left and the entire area was covered with low metallic domes, not unlike bulging manhole covers. Horsemen were prancing about on the horizon on the right side. Then I noticed a squat darkfaced man in armor sitting with his legs dangling over the edge of the ditch. Something resembling an automatic rifle with a very thick barrel was hung on his chest by a leather strap. He was chewing slowly, spitting every minute, and regarded me without any particular interest. I held the door open and looked at him too, not daring to speak. His appearance was just too strange. Uncommon. Savage. Who knew what sort of man he was?

Having looked his fill, he reached under his armor and pulled out a flat flask, pulled the cork out with his teeth, took a swig, spit into the ditch again, and said in a rusty voice in English, “Hello! You from that side?”

“Da,” I said. “I mean, yes.”

“And how is it going on out there?”

“So-so,” said I, shutting the door. “And how is it going on here?”

“It’s OK,” he said phlegmatically, and was silent.

After a while I asked what he was doing there. At first, he replied reluctantly, but then gradually grew more talkative. I learned that, to the left of the ditch, humanity was living out its last days under the heel of savage robots. The machines there had become more intelligent than men, had seized power and were now basking in all the delights of life, and had driven the men underground to work on the conveyors. To the right of the ditch, on the territory guarded by him, the men were enslaved by wanderers from a neighboring galaxy. They, too, had seized power, installed a feudal order, and were making the fullest use of the right of first night. They lived quite high, these wanderers (would that everyone could do as well), and this and that goody fell to those who served them well. About twenty miles from here along the ditch, there was a region where men were enslaved by conquerors from Altair, intelligent viruses which invaded people and forced them to do what they willed. Even farther to the west there was a large colony of the Galactic Federation. The men there were also enslaved, but their lot wasn’t all that bad because His Highness the Viceroy fed them well and enlisted them into the personal guard of His Majesty and Galactic Emperor E-U 3562-nd. There were also regions enslaved by intelligent parasites, intelligent plants, and intelligent minerals. Finally, over the mountain there were areas enslaved by still others, but all sorts of fairy tales were told about them, which no serious man could accept…

Here our conversation was interrupted. Several saucershaped flying machines flew low over the plain. Tumbling and twisting, bombs fell out of them. “It’s started up again,” growled the man, and he lay down with his feet toward the explosions and opened fire on the horsemen prancing on the horizon. I jumped out the gate, slammed the door, and leaning on it with my back, listened for some time to the bombs whisfling, roaring, and thundering. The pilot in blue and the girl in pink on the steps of the Pantheon still had not concluded their dialogue. Once more I looked behind the door cautiously: over the plain, fireballs slowly bloomed. The manhole covers opened one after another, and pale, tattered men with bearded savage faces were pouring out, brandishing iron staves. The horsemen had ridden up to my erstwhile interlocutor, and were backing him to ribbons with long swords, while he hollered and tried to parry their blows with his automatic rifle.

I closed the door and carefully drew the bolt shut.

Returning to my machine, I sat in the saddle. I was tempted to fly another million years forward and view the dying earth described by Wells. But here, for the first time, something got stuck in the machine; the clutch did not seem to engage. I pressed it once, twice, then pushed the pedal with all my strength; something cracked, rang, the waving wheat fields stood on end, and I had the feeling of coming out of a profound sleep. I was sitting on the viewing stand on the stage of the small auditorium of our Institute and everyone was looking at me with awe.

“What happened to the transmission?” I asked, looking around in search of the machine. There was no machine. I had come back alone.

“That’s not important!” cried out Sedlovoi. “A big Thanks to you! You have really helped me out… Now, that was interesting: isn’t that a fact, comrades?”

The auditorium buzzed loudly to the effect that, yes, it was interesting.

“But I have read all of it somewhere,” one of the magisters in the first row said dubiously.

“And how else? How else?” cried L. Sedlovoi. “Was he not in the described future?”

“Not much adventure,” said the players of the Functional Sea Warfare game in the rear row. “Conversations, endless conversations”

“Well, I can’t help that,” Sedlovoi said forcefully.

“I like that,” I said, getting off the stand. “Just talk, eh?” I recollected how they had chopped my dark-visaged conversationalist and felt ill.

“No, after all, some interesting spots had occurred,” said one of the baccalaureates. “That machine, for instance… do you remember? With trigonic quoaters that’s really something…”

“Now, then,” said Poopkov-Lahggard. “It seems we are already having a discussion. But then, perhaps, someone has a question for the lecturer?”

The dreary baccalaureate at once asked about the polyvelocity transmission (you see, he was interested in the coefficient of volume expansion) and I quietly withdrew.

I was experiencing a novel sensation. Everything around me seemed so real, solid, and material. People were passing by, and I could hear their shoes squeaking and feel the breeze from their motion. They were all very laconic, they were all working, thinking, and no one was prattling, reading poetry, or pouring forth bombastic speeches. Everyone knew that the laboratory was one thing and the stage of the union meeting, another, while a holiday meeting was something else again. So much so, that when Vibegallo passed me, slithering his leather-soled felt boots, I was almost sympathetic toward him, just because he had the usual bits of cereal in his beard and was picking his teeth with a long fine nail and didn’t even say hello. He was a live, visible, and ponderable boor; he didn’t wave his arms, or strike academic poses.

I looked in at Roman’s because I wanted badly to tell someone about my adventures. Roman, chin in hand, was standing over a lab table, staring at a small green parrot lying in a petri dish. It was quite defunct its eyes covered with a dead whitish film.

“What is the matter with him?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” said Roman. “Just croaked, as you can see.,’

“Where did you get it?”

‘I don’t understand it myself,” said Roman.

“Perhaps it’s artificial,” I offered.

“Not at all; it’s a parrot-type parrot, all right”

“Probably Victor sat on the umclidet again.”

We bent over the bird and examined it attentively. It had a ring on its black stiff claw.

“Photon,” read Roman. “And some numbers… nineteen, oh-five, seventy-three.”

“So,” said a familiar voice behind us.

We turned and stood respectfully.

“Good day,” said Janus-U, walking up to the table. He had come out of his laboratory door in the back of the room, and he somehow projected a very tired and very sad look.

“Good day, Janus Poluektovich,” we said in a chorus of utmost respect.

Janus saw the parrot and again said, “So.” He took the small bird in his hands, very gently and tenderly, stroked its bright red crest, and said softly, “What happened, little Photon?”

He wanted to say something more, but glanced at us and remained silent. We stood together and watched him, walking with an old man’s gait, slowly go to the far corner of the room, open the door of the electric furnace, and drop the little green corpse in.

“Roman Petrovich,” he said. “Be so kind, throw the switch, please.”

Roman obeyed. He had that look of having been struck with a far-out idea. Janus-U, head bowed, stood a while by the furnace, scraped out the hot ashes carefully, and opening the window ventilator, threw them out into the wind. He looked out the window for some time, then told Roman that he was expecting him in his office in half an hour, and left.

“Strange,” said Roman, following him with his eyes.

“What is strange?” I asked.

“The whole thing is strange,” said Roman.

It seemed strange to me too, both the appearance of the green parrot, apparently so well known to Janus Poluektovich, and the altogether unlikely ceremony of the fiery funeral with the scattering of ashes on the wind, but I couldn’t wait to tell about my journey into the imagined future, so I began my tale.

Roman listened inattentively, looked at me in a resigned way, nodded in the wrong’places, and then suddenly said, “Go on, go on, I am listening,” crawled under the table, came out with the wastebasket, and started to paw through the crumpled paper and pieces of magnetic tape. When I finished my story he asked, “Didn’t this Sedlovoi try traveling in the described present? In my opinion that would have been much more amusing…

While I was thinking about this suggestion and appreciating the acuity of Roman’s wits, he turned the basket over and poured its contents on the floor.

“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Lost your dissertation?”

“You know, Sasha,” he said, looking at me with unseeing eyes, “it’s a curious thing. Yesterday I was cleaning out the furnace and found a charred green feather in it. I threw it into the basket, but it’s not here today.”

“What feather?” I asked.

“You know very well that green bird feathers occur quite rarely in our latitudes. And the parrot we just burned was green.”

“What sort of nonsense is that?” I said. “Didn’t you find the feather yesterday?”

“That’s the point,” said Roman, putting the litter back in the basket.

Chapter 3

They kept on repairing the Aldan all night. When I went to Electronics next morning, the sleepy and annoyed engineers were sitting on the floor berating Cristobal Joseevich in uninspired invective. They were calling him a Scythian, barbarian, and Hun, who had gained access to computers. Their despair was so complete that for a while they actually listened to my advice and attempted to follow it. But then the chief arrived, a certain Savaof Baalovich Uni, and I was immediately displaced from the machine. Moving out of the way, I sat down at my desk and observed how Savaof Baalovich was divining the essence of the damage.

He was very old, but strong and sinewy, sunburned with a shiny bald head and closely shaved cheeks, dressed in a blinding white tussah suit. This man was regarded with great reverence by everyone. I saw for myself once how he was reading Modest Matveevich a lecture in a soft voice, and the menacing Modest Matveevich was bowing and repeating, “I understand. My fault. It won’t happen again….” A kind of monstrous energy emanated from Savaof Baalovich. It was noted that in his presence watches gained time, and the tracks of elementary particles, curved by a magnetic field, would straighten out. All the same, he was not a magus. At least, not a practicing magus. He didn’t go through walls, never transgressed anyone, and never created his own doubles, though he worked an inordinate lot. He was the head of the Technical Maintenance Department, knew all the technology in the Institute to the finest detail, and was a consultant to the Kitezhgrad magitechnic plant. In addition, he was involved in the most unexpected matters far removed from his profession.

I learned about his past only recently. In olden times, S.B. Uni was the leading magus on Earth. Cristobal Junta and Gian Giacomo were pupils of his students. Evil was exorcised with his name. Jinn bottles were sealed with his name. King Solomon wrote him letters of passionate admiration and erected temples in his honor. He seemed to be all-powerful. And then, sometime in the middle of the sixteenth century, he did become all-powerful. Having achieved a numerical solution of the integro-differential Equation of Perfection, which was postulated by some titan before the Ice Age, he acquired the ability to perform any miracle. Each of the magi had his own limits. Some were unable to rid themselves of the growth on their ears. Others were in possession of the generalized Lomonosov-Lavoisier law, but were powerless before the second law of thermodynamics. Still others—and they were very few—could stop time, but only in Riemann space and only for a short period. Savaof Baalovich was omnipotent He could do anything. And he could do nothing. Because the limiting boundary of the Equation of Perfection proved to be the condition that the miracle must not harm anyone. Not one intelligent being. On Earth or anywhere in any other part of the universe. But no one could envisage such a miracle, not even Savaof Baalovich himself. And so, S.B. Uni renounced forever the practice of magic and became the Head of the Department of Technical Maintenance at SRITS….

With his arrival, the affairs of the engineers quickly got on the mend. Their movements became purposeful and their nasty comments withered away. I got out the folder with my current assignments and was about to go to work, when Stellotchka, that very sweet, gray-eyed, and retrousse-nosed undergraduate witch in Vibegallo’s lab, came in and invited me to join her in the composition of the Institute gazette.

Stella and I were on the editorial staff, and we wrote satirical verses, fables, and captions for the illustrations. In addition to all this, I also drew clever pictures of a mailbox for notices, with winged letters converging on it from all sides. In general, the gazette artist was my namesake, Alexander Ivanovich Drozd, cinephotographer, who had successfully infiltrated the Institute. He was also our specialist on headlines. The editor-in-chief was Roman Oira-Oira, and Volodia Pochkin was his assistant.

“Sasha,” said Stellotchka, gazing at me out of her honest gray eyes. “Let’s go.”

“Where to?” I said. I knew where.

“Make up the issue.”

“Why?”

“Roman is asking for it, very insistently, because Cerberus is complaining. He says there are only two days left and there’s nothing ready.”

Cerberus Curovich Demin, comrade Personnel Director, was the curator of our paper and its chief expeditor and censor.

“Listen,” I said. “Let’s do it tomorrow, OK?”

“I can’t, tomorrow,” said Stellotchka. “Tomorrow I’m flying to Sukhumi, to tape baboons. Vibegallo says that we should make records of the leader, as the most responsible of the baboons…. He himself is afraid to go near the leader because he is jealous of him. What do you say, Sasha? Let’s go.”

I sighed, put away my worksheets, and followed Stellotchka, since I couldn’t compose verse alone. I needed Stellotchka. She always suggested the first line and the basic idea and, in my view, that was the main thing in poetry.

“Where are we going to work?” I asked on the way. “Over at the local committee room?”

“That’s taken, for putting Alfred on the carpet. On account of his tea. As for us, Roman has made room in his lab.”

“So what do we write about this time? About the steam-baths again?”

“About the steambaths, too. About that, about Bald Mountain, and, also, we have to roast Homa Brutus.”

“Homa Brutus—how badly you treat us.”

“Et tu, Brutus,” said Stella.

“That’s a thought,” I said. “I’ll have to work on that.”

On the table in Roman’s laboratory the paper was laid out—a huge, virginally clean sheet of drafting paper. Reclining next to it, among the gouache containers, atomizers, and notes, was our artist and cinephotographer Alexander Drozd, a cigarette hanging from his lip. As usual, his cute shirt was open, displaying a hairy potbelly through the crack.

“Greetings,” he said.

“Hello,” I said.

There was loud music—Sanya was exercising his portable receiver.

“What have you here?” I said, collecting the notes. There wasn’t much. There was the lead article, “The Coming Holiday.” There was the item from Cerberus Curovich, “Results of the Investigation of the Status of Conformance to Management Directives Regarding Work Discipline for the Period from the End of the First to the Start of the Second Quarter.” There was a Professor Vibegallo article, “Our Duty—Is the Duty to Subsidiary Rural and City Economics.” There was an article by Volodia Pochkin, “All-Union Conference on Electronic. Thaumaturgy.” There was the note from some house ghost, “When Will the Steam Pipes in the Fourth Floor Be Blown Clear?” There was the article of the Chairman of the Mess Committee, “Neither Fish Nor Fowl”—six typewritten pages with a single break. It began with the words, “Phosphorus is as necessary to man as air.” There was a short piece by Roman on the work of the Unapproachable Problems Department. For the section titled “Our Veterans,” there was an article by Cristobal Junta, “From Seville to Granada in 1547.” There were several other small contributions in which were criticized: the absence of an adequate orderliness in the account of the credit union; the presence of some slovenliness in the organization of the volunteer fire department; the permissive attitute toward gambling in the vivarium. There were several caricatures. One showed a draggle-tailed Homa Brutus with a purple nose. Another was ridiculing the steam-baths—it showed a blue, naked man congealing under an icicle shower.

“What a bore!” I said. “What do you say we don’t need verses?”

“We do need them,” said Stellotchka with a sigh. “I’ve been making layouts this way and that, and there’s always some empty space.”

“Let Sanya draw something. Some sort of wheat sheaf, or blooming pansies. How about it, Sanya?”

“Go on and get to work,” said Drozd. “I have to draw the banner.”

“Big deal,” I said. “Three whole words!”

“Against a background of a starry night,” Drozd said weightily. “Also a rocket. And headlines for the articles, too. And I haven’t had my dinner yet. Or breakfast.”

“Then go eat,” I said, irritated.

“I bought a tape recorder. At the commission shop. Here you are fooling around when you’d do better to make me a sandwich or two. With butter and jam. A dozen would be good!”

I took out a ruble and showed it to him from a distance.

“When you finish the banner I’ll give it to you.”

“For keeps?” said Sanya, animated.

“No, for a loan.”

“Well, that’s the same thing,” he said. “Consider the possibility that I’m going to die right now. I’ve already started to have spasms. Also my extremities are growing cold.”

“That’s a pack of lies,” said Stella. “Let’s sit down over at that table, Sasha, and finish those verses right now.”

We sat down at the separate table and spread out the caricatures before us. For some time we sat and looked at each other in the hope that an inspiration would come forth.

“That Brutus is a brute—beware, he’ll swipe your shoes to boot.”

“Swipe?” I said. “Did he steal something?”

“No,” said Stella. “He had a fight and was a hooligan. I just said that for the rhyme.”

We waited. Nothing more came into our heads. “Let’s approach this logically. There is this Homa Brutus. He drank himself stupid. He fought. What else did he do?”

“He pestered the girls,” said Stella. “Broke some glass.”

“All right,” I said. “What else?”

“He expressed himself”

“That’s strange,” Sanya Drozd piped up. “I worked in the projection booth with this Brutus. He was a regular guy. Normal”

“And?” I said.

“And, that’s all.”

“Can you come up with a rhyme for Brutus or maybe Brute?”

“Knout.”

“Sounds like we had that with the boot.”

“A knout is different. They whip you with one of those.”

Stella said, with expression,

“Comrade, before you is a Brute.

Pick up your trusty knout

And whack him head to foot.”

“No good,” said Drozd. “That would be propaganda for physical punishment.”

“Kaput,” I said.

“Behold, my friend, there is that Brute,” said Stella,

“His words so rough and tough

That it’s enough

To make the flies kaput.”

“It’s your poetry that’ll do the flies in,” said Drozd.

“Have you lettered the banner?” I asked.

“No,” Drozd said coquettishly.

“Then work on it.”

“They shame our proud Institute,” said Stella, “such drunkards as our Brutus Brute.”

“That’s good,” I said. “We’ll use that for the finale. Write it down. It will be a moral of freshness and originality.”

“What’s original about that?” said the simple Drozd.

I didn’t bother responding to him.

“Now we have to describe,” I said, “how he engaged in hooliganism. Let’s say… “The disgraceful buffoon!.

Drunk like a baboon!. . With language vile did ears defile!… Was born a man, became a holligan.’”

“Awful,” Stella said in disgust.

I propped up my head on my hands and continued to stare at the caricature. Drozd, his tail stuck up in the air, was stroking the paper with his paintbrush. His legs, encased in maximally tight jeans, were bowed out in a reverse curve. I was struck with an idea.

“Knees to the rear!” I said. “The popular song.”

“’The little grasshopper sat, knees to the rear,’“ said Stella.

“Precisely,” said Drozd, without turning around. “I know it, too. “’All the guests were scattering, knees to the rear,’ “ he sang.

“Wait, wail,” I said. I felt inspired. “ “He fights and curses and here is the result:!. . To the prison cell, knees to the rear.’”

“That’s not bad,” said Stella.

“You follow?” I said. “Another pair of verses and all with the refrain “knees to the rear.’ “Drunk beyond all reason… the girls he’s a-teasing….’ Something along these lines.”

“’He drank in desperation!… Without any ration,’“ said Stella. “’A stranger’s door he crashes!… And nothing him abashes!… Ignoring law and fear!… knees to the rear. ”

“Brilliant,” I said. “Write it down! He did break in?”

“Indeed, indeed.”

“Excellent!” I said. “Now another verse.”

“’He chased a girl!… Knees to the rear.’ We need the first line.”

“Ambition, ammunition,” I said. “Police, just-ice.”

“’And he has this charming way!…’“ said Stella, “’Not to wash or shave each day.’”

“That’s him,” added Drozd. “It’s a fact. You have achieved an artistic truth. He hasn’t shaved or bathed since the day he was born.”

“Maybe we can think up another line or two,” offered Stella. “Reprobate… regenerate… automate…

“Ingrate,” I said. “Berate.”

“Mate,” said Drozd. “Checkmate, of course.”

Again we were silent for a good long time, looking at each other numbly and moving our lips soundlessly. Drozd kept tapping on the rim of the jar with his brush.

“’A pirate’s fun he has, inspiring naught but fear!.’“ I said. “ “Chasing a poor lass, knees to the rear.’ “I don’t know about the pirate bit,” said Stella. “Then—something like… defying law and fear…

“We already had that,” said Stella.

“Where…? Ah, yes, true enough.”

“ “His tiger’s stripes appear,’ “ said Drozd.

Here there was a soft scratching and we turned to see what it was. The door to Janus Poluektovich’s laboratory was opening slowly.

“Look at that!” exclaimed Drozd in amazement, freezing into a pose, brush in hand.

A small green parrot with a bright red crest crawled into the crack.

“What a dear little parrot,” exclaimed Drozd. “Here, parrot.” He made chicken-calling noises, and worked his fingers as though he were crumbling bread. The parrot regarded him out of a single eye. Then it opened its black beak, which was as hooked as Roman’s, and cried out hoarsely, “Reactor! Reactor! Courage!”

“Isn’t he nice!” exclaimed Stella. “Sanya, catch him…

Drozd started toward the parrot, and then stopped. “He probably bites,” he said, looking reluctant. “Look at that beak.”

The parrot pushed off the floor and flapped its wings and flew, somehow ineptly, about the room. I watched it in astonishment. It looked very much like that other one of yesterday. An identical twin. Wall-to-wall parrots, I thought.

Drozd was parrying with his brush. “He’ll peck me yet, for all I know,” he said.

The parrot lighted on the laboratory balance beam, twitched a bit to attain equilibrium, and cried distinctly, “Proxima Centauri! R-Rubidium! R-Rubidium!”

Having delivered itself, it puffed out its feathers, drew in its head, and covered its eyes with a membrane. It seemed to be shivering. Stella quickly created a piece of bread with jam, pinched off the crust, and brought it under its beak. The parrot did not react. It was shaking as in a fever and the scale pans were vibrating rapidly, clinking against the base.

“I think he’s sick,” said Drozd. He took the bread absentmindedly from Stella’s hand and started to eat it.

“Friends,” I said. “has anybody ever seen a parrot at the Institute before?”

Stella shook her head; Drozd shrugged his shoulders.

“There’ve been just too many of them lately,” I said. “And yesterday, too…

“Janus is probably experimenting with them,” said Stella. “Antigravitation or something along those lines.

The door to the hall opened and Roman Oira-Oira, Victor Korneev, Eddie Amperian, and Volodia Pochkin came crowding in. The room became noisy. Korneev, well rested and very active, started to leaf through the articles, loudly ridiculing their style. The powerful Volodia Pochkin, acting as deputy editor in his main police function, seized Drozd by his plump nape, bent him over, and stuck his nose into the paper.

“Where is the banner? The banner! Where is it, Mr. Drozdillo?”

Roman demanded finished verses from us. Eddie, not having any direct connection with the paper, went to the cabinet and began to move its apparatus contents with a maximum of crashings.

Suddenly the parrot yelled out, “Oversanl Oversan!”—and thereupon ensued a stunned silence.

Roman stared at the parrot. His face depicted his traditional expression as though he were just struck with an astounding idea.

Volodia Pochkin let go of Drozd and said, “How about that—a parrot.” The rude Korneev instantly reached for the bird to grasp it around the body, but it broke free, and Korneev grabbed it by the tail.

“Let go, Victor!” Stella cried angrily. “What kind of behavior is that—torturing animals?”

The parrot screeched louder. Everyone crowded around. Korneev was holding it as though it were a pigeon, Stella was stroking its crest, while Drozd was tenderly fingering the feathers in its tail. Roman looked at me.

“Curious,” he said. “Isn’t it?”

“How did it get here, Sasha?” Eddie asked politely.

I jerked my head in the direction of Janus’s laboratory.

“What would Janus want with a parrot?” inquired Eddie.

“Are you asking me?” I said.

“No, it’s a rhetorical question,” Eddie said seriously.

“Why does he need two parrots?” I said.

“Or three,” Roman added softly.

Korneev turned toward us.

“Where is the other?” he asked, looking around.

The parrot flopped weakly in his hand, trying to pinch his finger.

“Why don’t you let it go?” I said. “You can see it’s not well.”

Korneev pushed Drozd away, and put the bird back on the scales. The parrot ruffled its feathers and spread its wings.

“Let him be,” said Roman. “We’ll figure it out later. Where’s the verse?”

Stella quickly rattled off everything we had had time to compose. Roman scratched his chin, Volodia Pochkin neighed unnaturally, and Korneev delivered a command.

“To the firing squad. With heavy-caliber machine guns. Are you going to learn to write poetry sometime?”

“You can write it yourself,” I said angrily.

“Poetry, I cannot write,” said Korneev. “I am not a Pushkin by nature. I am a Belinsky.”

“By nature you are a simulacrum,” said Stella.

“I beg your pardon!” insisted Victor. “I demand that the paper have a department of literary criticism. I desire to write critical articles. I shall shatter you all! I shall remind you again of your creation about the dachas.”

“Which?” asked Eddie.

Korneev quoted instantly:

“Did you have that? Admit it!”

“So what!” I said. “Pushkin had his unfortunate verse, too. They don’t even publish them in full in school books.”

“I know that,” said Drozd.

Roman turned toward him. “Are we going to have a banner today or not?”

“We shall!” said Drozd. “I have drawn the letter “F’ already.”

“What “F’? Where’s there an “F’?”

‘Why—didn’t we need it?”

“I will expire on the spot,” said Roman. “The paper is called, “To Progressive Thaumaturgy.’ Show me just one “F’ in that!”

Drozd goggled at the wall, moving his lips now and then. “How can that be?” he said finally. “Where did I get the letter “F’? But there was a letter “F’!”

Roman exploded and ordered Pochkin to chase us all back to our places. Stella and I were placed under Korneev’s command. Drozd was feverishly changing his letter “F” into a stylized letter “T.” Eddie Amperian attempted to fade out with the psychoelectrometer, but was seized, bound, and assigned to repair the airbrush needed for the creation of the starry sky. Then came Pochkin’s turn. Roman ordered him to type all the articles with concurrent editorial and style correction. Roman himself undertook to stroll about the laboratory, looking over everyone’s shoulder in turn.

The work boiled along for a while. We had time to compose and reject a series of variants on the steambath theme: “Instead of steamy bowers, we have ice cold showers”; “If you truly hunger to ablute, cold for hot is not a substitute”; “Our two hundred sages, each and all, desire hot water in their shower stall”; and so forth and so on.

Korneev continued his vile and scurrilous attacks like a true literary critic. “Learn from Pushkin!” he pounded into us. “Or at least from Pochkin. A genius is sitting next to you, and you can’t even imitate him…. “On the road a Zil is rolling…. o’er me it will be bowling.

What physical force is bound up in these lines! What sincerity of feeling!”

We fought back with anemic repartee. Sanya Drozd reached the letter “I” in the word “progressive.” Eddie fixed the airbrush and tried it out on Roman’s proofs. Volodia Pochkin was searching for the letter “T” on his typewriter, belching curses. Everything was proceeding normally. Then Roman said suddenly, “Sasha, will you glance over here?”

I looked. The parrot was lying under the scales, its legs drawn up, its eyes covered with a white film, and its crest drooping.

“Expired,” Drozd said pityingly.

Again we crowded around the parrot. I didn’t have any particular notions, and if I did, they were all in the subconscious, but I stretched out my hand, picked up the parrot, and examined its legs.

Roman asked at once, “Is it there?”

“It’s there,” I said.

On the black scrunched-up leg was the ring of white metal engraved “Photon” and bearing the numbers “19-05-73.” I looked distraughtedly at Roman.

We both must have looked peculiar, as Korneev said, “All right, let’s hear whatever interesting tale you have to tell.”

“Shall we tell?” asked Roman.

“it’s some kind of bad dream,” I said, “probably some sort of trick. They’re probably doubles.”

“But no,” he said. “That’s the whole point. It’s not a double. It’s a very genuine original.”

Roman again examined the little corpse attentively.

“Let me see,” said Korneev.

The four of them, including Volodia Pochkin and Eddie, investigated the parrot in the most thorough manner and declared unanimously that it was not a double and that they did not understand why this gave us such trouble.

“Let’s take myself, for instance,” said Komeev. “I, too, am not a double. Why doesn’t that amaze you?”

Roman surveyed, in turn, Stella, who was consumed with curiosity, Volodia Pochkin, with his mouth open, and Victor, who was smiling tauntingly, and told all how the day before yesterday he had found the charred feather, which he threw into the wastepaper basket; and about how there had been no feather in the basket yesterday, but instead a dead parrot had manifested itself on this (same) table, which parrot was not a double, but an exact copy of this one; and also about how Janus had recognized the parrot and mourned over it, incinerated it in the above-mentioned furnace, and scattered its ashes to the wind, for some reason.

No one spoke for a while. Drozd was only dimly interested in Roman’s story and shrugged his shoulders. His face clearly expressed that he didn’t understand what all this excitement was about, and that in his opinion much thicker broths were brewed in this institution. Stella also seemed disappointed. But the magister trio understood everything only too well, and their physiognomies registered protest.

Korneev said decisively, “You are making it up. And not too well at that.”

“This just isn’t that same parrot,” said the polite Eddie. “You must be mistaken.”

“It’s the one,” I said. “Green and with a ring.”

“Photon?” asked Korneev in a prosecutor’s tone.

“Photon. Janus called him his little Photon.”

“And the numbers?” asked Volodia.

“And the numbers!”

“The numbers are the same?” Korneev asked threateningly.

“I think they are the same,” I said, looking at Roman uncertainly.

“Let’s have that a bit more precisely,” demanded Korneev, covering the parrot with his red paw. “Would you repeat those numbers again?”

“Nineteen…” I said. “Eh… zero-two, is it? Sixty-three.”

Korneev looked under his palm. “You lie,” he said. “And how about you?” He turned to Roman.

“I don’t remember,” Roman said.calmly. “It seems it was zero-five, not zero-three.”

“No,” I said. “I still think it was zero-six. I remember there was that hook on it.”

“A hook,” Pochkin said contemptuously. “See our Holmeses and Pinkertons! They grow weary of the law of cause and effect.”

Korneev stuffed his hands in his pockets. “That’s a different matter,” he said. “I don’t believe you are lying. You are simply mixed up. The parrots are all green, many are tagged. This pair was from the “Photon’ series. And your memory is full of holes. As with all versifiers and editors of hack bulletin gazettes.”

“Full of holes?” inquired Roman.

“Like a sieve.”

“Like a sieve?” repeated Roman, smiling strangely.

“Like an old sieve,” elaborated Victor. “A rusty one. Like a net. With large mesh.”

Then Roman, continuing to smile strangely, pulled a notebook out of his shirt pocket and riffled its pages.

“And so,” he said. “Large, meshed, and rusty. Let’s see

nineteen, zero-five, seventy-three,” he read.

The magisters lunged toward the parrot and collided their foreheads with a dry crack.

“Nineteen, zero-five, seventy-three,” Korneev read the numbers on the ring in a fallen voice. It was most spectacular. Stella immediately squealed with pleasure.

“Big deal,” said Drozd without tearing himself away from his drawing. “I once had a number coinciding with the winner in a lottery. I ran to the savings outlet to pick up my car. And then it turned out—”

“Why did you write down the number?” said Korneev, squinting at Roman. “Is it a habit with you? Do you write down all numbers? Maybe you have the number of your watch in there?”

“Brilliantt” said Pochkin. “Victor, you are great! You have hit the bull’s eye. Roman. what a disgrace! Why did you poison the parrot? How cruel!”

“Idiots!” said Roman. “What am I to you? A Vibegallo?”

Korneev ran up to him and ogled his ears.

“Go to the devil!” said Roman. “Sasha, just look at them; aren’t they admirable?”

“Come on, fellow,” I said. “Who jokes that way? What do you take us for?”

“And what is left for us to do?” said Korneev. “Someone is lying. Either it’s you or the laws of nature. I believe in the law of nature. Everything else changes.”

Anyway, he quickly wilted, sat down out of the way, and settled down to think. Sanya Drozd drew his banner calmly. Stella was looking at each of us—in turn with frightened eyes. Volodia Pochkin rapidly wrote and crossed out some formulas. Eddie was the first to speak.

“Even if laws are not subverted,” he said with a show of reasonableness, “the unexpected appearance of a large number of parrots in the same room and their suspiciously high modality rate still remain most unlikely. But I am not too surprised, since I have not forgotten we are dealing here with Janus Poluektovich. Don’t you feel that Janus Poluektovich is in himself a most curious personage?”

“It would seem so,” I said.

“I think so, too,” said Eddie. “What field is he actually working in, Roman?”

“It depends on which Janus you mean. Janus-U is involved in communication with parallel spaces.”

“Hmm,” said Eddie. “That’ll hardly help us.”

“Unfortunately,” said Roman. “I, too, have been constantly thinking about how we can tie in the parrots with Janus, and I can’t come up with anything.”

“But is he not a strange person?” asked Eddie.

“Yes, undoubtedly,” said Roman. “Beginning with the fact that there are two of them and he is one. We have become so used to that, that we no longer think about it”

“That’s what I wanted to talk about. We seldom discuss Janus, as we respect him tremendously. But hasn’t every one of us noticed at least one idiosyncracy about him?”

“Idiosyncracy number one,” I said. “A fondness for dying parrots.”

“We’ll consider that as one,” said Eddie. “What else?”

“Gossips,” Drozd said with dignity. “I had occasion to ask him for a loan once.”

“Yes?” said Eddie.

“And he gave it to me,” said Drozd. “But then I forgot how much he gave me. Now I don’t know what to do.”

He was silent. Eddie waited a while for a continuation and then said, “Do you know, for example, that each time I had to work nights with him, at exactly twelve midnight he went away somewhere and came back five minutes later, and each time, I had the impression that, one way or another, he was trying to find out from me what we were doing there prior to his departure.”

“That is indeed so,” said Roman. “I know it very well. I have noted for a long time that right at midnight his memory is wiped clean. And he is thoroughly aware of this defect., He excused himself several times and said that it was a reflexive syndrome connected with the sequelae of a serious contusion.”

“His memory is worthless,” said Volodia Pochkin. He crumpled a sheet with computations and threw it under the table. “He keeps bothering you about whether he’s seen you yesterday or not.”

“And what you talked about, if he has seen you,” I added.

“Memory, memory,” Korneev muttered impatiently. “What has memory to do with it? Lots of people have faulty memories…. That’s not the point. What has he been doing with parallel spaces?”

“First we have to collect the facts,” said Eddie.

“Parrots, parrots, parrots,” continued Victor. “Can it be that they are doubles, after all?”

“No,” said Volodia Pochkin. “I calculated. According to all criteria, it is not a double.”

“Every midnight,” said Roman, “he goes to that laboratory of his and literally locks himself up in it for several. minutes. One time he ran in there so hurriedly that he did not have time to shut the door.

“And what happened?” asked Stella in a faint voice.

“Nothing. He sat down in his chair, stayed there a few minutes, and came back. Immediately he asked whether we had been talking about something important.”

“I’m going,” said Korneev, getting up.

“I, too,” said Eddie. “We’re having a seminar.

“Me, too,” said Volodia Pochkin.

“No,” said Roman. “You sit here and type. I appoint you head of this enterprise. And you, Stellotchka, take Sasha and make verses. And I’m leaving. I’ll be back in the evening and the paper had better be ready.”

They left, and we stayed to do the paper. At first we tried to come up with something, but grew tired quickly and had to accept that we just couldn’t do any more. So we wrote a small poem about a dying parrot.

When Roman returned the paper was finished. Drozd lay on the table and consumed sandwiches, while Pochkin was expounding to Stella and me why the incident with the parrot could absolutely not be included.

“Stout fellow,” said Roman. “An excellent paper. What a banner! What boundless starry skies! And how few typos! And where is the parrot?”

The parrot lay in the petrie dish, the very same dish and in the very same place where Roman and I saw it yesterday. It was enough to make me catch my breath.

“Who put it there?” inquired Roman.

“I did,” said Drozd. “Why?”

“No, that’s all right,” said Roman. “Let it lay there. Right, Sasha?’

I nodded.

“Let’s see what’ll happen with it tomorrow,” said Roman.

Chapter 4

Next morning, however, right from the start, I had to assume my normal duties. Aldan had been repaired and was ready to do battle, and when I arrived in Electronics after breakfast there was already a small queue of doubles, with lists of assigned problems, at the door. I began by vengefully expelling Cristobal Junta’s double, and writing on his list that I couldn’t decipher the script. (Junta’s handwriting was truly not susceptible to being read; he wrote Russian in gothic letters.) Feodor Simeonovich’s double brought a program that had been personally composed by him. It was the first program Feodor Simeonovich had written by himself without any advice, prompting, or directions on my part. I looked the program over attentively and was pleasantly reassured that it was put together competently, economically, and not without ingenuity. I corrected some inconsequential errors and turned it over to my girls. Then I noticed that a pale and distraught-looking accountant from the fish factory was visibly suffering from the delays in the line. He was so discomfited and even frightened that I received him at once.

“It’s a bit uncomfortabie,” he muttered, looking fearfully at the doubles out of the corner of his eye. “After all, these comrades are waiting there and they were here before me. .

“It’s all right, these are not comrades,” I calmed him.

“Well, citizens.

“Not citizens, either.”

The accountant turned altogether pale, and bending toward me, pronounced in a halting whisper, “No wonder, then! I am looking at them, and they are not blinking…. And that one there, in blue—I think he’s not even breathing…

I had already processed half of the queue when Roman called.

“Sasha?”

“Yes.”

“The parrot’s gone!”

“What do you mean—gone?”

“Just like that.”

“Did the charwoman throw it out?”

“I asked. Not only did she not throw it out, she hasn’t seen it.”

“Maybe the brownies are fooling around.”

“In the director’s laboratory? I doubt it.”

“Mmm, yes,” I said. “Maybe Janus himself?”

“Janus hasn’t come in yet. And, anyway, I don’t think he’s back from Moscow.”

“So, what are we supposed to make of it?” I asked.

“I don’t know. We’ll see.”

We were silent.

“You’ll call me?” I asked. “If something interesting develops?”

“Of course. Without fail. So long, old chum.”

I forced myself not to think about the parrot, which was, after all, none of my business. I finished with all the doubles, checked all the programs, and took up the nasty little problem that had been hanging over me for a long time. It was given me by the absolutists. At first I had told them that it had neither sense nor solution, as was the case with most of their conundrums. But then I consulted with Junta, who had a sharp insight into such matters, and he gave me a few encouraging pieces of advice. I had reverted to the problem several times and put it off as many, but now I was able to finish it off. It worked out most elegantly. Just as I finished and leaned back in my chair to contemplate with delight the solution from a distance, Junta arrived, ominous and irate. Looking down at my feet, he inquired in a dry, menacing tone as to when I had ceased to understand his writing. It reminded him quite strongly of sabotage, he informed me.

I was looking at him with a melting mien.

“Cristobal Joseevich,” I said. “I finally did find the solution. You were absolutely right. Conjuration space can indeed be folded along any four variables.”

Finally he raised his eyes to me and looked me in the face. I must have had an especially happy expression because he softened and growled, “May I see it?”

I handed him the sheets and he sat down next to me and, together, we went over the problem from beginning to end, savoring the two most elegant transformations, one of which he prompted to me, and one which I found myself.

“You and I don’t have such bad heads, Alessandro,” Junta said finally. “We have a certain artistry of thought. What do you think?”

“I think we’re pretty good,” I said sincerely.

“And I concur,” he said. “We’ll publish it. No one should be ashamed to publish that. It’s not anything like self-powered galoshes or invisibility pants.”

We had reached a fine state of satisfaction and began to analyze his new problem. In no time at all he told me that be had previously judged himself a bit inept and had come to the conclusion that I was a mathematical ignoramus at our very first meeting. I hotly agreed with him and expressed the opinion that he was conceivably quite ready to retire on pension, and as for me, I should be ejected bodily from the Institute to load lumber because I wouldn’t quality for any other job. He contradicted me. He said there could be no talk of any pension and that he should be processed for fertilizer, while I should not be allowed within a kilometer of a sawmill, where a certain intellectual level was still required, but should be assigned as a junior trainee on the cesspool pumper at the cholera barracks. So we sat, propping up our heads and abandoning ourselves to mutual devaluation, when Feodor Simeonovich looked in. As near as I could make out, he was impatient to hear my opinion of his program.

“Program!” exclaimed Junta, smiling biliously. “I haven’t seen your program, Feodor, but I am sure that it is a work of genius in comparison to this—“ He handed Feodor Simeonovich the sheet with the problem, holding it in ginger disgust between two fingers. “Regard this exemplar of mental poverty and vapidity.”

“B-but, my dear f-fellows,” said Feodor Simeonovich, having diligently deciphered the handwriting. “This is BBen B-Beczalel’s problem! Didn’t C–Cagliostro prove ththat it had no s-solution?”

“We know that it has no solution, too,” said Junta, bristling immediately. “But we wish to learn how to solve it”

“H-how strangely you r-reason, C–Cristo…. H-how can you look for a solution, where it d-does not exist? It’s s-some sort of n-nonsense.

“Excuse me, Feodor, but it’s you who are reasoning strangely. It’s nonsense to look for a solution if it already exists. We are talking about how to deal with a problem that has no solution. This is a question of profound principle, which, I can see, is not within your scope, since you are an applications type. Apparently I started this conversation with you for nothing.”

Cristobal Joseevich’s tone was exceedingly insulting and Feodor Simeonovich became angry.

“I’ll t-tell you what, my g-good fellow,” he said. “I can’t d-debate with you in such a v-vein, in the presence of the young man. Y-you astonish m-me. It’s not s-scholarly. If you wish to continue, let’s go out in the hall.”

“As you wish,” replied Junta, drawing himself up like a steel spring and reaching convulsively for a nonexistent rapier hilt at his hip.

They walked out ceremoniously, holding their heads high and not looking at each other. The girls tittered. I wasn’t particularly concerned, either. Sitting down, I put my hands around my head, studying the sheet that had been left behind and listening to the mighty rumble of Feodor Simeonovich’s bass and the dry, angry expletives of Cristobal Joseevich cutting through, out in the hall.

In the end, Feodor Simeonovich bellowed, “Would you please follow me to my office!”

“A pleasure!” grated Junta. They had now assumed the formal “you.” Their voices faded in the distance.

“Duel! A duel!” chittered the girls.

Junta had an arrant fame as a duelist and for picking quarrels. They said that he would bring his adversary to his laboratory, offer him a choice of rapiers, swords, or halbards, and then start jumping on tables and overturning cabinets a La Douglas Fairbanks. But there was no need to worry about Feodor Simeonovich. It was quite clear that, having arrived in his office, they would gloom in silence at each other across the table for half an hour, then Feodor Simeonovich would sigh heavily, open his liquor cabinet, and fill two glasses with the Elixir of Bliss. Junta would flare his nostrils, twist his moustache, and drink up. Feodor Simeonovich would fill the glasses again without delay and shout into the lab, “Fresh pickles!”

Roman called at this time and asked in an odd voice that I go to his place at once. I ran upstairs.

In the lab were Roman, Victor, and Eddie. Besides them, there was also a green parrot. Alive. He sat, just as yesterday, on the balance beam, ogled each one of us in turn out of one eye or the other, poked around under his feathers with his beak, and obviously exhibited excellent health. The scientists, in contradistinction, looked far from well. Roman hunched over the bird and periodically sighed with a jerk. A pale Eddie gently massaged his temples, wearing the agonized expression of a migraine sufferer. Victor, too, astride a chair, rocked it like a bug-eyed schoolboy and grumbled indistinctly, sotto voce.

“The same one?” I asked weakly.

“The same one,” said Roman.

“Photon?” I began to feel poorly, too. “And the number coincides?”

Roman did not reply.

Eddie said in a lugubrious tone, “If we knew how many feathers the parrot has in his tail, we could count them over again and account for the one lost yesterday.”

“Would you like me to go and fetch Braem?” I offered.

“Where is the corpse?” asked Roman. “That’s where we should start from! Listen, detectives—where is the corpse?”

“Corpse,” barked the parrot. “Ceremony! Corpse overboard! Rubidium!”

“The devil knows what he’s talking about,” said Roman with feeling.

“’Corpse overboard’ is a typical pirate expression,” elucidated Eddie.

“And rubidium?”

“R-rubidiuml Res-erve! Tr-tremendous!” said the parrot.

“The rubidium reserves are huge,” translated Eddie. “It would be interesting to know where.”

I bent over to examine the ring.

“Could it be that it’s still not the same one?”

“And where is the one?” asked Roman.

“Well, that’s a different question,” I said. “That would be easier to explain.”

“Explain,” Roman demanded.

“Wait,” I said. “Let’s first decide the question: Is it the same one or not?”

“I think it’s the same one,” said Eddie.

“And I think it’s not the same one,” I said. “Here there’s a scratch on the ring, where the three…”

“Three!” pronounced the parrot. ‘Thr-ree! Hard-a-starboard! Sprout! Water-r sprout!”

Victor suddenly perked up. “I have an idea,” he said.

“What?”

“Word-association test.”

“How?”

“Wait! Everybody sit down and be quiet and don’t interfere. Roman, do you have a tape recorder?”

“I do.”

.”Let’s have it. But everyone must be quiet. I’ll open him up, the rascal. He’ll tell me everything.”

Victor pulled up a chair, sat down with the recorder in his hand opposite the parrot, puffed himself up, fixed the parrot with one eye, and yelled, “R-rubidium!”

The parrot started and almost fell off the scales. Flapping his wings to regain equilibrium, he responded, “Rreserve! Cr-rater Ritchey!”

We looked at each other, “R-reserve!” yelled Victor.

“Tr-remendous! Riches! R-riches! Ritchey is r-right! Ritchey is r-right! R-robots! R-robots!”

“Robots!”

“Cr-rashes Bur-rning! Atmospher-re bur-rning! Scrram! R-retreat! Scram! Dr-ramba Retr-reat!”

“Dramba!”

“R-rubidium! R-reserve!”

“Rubidium!”

“R-reserve! Cr-rater! Ritchey!”

“Short circuit,” said Roman. “Full circle.” “Wait, wait,” Victor rattled on. “In a minute—“ “Try something different,” counseled Eddie. “Janus!” said Victor.

The parrot opened its beak and sneezed. “Ja-nus!” Victor repeated sternly. The parrot gazed pensively out of the window. “There’s no letter “R,’ “ I said.

“Possible,” said Victor. “Let’s try… Nevstr-r-uev!”

“Pr-ressing maneuver!” said the parrot. “Wizar-rd! Wizar-rd! Kr-rib transmitting!”

“That is not a pirate’s parrot,” said Eddie.

“Ask him about the corpse,” I said.

“Corpse,” Victor said reluctantly.

“Bur-rial cer-remony! Temporal restriction! Or-ration! Or-ration! Cr-rap! Work! Work!”

“He must have had some curious owners,” said Roman. “What do we do now?”

“Victor,” said Eddie, “I think he’s using space terminology. Try something simple, routine.”

“Hydrogen bomb,” said Victor.

The parrot lowered its head and cleaned its beak with a claw.

“Tractor,” said Victor.

The parrot remained silent.

“It doesn’t work,” said Roman.

“Devil take it!” said Victor. “I can’t think of a single everyday item with an “R’ in it. Table, stool, ceiling, sofa… oh, translator!”

The parrot looked at Victor out of one eye. “Kor-rneev, r-request!”

“What?” asked Victor. For the first time in my life I saw Victor at a loss for words.

“Kor-rneev r-rude! R-rude! Great worker! R-rare rrude! Dr-roll!”

We giggled. Victor looked at us and said vengefully, “Oira-Oira!”

“Elder-ny! Elder-rly!” the parrot responded readily. “Cheer-rful! R-reaching.”

“Something isn’t right,” said Roman.

“Why not right?” said Victor. “It’s very much to the point…. Privalov!”

“Ar-rtles Pr-roject! Pr-rimitive! Hard wor-rker!”

“Fellows, he knows us all,” said Eddie.

“Wor-rkers!” responded the parrot. “Or-rain pepper-r! Zer-ro! Zer-ro! Gr-ravitation!”

“Amperian!” Victor said hurriedly.

“Cr-rematorium! Pr-remature r-rupture!” said the parrot, thought some, and added, “Amper-re—meter!”

“Dissociated nonsense,” said Eddie.

“There is no such thing as dissociated nonsense,” Roman said pensively.

Victor snapped the catch and opened the dictaphone. “The tape has run out,” he said. “Too bad.”

“You know what,” I said. “I think it would be simpler to ask Janus. What sort of parrot this one is, where it is from, and in general—”

“And who is the one to ask?” inquired Roman.

No one responded. Victor suggested listening to the tape again. At the very first words from the dictaphone, the parrot flew to Victor’s shoulder and sat there listening with evident interest, making comments such as,” Dr-ramba ignor-res ur-ranium,” “Cor-rect,” and “Kor-rneev r-rude!”

When the recording was finished, Eddie said, “In principle, you could compose a lexicon and analyze it on the machine. But this and that is clear even now. In the first place, he knows us all. That’s astonishing in itself. It means that he’s heard our names many times. In the second place, he knows about robots. And about rubidium. By the way, where is rubidium used?”

“In our Institute,” said Roman, “it certainly is’not used at all.”

“It’s something like sodium,” said Korneev.

“All right for rubidium,” I said. “But how does he know about lunar craters?”

“Why lunar in particular?”

“Do we call mountains “craters’ on the Earth?”

“Well, right off the bat there’s the Arizona crater, and also, a crater is not a mountain, but a hole.”

“Tempor-ral r-rip!” the parrot said.

“He has the strangest terminology,” said Eddie. “In no way can I classify it as general usage.”

“Yes,” agreed Victor. “If the parrot is always with Janus, then Janus busies himself with strange matters.”

“Str-range or-rbital tr-ransfer!”

“Janus is not involved in space,” said Roman. “I would know.”

“Maybe he was previously.”

“Not previously either.”

“Robots of some kind,” Victor said sorrowfully. “Craters… why craters?”

“Perhaps Janus reads science-fiction,” I offered.

“Aloud? To a parrot?”

“Mmm, yes….

“Venera!” said Victor, addressing the parrot “R-ruinous cr-raze!” said the parrot. It grew thoughtful, then elucidated, “Cr-rashed. Fr-ruitlessly!”

Roman got up and paced up and down the laboratory. Eddie put his cheek down on the table and closed his eyes.

“How did he appear here?” I asked.

“Same as yesterday,” said Roman. “From Janus’s laboratory.”

“You saw it yourself?”

“Uhuh.”

“I don’t understand one thing,” I said. “Did he or didn’t he die?”

“And how would we know?” said Roman. “I’m not a veterinarian. And Victor is not an ornithologist. And, in general, this may not even be a parrot.”

“What then could it be?”

“How would I know?”

“This could be an involved hallucinatory induction,” said Eddie without opening his eyes.

“Induced how?”

‘That’s what I am thinking about now,” said Eddie.

I pressed my eyeball with a finger and looked at the parrot. The parrot image split.

“It splits,” I said. “It’s not an hallucination.

“I said—‘an involved hallucination,’“ reminded Eddie.

I pressed on both eyes and was temporarily blinded.

“Here’s what,” said Korneev. “I declare that we are dealing with a suspension of the law of cause and effect. Therefore, there is but one conclusion—it’s all an hallucination and we should all get up, get in line, and depart singing to a psychiatrist. Form a line!”

“I won’t go,” said Eddie. “I have one more idea.”

“What?’

“I won’t say.”

“Why?”

“You’ll beat me.”

“We’ll beat you if you don’t.”

“So beat me.”

“You don’t have any idea,” said Victor. “You are just imagining it. Off to the psychiatrist.”

The door creaked and Janus Poluektovich came in from the hall.

“So,” he said. “How do you do!”

We stood up. lie went around and shook each of us by the hand in turn.

“Dear Photon,” he said, seeing the parrot. “He is not bothering you, Roman Petrovich?”

“Bothering?” said Roman. “Me? Why would he bother me? He is not bothering me, just the opposite…

“Still, it’s every day—“ Janus started to say something and suddenly stopped. “What did we discuss yesterday?” he asked, wiping his forehead.

“Yesterday you were in Moscow,” said Roman, with a strange submissive tone in his voice.

“Ah-h… yes, yes. Well, all right. Photon—come here.”

The parrot flew up, perched on Janus’s shoulder, and said in his ear, “Gr-rain, gr-rain! Sugar-r!”

Janus Poluektovich smiled tenderly and went into his laboratory.

We looked stupidly at each other.

“Let’s get out of here,” said Roman.

“To the psychiatrist! To the psychiatrist,” mumbled Korneev ominously, while we walked along the corridor toward his sofa. “Into crater Ritchey! Dr-ramba! Sugar-r!”

Chapter 5

Victor put the containers with the water-of-life down on the floor and we all flopped down on the sofa-translator and lighted up. After some time Roman asked, “Victor, did you turn off the sofa?”

“Yes.”

“I keep having this or that nonsense popping into my head.”

“I switched it off and blocked it,” said Victor. “No, my good man,” said Eddie. “And why not hallucination, after all?”

“Who said that it’s not an hallucination?” asked Victor. “Didn’t I suggest a psychiatrist?”

“When I was courting Maika,” said Eddie, “I induced such hallucinations that I was frightened myself.”

“What for?” asked Victor.

Eddie thought. “I don’t really know,” he said. “Probably out of high feelings.”

“I ask: Why would anyone induce hallucinations in us?” said Victor. “And then, we are not Maika, either. We are, thank God, magisters. Who can best us? Maybe Janus, maybe Kivrin or Junta. Perhaps Giacomo, too.”

“But our Alexander is in the weak side,” said Eddie in a diffident tone.

“So what?” I asked. “Am I the only one who is seeing things?”

“As a general proposition, we could run a test,” said Victor, in deep thought. “If we had Sasha… you know—”

“No, no,” said I. “You will forget that for me. Aren’t there other methods? Press on the eyeball. Or give the tape recorder to an uninvolved person. Let him listen, and discover whether there is a recording or not.”

The magisters smiled pityingly.

“You make a good programmer, Sasha” said Eddie.

“Sprat!” said Korneev. “An embryo!”

“Yes, my dear Sashenka,” sighed Roman, “I can see you can’t even imagine what a really detailed, thoroughly induced hallucination is like.”

Dreamy expressions suffused the faces of the magisters—evidently sweet memories were evoked in them. I looked at them with envy. They were smiling, shutting their eyes in concentration. They were winking at an imaginary someone.

Then Eddie said suddenly, “Orchids bloomed for her all winter. They smelled of the sweetest scent I could think of.”

Victor came out of his trancelike state. “Berkeleyans!” he said. “Unwashed solipsists! “How awful is my perception!’

“Yes,” said Roman. “An hallucination is not a fit object of discussion. It’s too simple. We are not children or old wives. I don’t wish to be an agnostic. What was that idea you had, Eddie?”

“I had? Ah, yes, there was one. Also a primitive one, basically. Matrixats.”

“Hmm,” Roman said dubiously.

“And how’s that?” I asked.

Eddie explained reluctantly that besides the doubles with which I was familiar, there also were matrixats—absolutely accurate copies of people and objects. In contradistinction to the doubles, the matrixat was identical with the original in structural detail. It was impossible to distinguish one by the usual methods. Special equipment was required and, in general, that was a highly complicated and demanding undertaking. In his own time Balsamo received his magister-academician degree for the proof of the matrixat nature of Philippe Bourbon, known popularly as the “Iron Mask.” This matrixat of Louis XIV was created in the secret laboratories of the Jesuits with the aim of seizing the French throne. In our time, matrixats were made by the biostereographic method a la Richard Segure.

I didn’t know then who this Richard Segure was, but I said at once that the matrixat concept could only explain the extraordinary similarity of the parrots. And that’s all. For example, it continued to be incomprehensible where yesterday’s dead parrot had gone.

“That’s true enough,” said Eddie. “And I don’t insist. Especially since Janus has no connection whatsoever with biostereography.”

“There you are,” I said more boldly. “In that event it would be better to suggest a trip into the described future. You know? The way Louis Sedlovoi does it.”

“And then?” said Komeev, without any special interest

“Janus simply flies into a science-fiction novel, takes a parrot there, and brings him back here. When the parrot dies, he flies to the same page and again… it then becomes understandable why the parrots are similar. It is one and the same parrot and you can see why it has this science-fiction vocabulary. And furthermore,” I continued, feeling that I wasn’t doing so badly, “This could also explain why Janus asks the same questions all the time: each time he fears that he has returned on the wrong day… I think I have explained it all quite nicely, no?”

“And is there such a science-fiction novel?” asked Eddie with a show of curiosity. “With a parrot in it?”

“I don’t know,” I said honestly, “but there are all kinds of animals in those starships. Cats and dogs and children. and, anyway, there is a vast science-fiction literature in the West. You can’t read it all…

“Well, to begin with, a parrot out of Western science-fiction would hardly speak Russian,” said Roman. “But the main point is that it’s altogether incomprehensible how these cosmic parrots—even granted they come from Soviet S-F—could be acquainted with Korneev, Privalov, and Oira-Oira…

‘I won’t even mention,” Victor said lazily, “that it is one thing to transport a real material body into a world of ideas, but quite another to transport an idea-world body into the real world. I doubt that there is an author who created a parrot image suitable for transference into the material world.”

I was reminded of the semitransparent inventors and couldn’t find a rejoiner.

“However,” Victor continued charitably, “our Sasha here is exhibiting definite signs of promise. One feels a certain noble madness in his ideas.”

“Janus wouldn’t incinerate an ideal parrot,” said Eddie with conviction. “An ideal parrot cannot even rot.”

“And why, anyway,” Roman said suddenly, “why are we so inconsistent? Why Sedlovoi? Why should Janus repeat Sedlovoi’s activities? Janus has a line of investigation.

Janus has his own area of problems. Janus involves himself in the investigation of parallel dimensions. Let’s take that as a point of departure.”

“Let’s,” I said.

“Do you think that Janus was successful in establishing communications with some parallel dimension?” asked Eddie.

“Communications he established them some time ago. Why not suppose that he has gone further? Why not suppose that he is now working on the transfer of material bodies? Eddie is right. There must be matrixats, because the guarantee of complete identity is absolutely necessary. The transfer conditions are selected on the basis of the experimental situation. The first two transfers were unsuccessful: the parrots died. Today the experiment was apparently successful. .

“Why do they speak Russian?” asked Eddie. “And why, again, does the parrot have such a vocabulary?”

“It means that a Russia exists there, too,” said Roman. “But there they are already mining rubidium in Ritchey crater.”

“It’s all too farfetched,” said Victor. “Why parrots in particular? Why not dogs or guinea pigs? Why not just tape recorders, in the final analysis? Also, how do these parrots know that Oira-Oira is old, and that Korneev is an excellent worker?”

“Rude,” I prompted.

“Rude, but excellent. And where, after all, did the dead parrot disappear?”

“You know what?” said Eddie. “This won’t do. We are working like dilettantes. Like the authors of amateur letters: “Dear scientists—it is now two years that there are underground thumps in my basement. Please explain how they originate.’ We need a systematic approach. Where is your paper, Victor? We’ll write it down at once.”

So we wrote it all down in Eddie’s beautiful handwriting.

In the first place we took it as a postulate that what was happening was not an hallucination; otherwise the whole thing would be dull. Next we formulated questions which the sought-for-hypotheses would have to answer. The questions were divided into two groups: the “parrot” group and the “Janus” group. The latter was introduced at the insistence of Roman and Eddie, who declared that they sensed, with their innermost innards, a connection between the idiosyncrasies of the parrot and of Janus. They could not answer Korneev’s question as to the physical meaning of the concepts “innards” and “sensed,” but underlined that Janus himself presented a most curious subject for investigation, and, also, that an apple does not fall far from the apple tree. Inasmuch as I had no opinion of my own, they were in the majority and the final list of questions looked like this.

Why did parrots number one, two, and three, observed on the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth respectively, look so much alike that we assumed them, in the beginning, to be one and the same? Why did Janus burn the first parrot, and also probably the one before number one (number zero) and of which only a feather remained? Where did the feather go? Where did the second (expired) parrot go? How to account for the strange vocabularies of the second and third parrots? How to explain that the third parrot knew us all, although we had seen it for the first time? (“Why and of what did the parrots die?” I would have added, but Korneev growled, “Why and for what reason is a bluish color the first sign of poisoning?”—and my question was not included.) What did Janus and the parrots have in common? Why did Janus not remember with whom and about what he conversed on the previous day. What happened to Janus every midnight? Why did Janus-U have the strange habit of talking in the future tense, while nothing of the sort had been observed with Janus-A? Why, finally, were there two of them, and whence, actually, came the belief that Janus Poluektovich was one, person in two manifestations?

After that we thought laboriously for some time, constantly consulting the list I kept hoping that a noble madness would again descend upon me, but my thoughts scattered, and the more I thought, the more I tended to the viewpoint of Sanya Drozd: that in this Institute, anything at all, and worse than that, happened regularly. I understood that this cheap skepticism was simply the result of my ignorance of and unfamiliarity with the categories of thought associated with a changed world, but I couldn’t help it. All that had happened, I reasoned, was truly remarkable only if one considered the three or four parrots as being one and the same. They were actually so close in their resemblance that at first I had been led astray. That was only natural. I was a mathematician, I respected numbers, and their coincidence, especially of six digits, was automatically associated by me with the coincidence of the numbered object. However, it was clear that it could not have been one and the same parrot. In that case the law of cause and effect would have had to be abrogated, and I was not about to renounce that law for the sake of some scruffy parrots, some of which had already expired. But if it was not the same parrot, then the whole problem became more shallow. All right, then, the numbers coincided. Then again, someone had thrown out the corpse unbeknown to us. What else was there? The vocabulary? So what about the vocabulary…? For sure there was a very simple explanation.

I was about ready to give a speech on this theme when Victor suddenly said, “Fellows, I think I am beginning to see!”

We didn’t say a word, we only turned toward him in a simultaneous rush. Victor got up.

“It’s as simple as a pancake,” he said. “It is trivial. It is flat and banal. It’s not even of sufficient interest to converse about.”

We were getting up slowly. I had the same feeling as in reading the last pages of a gripping mystery novel. All my skepticism somehow evaporated instantly.

“Countermotion!” stated Victor. Eddie sat down.

“Countermotion?’ said Roman. “Let’s see—aha….” He twisted his fingers. “So.—uhuh… and—if so? Yes, it’s understandable why he knows us all. -

Roman made a wide welcoming gesture. “It means they come from there.”

“And that’s why he asks what he talked about yesterday,” Victor picked up, “and the science-fiction vocabulary, too!”

“Will you wait!” I howled. The last page of the mystery was writ in Arabic. “Hold it! What countermotion?”

“No,” said Roman with regret, and at once you could tell by Victor’s expression that countermotion wouldn’t work out. “It doesn’t fit,” said Roman. “It’s like a motion picture… Imagine a motion picture…

“What motion picture?” I yelled. “Help!”

“Movies in reverse,” explained Roman. “Do you understand? Countermotion.”

“Dog crap,” said Victor, all upset, and lay down on the sofa with his nose in his crossed arms.

“True enough, it doesn’t fit,” said Eddie, also crushed. “Don’t get excited, Sasha: it doesn’t work out anyway. Countermotion is simple movement in time in the opposite direction. Like a neutrino. But the problem is that if the parrot was a countermover, he’d be flying backward and instead of dying he’d be coming alive. But, generally, it’s a good idea. A parrot-countermover would indeed know something about space. He would be living from the future and into the past. And a countermoving Janus could not, in fact, know what happened in our ‘yesterday.’ Because our ‘yesterday’ would be his ‘tomorrow.’

“That’s the point,” said Victor. “That’s what I thought:

why did the parrot say that Oira-Oira was “elderly’? And how did Janus so cleverly and in detail foretell, on occasion, what would happen on the next day. Do you remember the incident on the polygon, Roman? It all suggested strongly that they were from the future

“Listen. Is it really possible—this countermotion?” I said.

“Theoretically it is possible,” said Eddie. “After all, half the matter in the universe is moving in the opposite direction in time. Practically no one has worked in that field.”

“Who needs it, and who could stand it?” Victor said gloomily.

“Granted, it would be a wonderful experiment,” noted Roman.

“Not an experiment, but a self-sacrifice,” growled Victor. “Whatever you may think, I feel there is something involving countermotion in all this. -. - I feel it in my innards.”

“Ah, yes, the innards!” said Roman and we all were quiet.

While they were silent, I was feverishly adding up all the practical evidence. If countermotion was theoretically possible then theoretically the suspension of the law of cause and effect was also possible. Actually, the abrogation of the law was not involved as it remained in effect separately both for the normal world and for the world of the countermover. -. - And this meant that one could still postulate that there were not three or four parrots, but only one and the same. What results? On the morning of the tenth it was lying dead in the petri dish. Afterward it was burned to ashes and scattered on the wind. Nonetheless, on the morning of the eleventh it was again alive. Not only not burned to ashes, but whole and unhurt. True, it expired in the middle of the day and again wound up in the dish. This was devilishly important! I felt it was devilishly important—the petri dish—. - the uniqueness of place—. - on the twelfth the parrot was again alive and begged for sugar. - - This was not countermotion, it was not a film running backward, but there was something of countermotion in it… Victor was right. - For the countermover the sequence of events was: the parrot lives, the parrot dies, the parrot is burned. From our point of view, if details were discarded, it came out exactly in reverse: the parrot is burned, the parrot dies, the parrot lives. - - It’s as though the film had been cut in three places and was shown with the third piece first, then the second, and finally the first piece. -. There were some kinds of breaks of discontinuity—. - discontinuity interruption.—points of discontinuity.

“Fellows,” I said, my voice feeble. “Must countermotion be necessarily continuous?”

For a while they did not react. Eddie smoked, blowing clouds at the ceiling, Victor lay motionless on his stomach, and Roman stared at me vacuously. Then his eyes widened.

“Midnight!” he said in a fearsome voice.

They all jumped up.

It was as though I had just driven in a decisive goal in a championship soccer game. They were all over me, smacking me on my cheeks, they pounded me on my neck and shoulders, they threw me on the sofa and fell down themselves.

“Genius,” howled Eddie.

“What a head,” roared Roman.

“And here I thought we had an imbecile in you!” added the rude Korneev.

Then we quieted down and everything proceeded as smooth as butter.

First Roman announced, out of a clear blue sky, that now he understood the mystery of the Tunguska meteorite. He desired to impart it to us at once and we concurred gladly, paradoxical as this might sound. We were not in any hurry to approach that which intrigued us the most. No, we were in no hurry whatsoever! We were gourmets.

We did not attack the delicacies. We inhaled the aroma, we rolled up our eyes and smacked our lips, we rubbed our hands, we stalked around, we anticipated….

“Let us finally shed a true light,” began Roman in an ingratiating tone, “on the snarled problem of the Tungus marvel. Prior to us, this problem has been tackled by persons absolutely devoid of imagination. All these comets, antimatter meteorites, auto-exploding nuclear ships, various cosmic clouds, and quantum generators—it’s all too banal, and consequently far from the truth. As for me, the Tungus meteorite was always the ship of cosmic wanderers and I always supposed that it could never be found on the site of the explosion simply because it was long gone. Until today, I thought that the fall of the Tungus meteorite was not the landing of a ship, but its departure. And even this roughed-out theory explained a great deal. The concept of discrete countermotion allows us to finish this problem once and for all.

“What did happen on the thirtieth of June, 1908, in the region of Podkammenaia Tunguska? About the middle of July of the same year, the ship of the aliens entered circumsolar space. But they were not the simple, artless aliens of science-fiction novels. They were countermovers, my friends. People who had arrived in our world from another universe where time flows in the opposite direction of ours. As a result of the mutual interaction of the opposite time flows, they had become converted from ordinary countermovers, who perceived our universe as a film running backward, into countermovers of the discrete type. The nature of such discreteness does not concern us at this time. What is of significance is another aspect of the matter. The important thing is that in our universe life for them became subject to a definite rhythmic cycle.

“If you assume for the sake of simplicity that their unit cycle was equal to an Earth day, then their existence would look like this from our point of view. On the first of July, let’s say, they live, work, and eat just as we do. But exactly at, say, midnight, they and all their equipment pass not into the second of July, as we ordinary mortals do, but into the very start of June the thirtieth; that is, one moment forward and two days backward, if you consider it from our viewpoint. Exactly the same way, at the end of June thirtieth, they pass not into the first of July but into

the very beginning of June the twenty-ninth. And so forth.

“Finding themselves in close proximity to Earth, our countermovers discovered to their amazement, assuming they had not discovered it previously, that the Earth was performing strange leaps in its orbit, which leaps made astrogation extremely difficult. Further, finding themselves above the Earth on the first of July, according to our calendar, they observed a huge fire in the very center of the gigantic Eurasian continent, whose smoke they had previously seen—on the second, third, and so on of July in our time. The cataclysm in itself interested them, but their scientific curiosity was thoroughly aroused, when on the morning of the thirtieth of June—in our time-frame—they noticed that there was not even a vestige of any fire at all and a serene sea of green taiga was stretching below them. The intrigued captain ordered a landing in the very same place where he had observed the day before—in his time-frame, and with his own eyes—the epicenter of the fiery catastrophe. From that time on everything proceeded as expected. Relays clicked, screens flickered, planetary engines (in which k-gamma-plasmoin was exploding) roared.”

“How’s that again?” asked Victor.

“K-gamma-plasmoin. Or, say, mu-delta-ionoplast. The ship wrapped in flames fell into the taiga, and, naturally, ignited it. It was precisely this scene which was observed by Karelinsk peasants, who subsequently entered history as eyewitnesses. The fire was awful. The countermovers looked tentatively outside, were intimidated and decided to wait it out behind their fire-resistant screens and alloys. Until midnight they listened with trepidation to the fierce roaring and crackling of the flames, and exactly at midnight everything became still. And no wonder. The countermovers entered their new day—the twenty-ninth of June on our calendar. The courageous captain, with infinite precautions, decided about two hours later to exit the ship and saw magnificent conifers calmly swaying in the brilliant light of his searchlights. He was immediately subjected to attack by clouds of bloodsucking insects, known as mosquitoes and midges in our terminology.”

Roman stopped to catch his breath and looked around at us. We liked it very much. We anticipated, how, in the same way, we would crack open the mystery of the parrot.

“The subsequent fate of the couutermover wanderers,” continued Roman, “should be of no interest to L15. It may be that, on about the fifteenth of June, they quietly and noiselessly, using noninfiammatory alpha-beta-gamma-anti-gravitation this time, took off from the peculiar planet and went home. Maybe they all perished, poisoned by mosquito saliva, and their cosmic ship remained stuck on our planet, sinking into the abyss of time, and the Silurian Sea, where trilobites crawled over its wreck. Neither is it impossible that sometime in 1906 or possibly 1901 a taiga hunter may have stumbled upon it and told his friends about it for a long time afterward. They in turn, even as they should, didn’t believe him worth a damn.

“In concluding my modest presentation, I will permit myself to express my sympathy for the courageous explorers who attempted in vain to discover something worthwhile in the region of Podkammenaia Tunguska. Mesmerized by the obvious, they were interested only in what happened in the taiga after the explosion and none of them were interested in what had happened before.”

Roman coughed to clear his throat and drank a mug of the water-of-life.

“Does anybody have any questions for the lecturer?” inquired Eddie. “No questions? Fine! Let us revert to the parrots. Who is asking for the floor?”

Everybody asked for the floor. And everyone started speaking. Even Roman, who was slightly hoarse. We tore the list with questions out of each other’s hands and crossed out one question after another, so that, in less than half an hour, there was constructed a thoroughly clear and scrupulously detailed picture of the observed events.

In 1841, in the family of a landlord of moderate means, who was also a reserve lieutenant in the army, by the name of Poluekt Chrisanovitch Nevstruev, there was born a son. He was named Janus, in honor of a distant relative by the name of Janus Poluektovich Nevstruev, who had accurately predicted the sex and also the day and even the hour of the infant’s birth. This relative, a quiet, retiring old man, moved to the reserve lieutenant’s estate soon after the Napoleonic invasion and lived in the guest house, devoting himself to scientific endeavors. He was somewhat peculiar, as is appropriate for a scientist, with many idiosyncrasies, but became attached to his godson and didn’t leave him for a minute, constantly feeding him knowledge of mathematics, chemistry, and other sciences. It could be said that there was not a single day in the life of the younger Ianus without Janus the elder, and it was probably due to this that he didn’t notice what was a subject of wonder to others: that the old man not only grew no older, but to the contrary, became apparently stronger and more vigorous. Toward the end of the century the old Janus introduced the younger into the final mysteries of analytical, relativistic, and general magic. They continued to live and work side by side, taking part in all the wars and revolutions, suffering with stoic courage all the reverses of history, until they came finally to the Scientific Research Institute of Thaumaturgy and Spellcraft.

To be honest, this whole introductory part was entirely a fictional invention. About the past of the Januses we knew but one fact: that J.P. Nevstruev was born on the seventh of March, 1841. How and when J.P. Nevstruev became the director of the Institute was completely unknown to us. We didn’t even know who was the first to guess, and gave away, the fact that Janus-U and Janus-A were one and the same man in two persons. I learned of this from Oira-Oira and believed it because I couldn’t understand it. Oira-Oira learned it from Giacomo and also believed because he was young and exalted. A charwoman told it to Korneev and Korneev then decided that the fact itself was so trivial as not to merit any examination. Eddie, on the other hand, heard Savaof Baalovich and Feodor Simeonovich talking about it. Eddie was then a junior technician and generally believed in everything except God.

And so, the past of the Januses appeared extremely hazy to us. But the future we knew quite accurately. Janus-A, who was now busier with the affairs of the Institute than with science, would, in the near future, become entranced with the idea of practical countermotion. He would devote his life to it. He would acquire a friend—a small green parrot named Photon, which would be a gift to him from famous Russian cosmonauts. It would occur on the nineteenth of May of either 1973 or 2073—that’s how the foxy Eddie deciphered the mysterious number 190573 on the ring. Most likely, soon after that date, Janus would attain his goal and convert into countermovers both himself and the parrot, who would, of course, be sitting on his shoulder begging for sugar. Precisely at that moment, if we understood anything at all about counter-motion, future mankind would be deprived of Janus Poluektovich; but in return, the past would acquire two Januses, since Janus-A would turn into Janus-U and would begin to glide backward on the axis of time. They would meet every day, but it would never enter the mind of Janus-A to suspect anything out of the ordinary because he had become accustomed, from his cradle, to the kindly wrinkled face of his relative and teacher. And every night, exactly at midnight, exactly at zero hours, zero-zero minutes, zero-zero seconds, and zero-zero tertia*, local time, Janus-A would transit, as we all do from today’s night into tomorrow morning, while Janus-U and his parrot, in that same moment equal to a micro quantum of time, would transit from our present right into our yesterday’s morning.

That was why the parrots one, two, and three were so similar: they were simply one and the same parrot. Poor old Photon. Perhaps he had been overcome by old age or maybe he had caught a cold in the draft and had flown to his favorite balance in Roman’s laboratory to die. He died and his aggrieved owner made him a fiery funeral and scattered his ashes to the wind, doing so because he didn’t realize how dead countermovers behave. Or perhaps precisely because he did know. Naturally, we viewed this as a movie with reversed sections.

On the ninth, Roman finds the remaining feather in the furnace. Photon’s corpse is already gone; it was burned tomorrow. On the morrow, the tenth, Roman finds it in the petri dish. Janus-U finds the corpse and burns it then and there in the furnace. The feather, which escaped cremation, remains in the furnace to the end of the day; and at midnight jumps into the ninth. On the morning of the eleventh, Photon is alive, although already sickly. The parrot expires before our eyes under the scales (on which it will be so happy to sit now) and the simple-souled Sanya Drozd puts it in the dish, where the deceased will lie till midnight, will jump into the morning of the tenth, will be found there by Janus-U, burned and scattered to the winds, but its feather will remain to be found by Roman. On the morning of the twelfth, Photon is alive and well and has an interview with Korneev, asking for sugar; but at midnight the bird wilt jump into the morning of the One-sixtieth of a second. eleventh when it will sicken and die, and will be placed in the petri dish; but at midnight it will jump into the morning of the tenth, will be burned and scattered, but a feather will remain behind, which at midnight will jump into the morning of the ninth, will be found by Roman and thrown in the wastebasket. On the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth, and so on, much to our joy, Photon will be happy, talkative, and we’ll be spoiling it, feeding it sugar and pepper seeds, while Janus-U will be coming around to inquire whether he is interfering with our work. Employing the word-association technique, we should be able to learn a great many curious facts from him concerning the cosmic expansion of mankind and, doubtlessly, our own personal futures.

When we arrived at this point in our discussion, Eddie suddenly became gloomy and announced that he didn’t appreciate Photon’s insinuations about his, Amperian’s, untimely demise. Korneev, to whom any empathetic tact was foreign, remarked that any death was inevitably untimely and that nonetheless we’d all get to it sooner or later. Anyway, Roman said, it was possible the parrot loved him more than anyone else and remembered only his death. Eddie understood that he had a chance to die later than all of us and his mood improved.

However, the talk about death channeled our thoughts into a dismal direction. All of us—except, of course, Korneev—began to feel sorry for Janus-U. Truly, if one thought about it, his situation was horrible. First, he represented an example of tremendous scientific selflessness, because he was practically deprived of the possibility to exploit the fruits of his labor. Further, he had no bright future whatsoever. We were moving toward a world of reason and brotherhood, and he, with each passing day, went toward Bloody Nicholas, serfdom, the shooting on Sennaya Square, and—who knew? — maybe toward all kinds of repressive governments and torture. And somewhere in the depths of time, on the waxed parquet floor of the Saint Petersburg Academic de Science, he would be met on a fine day by a colleague in a powdered wig—a colleague who for a whole week had been scrutinizing him peculiarly—and who now would exclaim in surprise, throw up his hands, and mutter with horror in his eyes, “Herr Neffstroueff! How can it be? Fwhen yesterday they printed in “Notices’ that you hat passet away from a stroke?” And he would have to tell of a twin brother and false reporting, knowing full well and understanding only too correctly what that conversation meant.

“Cut it out,” said Korneev. “You are too maudlin. In return for all that he knows the future. He’s been there, where we still have a long way to go. And he may know exactly when we will all die.”

“That’s a completely different matter,” Eddie said sadly.

“It’s hard on the old man,” said Roman. “See to it that you treat him more gently and warmly in the future. Especially you, Victor. You are always the wise guy.”

“So why does he always pester me?” Victor hit back.

“’What did we talk about and where did we see each other…?’”

“So now you know why he pesters you, and you can conduct yourself decently.”

Victor scowled and started to examine the list of questions with a great show of concentration.

“We have to explain everything in more detail to him,” I said. “Everything we know. We have to predict his near future to him constantly.”

“Yes, devil take it!” said Roman. “He broke his leg this winter, on the ice.

“It has to be prevented,” I said decisively.

“What?” asked Roman. “Do you understand what you are saying? It has been healed for a long time. .

“But it has not been broken yet—for him,” contradicted Eddie.

For several minutes he tried to comprehend the whole thing.

Victor said suddenly, “Wait a minute! And how about this? One question, my dear chums, has not been crossed out.”

“Which?”

“Where did the feather go?”

“What do you mean, where?” said Roman. “It transited into the eighth. And on the eighth, I had coincidentally used the furnace to melt an alloy. .

“And so what does that mean?”

“But I did throw it into the wastebasket. -. I did not see it on the eighth, seventh, sixth. hmm. . Where did it go?”

“The charwoman threw it out,” I offered.

“As a matter of fact it would be interesting to cogitate on that,” said Eddie. “Assume that no one incinerated it. How should it appear through the centuries?”

“There are items of more interest,” said Victor. “For instance, what happens to Janus’s shoes when he wears them to the day they were manufactured at the shoe factory? And what happens to the food he eats for supper? And again. ?

But we were too tired to continue. We argued a little more, and then Sanya Drozd came along, evicted us from the sofa, switched on his radio, and got around to scrounging for two rubles.

“I need some bread,” he droned.

“We don’t have any,” we replied.

“So it’s the last you have; can’t you let me have some…

Further discussion became impossible and we decided to go and have dinner.

“After all is said and done,” said Eddie, “our hypothesis is not so fantastic. Perhaps the fate of Janus is even more astounding.”

That would be quite possible, we thought, and departed for the dining room.

I ran in to Electronics to let them know that I’d gone to have dinner. In the hall I bumped into Janus-U, who looked at me attentively, smiled for some reason, and asked if we had met yesterday.

“No, Janus Poluektovich,” I said. “We did not see each other yesterday. Yesterday you were not at the Institute. Yesterday, Janus Poluektovich, you flew to Moscow first thing in the morning.”

“Ah yes,” he said. “It had slipped my mind.”

He was smiling at me in such an affectionate way, that I made up my mind. It was a little presumptuous of me, of course, but I knew for sure that Janus Poluektovich was kindly disposed toward me lately, and this meant that no unpleasantness could occur between us now. And I asked softly, looking around cautiously, “Janus Poluektovich, may I be permitted to ask you one question?”

Raising his eyebrows, he regarded me thoughtfully for some time, and then, apparently remembering something, said, “Please do. One question only?”

I understood that he was right. It all wouldn’t fit into just one question. Would there be a war? Would I amount to something? Would the recipe for universal happiness be found? Would the last fool die someday?

I said, “Could I come to see you tomorrow morning?”

He shook his head, and replied, with what seemed to be a touch of perverse enjoyment, “No. It is quite impossible, Tomorrow morning, Alexander Ivanovich, you will be called by the Kitezhgrad plant, and I will have to approve your trip.”

I felt stupid. There was something degrading about this determinism, delivering me, an independent person with free will, to totally defined steps and actions outside of my control. And it was not a question of whether I wanted to go to Kitezhgrad or not. It was a question of inevitability. Now I could not die or get sick, or act up (“up to getting fired”). I was fated, and for the first time, I grasped the terrible meaning of this word. I had always known that it was bad to he fated to execution or blindness, for example. But to be fated to the love of the most wonderful girl in the world, to a round-the-world voyage, and to the Kitezhgrad trip (where, incidentally, I had rared to go for the past three months) also proved to be most unsettling. The knowledge of the future now presented itself to me in an entirely new light.

“It’s bad to read a good book from its end, isn’t it?” said Janus Poluektovich, watching me frankly. “As to your questions, Alexander Ivanovich… try to understand, Alexander Ivanovich, that a single future does not exist for everyone. They are many, and each one of your actions creates one of them. You will come to understand that,” he said convincingly. “Very definitely, you will understand it.”

Later I did indeed understand it.

But that’s really an altogether different story.