Monday Starts on Saturday

1

About two o’clock in the afternoon, when the Aldan’s input device blew its fuse again, the phone started to ring. It was the deputy director for the administration of buildings and contents, Modest Matveevich Kamnoedov.

“Privalov,” he said sternly, “why aren’t you where you’re supposed to be again?”

“Why, where am I supposed to be?” I asked petulantly. That day had been just full of hassle, and I’d forgotten everything.

“Now, that’s enough of that,” said Modest Matveevich. “You were supposed to report to me for instructions five minutes ago.”

“Holy cow,” I said, and put down the phone.

I turned off the computer, took off my lab coat, and told the girls not to forget to shut off the power. The big corridor was empty, the windows were half frozen over, and there was a blizzard raging outside. I put my jacket on as I walked along, then set off at a run to the Department of Buildings and Contents.

Modest Matveevich, wearing his shiny suit, was waiting imperiously for me in his own waiting room. Behind him a little gnome with hairy ears was running his fingers over a massive register with despondent diligence.

“You, Privalov, are like some kind of ham-munculus,” said Modest, “never where you’re supposed to be.”

Everyone tried to keep on the right side of Modest Matveevich, because he was a powerful man, absolutely intransigent and quite incredibly ignorant. So I roared out, “Yes, sir!” and clicked my heels.

“You’ve always got to be where you’re supposed to be,” Modest Matveevich continued. “Always. You’ve got a university education, and glasses, and you’ve grown that fine beard, but you still can’t even grasp a simple theorem like that.”

“It won’t happen again,” I said, opening my eyes wide.

“That’s quite enough of that,” said Modest Matveevich, softening. He took a sheet of paper out of his pocket and looked at it for a moment. “Right, then, Privalov,” he said eventually, “today it’s your turn to stand watch. Night watch in an institution over a holiday is a serious responsibility. Not as simple as pressing those buttons of yours.

“First, there’s fire safety. That’s the first thing, to forestall any occurrences of spontaneous combustion. Ensure that the production facilities entrusted to your care are disconnected from the power supply. And do it in person—none of that doubling-up or tripling-up trickery. None of those doubles of yours. If you discover an incident of combustion, call 01 immediately and start taking measures. For this eventuality you are provided with an alarm whistle to summon the emergency team.” He handed me a platinum whistle with an inventory number on it.

“And don’t you let anyone in. This is the list of individuals who have permission to use the laboratories at night, but don’t you let them in either, because it’s a holiday. Not a single living soul in the entire Institute. All those other souls and spirits—that’s all right, but not a single living one. Put a spell on the demons at the entrance and the exit. You understand the situation. Not a single living soul must get in, and none of the others must get out. Because we’ve already had a press-eedent: when a devil got out and stole the moon. A very famous press-eedent it was too—they even made it into a film.” He gave me a meaningful look and suddenly asked to see my papers.

I showed them to him. He examined my pass closely, gave it back to me, and said, “All in order. Just for a moment there I suspected you were a double after all. All right, then. At fifteen hundred hours in accordance with the currently applicable labor regulations, the working day will end and everyone will hand in the keys to their production premises. Following which you will personally inspect all the Institute’s premises. After that you make your rounds every three hours for purposes of spontaneous combustion. During your period of duty you will visit the vivarium at least twice. If the supervisor is drinking tea, stop him. We’ve had reports it’s not tea he’s drinking. That’s the way of things. Your post is in the director’s waiting room. You can rest on the sofa. Tomorrow at sixteen hundred hours you will be relieved by Vladimir Pochkin from comrade Oira-Oira’s laboratory. Is that clear?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

“I’ll call you during the night and tomorrow afternoon. You may also be checked by comrade head of the Personnel Department.”

“I understand,” I said, and ran my eye down the list. The first name on the list was the Institute’s director, Janus Polyeuctovich Nevstruev, with a penciled note: “Two-off.” Second came Modest Matveevich himself, and third was comrade head of the Personnel Department citizen Cerberus Psoevich Demin. They were followed by names I’d never come across anywhere before.

“Is anything unclear?” inquired Modest Matveevich, who had been following my movements suspiciously.

“Just here,” I said gravely, jabbing my finger at the list, “I have identified a sequence of… twenty-two comrades with whom I am not personally acquainted. I would like to run through these names with you in person.” I looked him straight in the eye and said, “As a precautionary measure.”

Modest Matveevich took the list and examined it, holding it at arm’s length. “All in order,” he said condescendingly. “It’s just that you, Privalov, are not up to speed. The individuals listed from number 4 to number 25 inclusive have been entered in the list of individuals allowed to work at night posthumously. In acknowledgment of services rendered previously. Is that clear now?”

I felt a little bit freaked. After all, it was pretty hard to get used to all this stuff.

“Take up your post,” Modest Matveevich said majestically. “Allow me, comrade Privalov, on behalf of the administration, to wish you every appropriate success in your professional and private life in the New Year.”

I wished him appropriate success too and went out into the corridor.

When I had learned the day before that I was going to be on duty, I’d been delighted: I was intending to finish off a calculation for Roman Oira-Oira. But now I realized that things weren’t quite that simple. The prospect of spending the night in the Institute suddenly appeared to me in an entirely different light. I’d stayed on to work late before, when the guys on watch had economized by switching off four lamps out of five in every corridor and I had to make my way to the exit past twitching masses of tangled shadows. At first I found this very disturbing, then I got used to it, but then I got unused to it again when one day I was walking down the wide corridor and I heard the regular clicking of claws on parquet flooring and glanced back to see some kind of phosphorescent beast running along behind me, clearly following my tracks. In actual fact, when they brought me down from the cornice, it turned out to have been an ordinary live dog that belonged to one of the staff. The staff member concerned came to apologize and Oira-Oira lectured me on the harmfulness of superstition, but even so it all left a pretty bitter aftertaste. The first thing I’ll do, I thought, is put the spell on the demons.

At the entrance to the director’s waiting room I ran into the morose Vitka Korneev. He nodded gloomily and was about to walk by, but I caught hold of his sleeve.

“What?” Korneev said rudely, stopping.

“I’m on duty today,” I informed him.

“More fool you,” said Korneev.

“You’re so rude, Vitka,” I said. “I don’t think I’ll bother talking to you any more.”

Vitka pulled down the collar of his sweater with one finger and looked at me curiously. “What are you going to do with me, then?”

“I’ll think of something,” I said, rather uncertainly.

Vitka suddenly livened up. “Hang on,” he said. “You mean this is the first time you’ve done the night watch?”

“Yes.”

“Aha,” said Vitka. “And just how do you intend to proceed?”

“According to instructions,” I replied. “I’ll put a spell on the demons and go to sleep. For purposes of spontaneous combustion. Where are you going to be?”

“Oh, there’s a few people getting together,” Vitka said vaguely. “At Vera’s place… what’s that you’ve got there?” He took my list. “Ah, the dead souls…”

“I won’t let anyone in,” I said. “Dead or alive.”

“A correct decision,” said Vitka. “Impeccably correct. Only keep an eye on my lab. There’ll be a double working in there.”

“Whose double?”

“My double, of course. Who else would give me theirs? I’ve locked him in there—here, take the key, since you’re on duty.”

I took the key. “Listen, Vitka, he can work until about ten, but after that I’ll disconnect everything. In accordance with regulations.”

“OK, we’ll sort that out somehow. Have you seen Edik anywhere around?”

“No, I haven’t,” I said. “And don’t you go trying to pull a fast one. I’m disconnecting everything at ten o’clock.”

“That’s just fine by me. Disconnect away. Disconnect the whole town if you like.”

Then the door of the waiting room opened and Janus Polyeuctovich came out into the corridor. “I see,” he said when he saw us there.

I bowed respectfully. I could tell from Janus Polyeuctovich’s face that he’d forgotten my name.

“Here you are,” he said, handing me his keys. “You’re on duty, if I’m not mistaken… And by the way…” He hesitated. “Wasn’t I talking to you yesterday?”

“Yes,” I said, “you stopped by the computer room.”

He nodded. “Yes, yes, that’s right… we had a talk about trainees.”

“No,” I interjected respectfully, “not exactly. It was about our letter to the Central Academic Supplies Committee. Concerning an electronic peripheral device.”

“Ah, that’s it,” he said. “Very well then, I wish you a peaceful night shift… Victor Pavlovich, could I see you for a moment?”

He took Vitka by the arm and led him away down the corridor, and I went into the waiting room, where the second Janus Polyeuctovich was locking the safes. When he saw me, he said, “I see,” and immediately started jangling his keys. It was A-Janus. I’d already learned something about how to tell them apart. A-Janus looked a bit younger; he was unsociable, always formally correct, and not very talkative. He was supposed to be a hard worker, and people who had known him for a long time said that this fair-to-middling administrator was slowly but surely developing into an outstanding scientist. S-Janus, on the other hand, was always soft-mannered and very attentive, and he had the strange habit of asking, “Wasn’t I talking to you yesterday?” They said he’d been going downhill pretty badly just recently, although he was still a scientist with a serious international reputation. And yet A-Janus and S-Janus were one and the same person. I just couldn’t get my head around that. It seemed too artificial somehow. I even suspected it was just a figure of speech.

A-Janus closed the final lock, handed me some of the keys, said good-bye coolly, and went out. I sat at the academic secretary’s desk, put my list down in front of me, and dialed my own number in the computer room. There was no answer—the girls must have gone already. It was 1430 hours.

At 1431 hours the great magician and sorcerer the famous Fyodor Simeonovich Kivrin came bursting into the waiting room, panting noisily and setting the parquet floor creaking. As the head of the Department of Linear Happiness, Fyodor Simeonovich was famous for his incorrigible optimism and faith in the bright future. His own past history was extremely turbulent. Under Ivan Vasilyevich—the czar Ivan the Terrible—the oprichniki of the minister of state security, Malyuta Skuratov, had jibed and joked as they burned him in a wooden bathhouse as a sorceror on the denunciation of his neighbor, a church sexton; under Czar Alexei Mikhailovich the Peaceful he was beaten mercilessly with rods, and the collected manuscripts of his works were burned on his bare back; under Czar Peter the Great he was initially elevated to the role of a specialist in chemistry and mining but somehow managed to displease Prince Romodanovsky and ended up in exile at the Tula Arms Plant, from where he fled to India, traveled around for a long time, was bitten by poisonous snakes and crocodiles, effortlessly mastered yoga, came back to Russia at the height of Pugachev’s rebellion, was accused of being the rebels’ healer, had his nostrils slit, and was exiled to Solovets in perpetuity. In Solovets he survived a whole heap of other misfortunes before he eventually became attached to NITWiT, where he soon became a head of department, and recently he had been doing a lot of work on the problems of human happiness, waging a dedicated struggle against those of his colleagues who believed that the basis of happiness was material abundance.

“Greetings to you!” he boomed, laying the keys to his laboratories in front of me. “Poor man, what have you done to deserve this? On a night like this you ought to be out having fun. I’ll call Modest, this is such nonsense, I’ll take the shift myself…”

I could see this idea had only just occurred to him and he was really taken by it.

“All right now, where’s his telephone number? Curses, I never remember telephone numbers… One-one-five or five-one-one…”

“Thank you, Fyodor Simeonovich,” I cried. “Please don’t bother! I’ve just settled in to get a bit of work done!”

“Ah, a bit of work! That’s a different matter. ’At’s good, ’at’s splendid, well done! Dammit, I know nothing at all about electronics… I must do some studying, get away from all this word magic, this old junk, hocus-pocus with psychofields, primitive stuff… Antiquated methods.”

And right there and then he conjured up two big apples, handed one to me, bit off half of the other, and began munching on it with relish.

“Curses, I’ve made a worm-eaten one again. How’s yours—is it all right? ’At’s good. I’ll come back and see you later, Sasha. I don’t really understand that system of computer commands properly… I’ll just have a glass of vodka and then come back… The twenty-ninth command of that machine of yours… Either the machine is lying, or I don’t understand… I’ll bring you a detective novel: Erle Stanley Gardner. You read English, don’t you? He writes well, the rascal, great stuff. He’s got this real hard-headed lawyer, Perry Mason. Do you know him? And then I’ll give you something else to read, some science fiction. Asimov, maybe, or Ray Bradbury…”

He went over to the window and exclaimed in delight. “A blizzard, dammit. How I love that!”

The slim and elegant Cristóbal Joséevich Junta came in, wrapping himself in a mink coat.

Fyodor Simeonovich turned around. “Ah, Cristó!” he exclaimed. “Just look at this, that fool Kamnoedov has locked a young boy in to keep watch on New Year’s Eve. Let’s let him off; the two of us can stay, we’ll remember the old times and have a drink, what do you say? Why should he have to suffer? He ought to be out dancing with the girls…”

Junta put his keys on the desk and said casually, “Association with girls affords pleasure only when it is attained through the overcoming of obstacles.”

“But of course!” boomed Fyodor Simeonovich. “‘Much blood is spilled and many songs are sung for ladies fair’… How does that one of yours go? ‘Only he shall attain the goal who knows not the word fear…’”

“Precisely,” said Junta. “And anyway, I can’t stand charity.”

“He can’t stand charity! Who was it who begged Odikhmantiev from me? Enticed away a fine laboratory assistant, you did… You put up a bottle of champagne right now, nothing less… No, you know what, not champagne! Amontillado! Do you have any of the old Toledo stock left?”

“They’re waiting for us, Teodoro,” Junta reminded him.

“Ah yes, that’s right… I’ve still got to find a tie… and some felt boots. We’ll never get a taxi… We’re off then, Sasha, don’t get too bored now.”

“No one on duty in the Institute on New Year’s Eve ever gets bored,” Junta said in a low voice. “Especially new boys.”

They walked to the door. Junta let Fyodor Simeonovich out first and, before going out himself, he glanced sideways at me and carefully traced out a Star of Solomon on the wall with his finger. The star flared up and then began slowly fading away, like the trace of an electron beam on the screen of an oscilloscope. I spat three times over my left shoulder.

Cristóbal Joséevich Junta, the head of the Department of the Meaning of Life, was a remarkable man, but apparently quite heartless. In his early youth he had spent a long time as a grand inquisitor, but then he’d fallen into heresy, although to the present day he’d retained the habits of those times, and rumor had it that he’d found them very useful during the struggle against the fifth column in Spain. He performed almost all of his abstruse experiments either on himself or on his colleagues, as I had been indignantly informed at the general meeting of the trade union. He was studying the meaning of life, but he hadn’t made a great deal of progress so far, although he had produced some interesting results. For instance, he had proved, at least theoretically, that death was by no means a necessary attribute of life. People had expressed their indignation at this discovery, too—at the philosophy seminar.

He allowed almost no one to enter his office, and vague rumors circulated in the Institute about it being full of all sorts of interesting things. They said that standing in one corner was the magnificently stuffed body of an old acquaintance of Cristóbal Joséevich, an SS Standartenführer in full dress uniform, with a monocle, dagger, Iron Cross, Oak Leaves, and other paraphernalia. Junta was a magnificent taxidermist and, according to Cristóbal Joséevich himself, so was the Standartenführer. But it was Cristóbal Joséevich who had gotten his hand in first. He always liked to get his hand in first, in everything he did. But he was not entirely without skepticism either. A huge poster hanging in one of his laboratories posed the question DO WE REALLY NEED OURSELVES FOR ANYTHING? A quite exceptional individual.

At exactly 3:00, in accordance with the labor regulations, doctor of science Ambrosius Ambroisovich Vybegallo brought me his keys. He was wearing felt boots soled with leather and a smelly sheepskin coat like a cab driver’s with his gray, dirty beard sticking out through its upturned collar. He wore his hair in a bowl cut, so no one had ever seen his ears.

“It, er…” he said as he came up to me. “It could just happen that one of mine will hatch out today. In my laboratory, that is. It, er… it would be a good idea to keep an eye out. I’ve left him plenty of supplies. It’s er… five loaves of bread, you know, some steamed bran, two buckets of skim milk. But when, er… he’s eaten all that lot, he’ll start kicking up a fuss, you know. So, mon cher, if anything happens, you… er… just give me a jingle, my good man.” He set a bunch of barn door keys down in front of me and opened his mouth in some perplexity, with his eyes fixed on me.

His eyes were transparent and he had grains of millet stuck in his beard.

“Where shall I jingle you?” I asked.

I disliked him very much. He was a cynic and he was a fool. The work that he carried out for his 350 rubles a month could quite easily have been called eugenics, but no one did call it that—they were afraid of provoking him. This Vybegallo had declared that all the misfortunes of the world were… er… the result of material, you know, deprivation, and that if you gave a man everything—bread, that is, and steamed bran—then he wouldn’t be a man, but an angel. He promoted this feeble idea in every possible way, brandishing volumes of classic texts and ripping quotations out of their living flesh with quite indescribable simplemindedness, mercilessly suppressing and expurgating everything that didn’t suit him.

Even the Academic Council had shuddered under the onslaught of this positively primordial, unrestrained demagogy, and Vybegallo’s theme had been included in the research plan. Acting strictly according to this plan, painstakingly measuring his achievements in terms of percentage plan fulfillment and never forgetting about operational economy, improving the efficiency of use of operating capital, and the issue of practical relevance to society, Vybegallo had developed three experimental models: the model of Man entirely unsatisfied, the model of Man gastrically unsatisfied, and the model of Man totally satisfied. The entirely unsatisfied anthropoid model had been ready first—it had hatched two weeks earlier. A pitiful being, covered with sores like Job, half decomposed, tormented by every disease in existence known and unknown, incredibly hungry, suffering from cold and heat at the same time, it had staggered out into the corridor, deafened the Institute with a series of loud, inarticulate complaints, and died. Vybegallo was triumphant. Now he could consider he had proved that if you didn’t give a man any food or drink or treat his ailments then he, you know… er… would be unhappy and he might even die. Like this model had died. The Academic Council was horrified. Vybegallo’s project had assumed an aspect of the macabre. But Vybegallo, not flustered in the slightest, had submitted two statements that demonstrated, first, that three lab assistants from his laboratory went out every year to work on the state farm sponsored by the Institute and, second, that he, Vybegallo, had been a prisoner under the old czarist regime, and now he regularly gave popular lectures in the municipal lecture hall and outlying districts. And while the dumbfounded commission struggled to grasp the logic of what was going on, he calmly shipped in four truckloads of herring heads from the Institute-sponsored fish processing plant (under the terms of a scheme for developing ties with industry) for the gastrically unsatisfied anthropoid, who was approaching a state of readiness. The commission wrote a report and the Institute waited fearfully for what would happen next. The other people on Vybegallo’s floor took unpaid leave.

“Where shall I jingle you?” I asked.

“Jingle me? At home, where else on New Year’s Eve? Moral fiber has to be maintained, my good man. The New Year should be seen in at home. That’s the way we see things, n’est-ce pas?” (Vybegallo loved to sprinkle his speech with isolated phrases in what he referred to as “the French dialect.”)

“At home, I know that, but what’s the number?”

“Ah, that… er… you look in the book. Can read, can’t you? You just look in the book, then. We’ve got no secrets, not like others I could mention. En masse.”

“All right,” I said. “I’ll jingle you.”

“Do jingle, mon cher, do jingle. And if he starts to bite… er… then you just smack him in the chops, and don’t hold back. C’est la vie.”

I plucked up my courage and blurted out, “If I’m ton cher, perhaps we ought to drink to Bruderschaft?”

“Pardon?”

“Never mind, it’s nothing,” I said.

He looked at me for a while with those transparent eyes that expressed absolutely nothing at all, then said, “If it’s nothing, that’s all right, then. Happy New Year to you when it comes. Keep well. It… er… au revoir, then.”

He pulled on his cap with earflaps and left. I hastily opened the small top window.

Roman Oira-Oira breezed in wearing a green coat with a lambskin collar. He twitched his hooked nose and inquired, “Did Vybegallo just drop by?”

“He did,” I said.

“Yes indeed,” he said, “it’s the herrings. Take my keys. Do you know where he dumped one truckload? Under Gian Giacomo’s windows. Right under his office. A little New Year’s present. Might as well have a cigarette now that I’m here.”

He slumped into an immense leather armchair, unbuttoned his coat, and lit up.

“All right, try this one,” he said. “Given: the smell of salted herring water, intensity sixteen microchokes, cubic volume…” He looked around the room. “Well, you can work that out for yourself. The year’s on the turn, Saturn’s in the constellation of Libra… Get rid of that stench!”

I scratched myself behind one ear. “Saturn… Why are you telling me about Saturn? What’s the magistatum vector?”

“Well, brother,” said Oira-Oira, “that’s for you…”

I scratched behind my other ear, worked out the vector in my head, then stuttered and stammered my way through the acoustic operation (pronounced the incantation). Oira-Oira held his nose. I pulled two hairs out of my eyebrow and polarized the vector. The smell grew stronger again.

“That’s bad,” Oira-Oira said reproachfully. “What are you doing, sorcerer’s apprentice? Can’t you see the window’s open?”

“Ah,” I said, “that’s right.” I adjusted for the divergence and the curl of the vector, tried to resolve Stokes’s equation in my head, got confused, plucked another two hairs out of my eyebrow, breathing through my mouth, sniffed them, mumbled Auer’s incantation and was already plucking out another hair when I realized the waiting room had aired itself by natural means and Roman advised me not to waste any more of my eyebrows and close the window.

“Satisfactory,” he said. “Let’s try some materialization.” We worked on materialization for a while. I created some pears, and Roman insisted that I eat them. I refused, and then he made me create some more. “You’ll keep working until you create something edible,” he said. “And you can give these to Modest. He can digest stones.” Eventually I created a genuine pear—large, yellow, soft as butter, and bitter as quinine. I ate it and Roman allowed me to take a break.

Then fat Magnus Fyodorovich Redkin, bachelor of black magic, brought in his keys, as always preoccupied and greatly affronted. He’d been awarded his bachelor’s degree three hundred years earlier for inventing breeches of darkness, and he’d spent all his time since then making improvements to those breeches. The breeches of darkness had first been transformed into pantaloons of darkness, then into trousers of darkness, and just recently they’d become known as pants of darkness. But somehow he just couldn’t get them right.

At the most recent session of the black magic seminar, when he gave his regular paper “On Certain New Properties of Redkin’s Pants of Darkness,” he had suffered yet another fiasco. During the demonstration of the new, improved model something had gotten stuck in the button-and-braces mechanism and instead of making the inventor invisible the trousers had given a resounding click and become invisible themselves. It had been a very awkward moment.

For the most part, however, Magnus Fyodorovich was working on a dissertation under the title “The Materialization and Linear Naturalization of the White Thesis as an Argument for the Adequately Random Sigma Function of Incompletely Representable Human Happiness.” In this area he had produced substantial and significant results, from which it followed that humanity would be literally swimming in incompletely representable happiness, if only the White Thesis itself could be located and also—more important—if only we were able to understand what it is and where to look for it.

The only mention of the White Thesis is found in the journals of ben Bezalel, who supposedly isolated the Thesis as a byproduct of some alchemical reaction and, not having any time to waste on such petty matters, incorporated it into one of his devices as an auxiliary element. In one of his later memoirs, written in a dungeon, ben Bezalel noted, “And can you believe it? That White Thesis failed to justify my expectations. It failed. But when I realized the good that it could have done—I am talking about happiness for all people, as many as there are in existence—I had already forgotten where I installed it.”

The Institute possessed seven devices that once belonged to ben Bezalel. Redkin had stripped six of them down to the last bolt and not discovered anything special. The seventh device was the sofa-translator. But Vitka Korneev had appropriated the sofa, and Redkin’s simple soul had been filled with the very blackest of suspicions. He began following Vitka around. Vitka had immediately flown into a rage. They had argued and become sworn enemies, and still were to that very day. Magnus Fyodorovich was well disposed toward me as a representative of the precise sciences, but he disapproved of my friendship with “that plagiarist.”

Redkin was basically not a bad person, very hardworking, very tenacious, entirely devoid of self-interest and avarice. He had done a huge amount of work, assembling a gigantic collection of the most varied definitions of happiness. There were extremely simple negative definitions (“Happiness is not to be found in money”), extremely simple positive definitions (“Supreme satisfaction, total gratification, success, and good luck”), casuistic definitions (“Happiness is the absence of unhappiness”), and paradoxical definitions (“The happiest of all men are jesters, fools, idiots, and the unaware, for they know not the pangs of conscience, have no fear of ghosts and other ghouls and goblins, and are not tormented by fear of future calamities, nor are they deluded by hopes of boons to come”).

Magnus Fyodorovich put down his key on the table and, glancing distrustfully at us from under his brows, said, “I’ve found another definition.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’s like a poem. Only without any rhyme. Would you like to hear it?”

“Of course we would,” said Roman.

Magnus Fyodorovich opened his notebook and read it out, stammering and stuttering:

“I didn’t understand a thing,” said Roman. “Let me read it for myself.”

Redkin gave him the notebook and explained: “It’s Christopher Logue. From the English.”

“Great poetry,” said Roman.

Magnus Fyodorovich sighed. “Some say one thing, others say something else.”

“It’s tough,” I said sympathetically.

“It really is, isn’t it? How can you link it all together? Hear a girl singing… And not just any old singing either—the girl has to be young and be off his path, and it must be after someone asks him the way… How on Earth can it be done? Is it really possible to reduce things like that to algorithms?”

“Hardly,” I said. “I wouldn’t like to try.”

“You see!” Magnus Fyodorovich exclaimed. “And you’re the head of our computer center! So who can do it?”

“Maybe it just doesn’t exist at all?” Roman suggested in the voice of a movie villain.

“What?”

“Happiness.”

Magnus Fyodorovich immediately took offense at that. “How can it not exist,” he said with a dignified air, “when I myself have experienced it on repeated occasions?”

“By changing pennies for a shilling?” asked Roman.

Magnus Fyodorovich took even greater offense at that and grabbed his notebook out of Roman’s hands. “You’re still too young—” he began.

But at that moment there was a sudden rumbling and crashing, a flash of flame, and a smell of sulfur, and Merlin appeared in the center of the room. Magnus Fyodorovich recoiled all the way to the window in surprise, exclaimed, “Oh, you!” and went running out.

“Good God!” Oira-Oira said in English, wiping the dust out of his eyes. “Canst thou not enter by the usual route as decent people do?” Then he added, “Sir.”

“I do beg thy pardon,” Merlin said smugly, casting a satisfied glance in my direction. I must have looked pale, because I’d suddenly been terrified by the thought of spontaneous combustion.

Merlin straightened his moth-eaten robe, tossed a bunch of keys onto the desk, and said, “Have you noticed, kind sirs, what the weather is like?”

“As predicted,” said Roman.

“Precisely, Sir Oira-Oira! Precisely as predicted!”

“A very handy thing, the radio,” said Roman.

“I listen not to the radio,” said Merlin. “I have my own methods.” He shook the hem of his robe and floated up a meter above the floor.

“The chandelier!” I said. “Careful!”

Merlin glanced briefly at the chandelier and began speaking, apropos of nothing at all: “Oh ye imbued with the spirit of Western materialism, base mercantilism, and utilitarianism, whose spiritual poverty is incapable of rising above the gloom and chaos of petty, cheerless cares… I cannot help but recall, dear sirs, how last year I and Sir Chairman of the district soviet, comrade Pereyaslavsky…”

Oira-Oira gave a heart-rending yawn, and I suddenly felt depressed too. Merlin would probably have been even worse than Vybegallo, if he weren’t so archaic and conceited. Through an oversight on someone’s part he had once managed to rise to be head of the Department of Predictions and Prophecies, because he had written in all his questionnaires about his implacable struggle against Yankee imperialism even back in the Middle Ages, attaching to the questionnaires notarized typed copies of the relevant pages from Mark Twain. Later, in connection with the changed internal situation and the improved international climate, he had been moved back to his position as head of the weather office and now worked, just as he had a thousand years earlier, at forecasting atmospheric phenomena, relying on magical means as well as the behavior of tarantulas, twinges of rheumatism, and the propensity of the pigs of Solovets to lie down and wallow in the mud or to clamber out of the aforesaid substance. However, the main source of his forecasts was the crude interception of radio signals, performed with the assistance of a crystal receiver that was widely believed to have been stolen in the 1920s from a Young Scientist Exhibition in Solovets. The Institute kept him on out of respect for his age. He was a great friend of Naina Kievna Gorynych, and the two of them collected and disseminated rumors about a gigantic woman covered in hair appearing in the forest and a female student being taken prisoner by a yeti from Mount Elbrus. It was also said that from time to time he took part in the nocturnal vigils on Bald Mountain with C. M. Viy, Khoma Brut, and other hooligans.

Roman and I said nothing and waited for him to disappear. But he wrapped his robe around himself, settled in comfortably under the chandelier, and launched into the long, boring story that everyone already knew by heart about how he, Merlin, and the chairman of the Solovets district soviet, Pereyaslavsky, had undertaken a journey of inspection around the local district. The whole story was nothing but a pack of lies, a talentless and opportunistic transposition of Mark Twain. He talked about himself in the third person, sometimes losing the thread and calling the chairman King Arthur.

“Right so the chairman of the district soviet and Merlin departed, and went until a keeper of bees, the Hero of Labor Sir Eremitenko, who was a good knight and a renowned gatherer of honey. So Sir Eremitenko related to them his successes in labor and did cure Sir Arthur of his radiculitis with bee venom. And Sir Chairman was there three days, and his radiculitis was soothed that he might ride and go, and so departed. And as they rode, Ar—Chairman said, I have no sword. No force, said Merlin, hereby is a sword that shall be yours and I may. So they rode till they came to a lake, the which was a fair water and broad, and in the midst of the lake Arthur was ware of a hand hardened by toil, that held a hammer and sickle. Lo, said Merlin, yonder is that sword that I spake of…”

Then the phone rang and I grabbed it in delight. “Hello,” I said. “Hello, who is it?”

There was a low mumbling in the receiver and Merlin droned on through his nose: “…So they rode into Lezhnev, and by the way they met with Sir Pellinor; but Merlin had done such a craft that Pellinore saw not the Chairman…”

“Sir citizen Merlin,” I said, “could you speak more quietly please? I can’t hear.”

Merlin stopped speaking, but with the expression of a man ready to continue at any moment.

“Hello,” I said into the receiver again. “Who’s speaking? Who are you looking for?” I said out of old habit.

“That’s enough of that from you. You’re not in the circus now, Privalov.”

“I’m sorry, Modest Matveevich. Duty staff member Privalov here.”

“That’s better. Now report.”

“Report what?”

“Listen here, Privalov, there you go again behaving like I don’t know what. Who’s that you’re talking with there? Why are there outsiders at your post? Why, in contravention of the labor regulations, are there still people in the Institute after the end of the working day?”

“It’s Merlin,” I said.

“Throw him out on his ear!”

“Gladly,” I said. (Merlin, who had no doubt been listening, broke out in red blotches, exclaimed, “Boorish churl!” and dissolved into thin air.)

“Gladly or otherwise, it makes no difference to me. And I’ve received a warning here that you’re piling up the keys entrusted to you in a heap on the desk, instead of locking them in the box.”

Vybegallo ratted on me, I thought.

“Haven’t you got anything to say?”

“I’ll put that right.”

“That’s the way of things,” said Modest Matveevich. “Unflagging vigilance is absolutely essential. Is that clear?”

“It is.”

“That’s all from me, then,” Modest Matveevich said, and hung up.

“All right, then,” said Oira-Oira, “I’ll go and start opening cans and uncorking bottles. Cheers for now—I’ll drop by again later.”

2

I dropped the keys into my jacket pocket and set off on my first round. I went down the formal staircase, which I could only ever remember being used on one occasion, when the Institute was visited by a most august personage from Africa, into the vast entrance hall decorated with centuries-old strata of architectural extravagance, and glanced in the window of the doorman’s chamber, where I could vaguely make out the two Maxwell’s macrodemons through the phosphorescent mist. The demons were playing that most stochastic of games—heads or tails, which was what they did whenever they weren’t on duty. Huge, sluggish, and indescribably grotesque, resembling more than anything else colonies of the polio virus under an electron microscope, dressed in worn-out livery, they spent all their lives, as Maxwell’s demons are supposed to do, opening and closing doors. These were experienced, well-trained specimens, but one of them—the one in charge of the exits—had already reached retirement age, commensurate with the age of the galaxy, and every now and then he lapsed into senile dementia and started malfunctioning. Then someone from the Technical Service Department had to put on a diving suit, clamber into the chamber, which was filled with compressed argon, and restore the old guy to his senses.

Following instructions, I put a spell on them both—that is, I shut off the information channels and linked the input-output devices to myself. The demons didn’t react; they had other things on their mind. One was winning and the other, accordingly, was losing, and that bothered them, because it violated the statistical equilibrium. I closed the cover over the little window and walked around the entrance hall. It was damp and gloomy, with a hollow echo. The Institute building was pretty ancient, but they had obviously started building it from this entrance hall. The bones of chained skeletons gleamed in the mildewed corners, there was a steady drip-drip of water from somewhere, in the niches between the columns statues in rusty suits of armor stood in unnatural poses, fragments of ancient idols were heaped up by the wall to the right of the door, and there was a pair of plaster legs in boots jutting out of the top of the heap. Venerable elders gazed down severely from blackened portraits up under the ceiling, with the familiar features of Fyodor Simeonovich, comrade Gian Giacomo, and other grand masters discernible in their faces. They should have thrown out all this archaic garbage ages ago, set windows in the walls and installed daylight fluorescent lighting, but everything was registered and inventoried and Modest Matveevich had personally forbidden its improper exploitation or disposal.

On the capitals of the columns and in the labyrinths of the gigantic chandelier hanging from the blackened ceiling, bats of several varieties, large and small, rustled their wings. Modest Matveevich waged war against them. He doused them with turpentine and creosote, sprinkled them with insecticide, sprayed them with hexachlorophene, and they died in the thousands—but regenerated in the tens of thousands, and mutated. Singing and talking strains appeared, and the descendants of the most ancient species now fed exclusively on a mixture of pyrethrum and chlorophene. The Institute’s film technician, Sasha Drozd, swore that one day he’d seen a bat here that was a dead ringer for our comrade head of the Personnel Department.

In a deep niche that gave off an icy stench, someone was moaning and rattling chains. “Now that’s enough of that,” I said sternly. “None of that mysticism! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!” The niche went quiet. I restored order by adjusting a carpet that was out of position and went back up the stairs.

As you already know, from the outside the Institute looked like a two-story building, but in actual fact it had at least twelve floors. I never went any higher up than the twelfth floor, because they were always repairing the elevator, and I didn’t know how to fly yet. Like most facades, the frontage with ten windows was an optical illusion. To the right and left of the entrance hall the Institute extended for at least a kilometer, and yet absolutely all of the windows looked out onto the same crooked street and the same “emporium.” I was absolutely astounded by this. At first I used to pester Oira-Oira to explain to me how it could be reconciled with classical or even relativistic concepts of the properties of space. I didn’t understand a word of his explanations, but I gradually got used to it and stopped being amazed. I am quite convinced that in ten or fifteen years’ time every schoolboy will have a better grasp of the general theory of relativity than our present-day specialists. This by no means requires any understanding of how the deformation of space and time occurs; all that’s needed is for the concept to be made familiar in childhood so that it seems normal.

The entire ground floor was occupied by the Department of Linear Happiness. This was Fyodor Simeonovich’s kingdom, which smelled of apples and pine forests; this was where the prettiest girls and the grandest boys worked. Here there were no gloomy zealots and adepts of black magic; here no one plucked out his own hair, hissing and grimacing at the pain; no one muttered incantations that sounded like indecent tongue twisters or boiled toads and ravens alive at midnight, for Halloween or on unlucky days of the year. They worked on optimism here. Here they did everything that was possible within the limits of white, submolecular, and infraneuron magic to enhance the spiritual vigor of every individual and entire collectives of individuals. Here they condensed happy, good-natured laughter and disseminated it right around the world; they developed, tested, and applied models of behavior and relationships that reinforced friendship and subverted discord; they sublimated and distilled extracts of sorrow-soothers that didn’t contain a single molecule of alcohol or other drugs. At that time they were preparing for the field trials of a portable universal evil-crusher and were developing new grades of the rarest alloys of intellect and kindness.

I unlocked the door of the central hall and stood in the doorway, admiring the operation of the gigantic Children’s Laughter Distillation Unit, which looked something like a Van de Graaf generator, except that unlike a generator it worked quite silently and gave off a pleasant smell. According to my instructions, I was supposed to turn two large white switches on the control panel to switch off the golden glow that filled the hall and leave it dark, cold, and still—in other words, my instructions required me to cut off the power to the production premises in question. But without even the slightest hesitation, I backed out into the corridor and locked the door behind me. Shutting down anything at all in Fyodor Simeonovich’s laboratories seemed like sacrilege to me.

I set off slowly along the corridor, examining the amusing pictures on the doors of the laboratories, and at the corner I met the brownie Tikhon, who drew the pictures and changed them every night. We shook hands. Tikhon was a lovely little gray brownie from the Ryazan region, whom Viy had exiled to Solovets for some offense or other: he’d either failed to greet someone correctly or refused to eat up his boiled viper… Fyodor Simeonovich had taken him in, cleaned him up, and cured him of chronic alcoholism, and he’d settled in here on the ground floor. He drew extremely well, in the manner of Bidstrup, and he was famous among the local brownies for his sensible and sober behavior.

I was about to go up to the second floor when I remembered about the vivarium and set out for the basement instead. The vivarium supervisor, an elderly rehabilitated vampire named Alfred, was drinking tea. When he caught sight of me he tried to hide the teapot under the table and broke his glass. He blushed and lowered his eyes. I felt sorry for him.

“Happy New Year, when it arrives,” I said, pretending I hadn’t noticed anything.

He cleared his throat, put his hand over his mouth, and replied hoarsely, “Thank you. And the same to you.”

“Is everything in order?” I asked, looking around at the rows of cages and stalls.

“Briareos has broken a finger,” said Alfred.

“How did he manage that?”

“Some way or other. On his eighteenth right hand. He was picking his nose and he turned awkwardly—they’re clumsy, those hecatoncheires—and he broke it.”

“Then we need a vet,” I said.

“He’ll manage without! It’s not the first time.”

“No, that’s not right,” I said. “Let’s go and take a look.”

We walked through into the depths of the vivarium, past the Little Humpbacked Horse, dozing with its nose stuck in a feed bag of oats, past the cage of harpies who watched us go by with eyes dull and heavy from sleep, past the cage of the Hydra of Lerna, morose and incommunicative at that time of year… The three hecatoncheir brothers, triplets with a hundred hands and fifty heads each, the firstborn of Heaven and Earth, were housed in a vast concrete cave, closed off by thick iron bars. Gyges and Kottos were asleep, curled up into huge, shapeless bundles from which their blue shaved heads with closed eyes and their relaxed hairy hands protruded. Briareos was suffering. He was squatting on his haunches, huddled up against the bars, sticking the hand with the damaged finger out into the passage and holding it with another seven hands. With his remaining ninety-two hands he was holding on to the bars and propping up his heads. Some of the heads were asleep.

“Well?” I asked. “Does it hurt?”

The heads that were awake started jabbering in ancient Hellenic and woke up a head that knew Russian.

“It hurts really badly,” said the head. The other heads fell silent and gaped at me with their mouths open.

I inspected the finger. It was dirty and swollen, but it wasn’t broken at all. It was simply dislocated. In our sports hall, injuries like that are cured without any doctor. I grabbed hold of the finger and tugged it toward me as hard as I could. Briareos roared with all of his fifty throats and fell over on his back.

“There, there,” I said, wiping my hands on my handkerchief. “It’s all over now.”

Sniveling with all his noses, Briareos began inspecting the finger. The heads at the back craned their necks avidly and in their impatience bit the ears of the heads in front to make them get out of the way. Alfred chuckled.

“It would do him good to have some blood let,” he said with a long-forgotten expression on his face, then he sighed and added, “But what sort of blood has he got in him? It’s just pretend. Nonlife, isn’t he?”

Briareos stood up. All of his fifty heads were smiling blissfully. I waved to him and began walking back. I paused beside Koschei the Deathless. The great villain lived in his own comfortable cage with carpets, air conditioning, and bookshelves. The walls of the cage were hung with portraits of Genghis Khan, Himmler, Catherine de Médicis, one of the Borgias, and either Goldwater or McCarthy. Koschei himself, wearing a shimmering dressing gown, was standing in front of an immense lectern with one leg crossed over the other, reading an offset-printed copy of the Malleus Maleficarum; at the same time he was making unpleasant movements with his fingers—screwing or thrusting something in or ripping something off. He was detained in eternal confinement awaiting trial while a never-ending investigation was conducted into his infinite number of crimes. He was well taken care of in the Institute, since he was used in certain unique experiments and as an interpreter for communicating with Wyrm Gorynych. Gorynych himself was locked away in an old boiler room, where he could be heard snoring metallically and roaring as he dozed.

I stood there, thinking that if at some point in time infinitely removed from us Koschei should ever be convicted, then the judges, whoever they might be, would find themselves in a very strange position: the death penalty can’t be applied to an immortal, and if you included detention while awaiting trial, he would already have served an infinite sentence…

Then someone grabbed me by the trouser leg and a hoarse drunk’s voice asked, “Right, then, guys, who fancies sharing a drink?”

I had to pull myself free. The three vampires in the next cage were staring at me greedily, pressing their grayish-purple faces against the metal mesh that carried two hundred volts of electricity.

“You crushed my hand, you four-eyed beanpole!” said one of them.

“You shouldn’t go grabbing hold of people,” I said. “Fancy a nice little poplar stake?”

Alfred came running up, cracking a whip, and the vampires withdrew into a dark corner, where they immediately started swearing obscenely and slapping down homemade cards on the floor in a frenzied game.

I said to Alfred, “All right, then. I think everything’s in order. I’ll get going.”

“Safe journey,” Alfred replied eagerly.

As I walked upstairs I could hear the rattling and glugging of his teapot.

I glanced into the electrical room to see how the generator was working. The Institute was not dependent on the municipal energy supply. After the principle of determinism had been defined, it had been decided to use the well-known Wheel of Fortune as a source of free mechanical energy. There was only a minute section of the gigantic wheel’s gleaming, polished rim rising up above the concrete floor, and since the axis of rotation lay an infinite distance away, the rim looked like a conveyor belt emerging from one wall and disappearing into the other. At one time it was fashionable to present doctoral dissertations on calculating the Wheel of Fortune’s radius of curvature, but since all these dissertations produced results with an extremely low degree of accuracy, plus or minus 10 megaparsecs, the Institute’s Academic Council had decided not to consider any more dissertations on this topic until such time as intergalactic transportation should make it reasonable to expect a substantial improvement in precision.

Several maintenance imps were playing by the Wheel, leaping onto the rim, riding as far as the wall, leaping off, and running back to the start. I called them to order firmly. “That’s enough of that,” I said. “You’re not at the fairground now.” They hid behind the housings of the transformers and began pelting me with spitballs. I decided not to get involved with the little babies and set off along the line of control panels. Once I was certain everything was in order, I went up to the second floor.

Here it was quiet, dark, and dusty. A decrepit old soldier wearing the uniform of the Preobrazhensky Regiment and a three-cornered hat was dozing by a low, half-open door, leaning on a long flintlock rifle. This was the Department of Defensive Magic, where for a long time now the staff had not included a single living person. In their day all of our old-timers, with the possible exception of Fyodor Simeonovich, had shown some enthusiasm for this division of magic. Ben Bezalel had made successful use of the Golem in palace coups; the clay monster, indifferent to bribes and impervious to poisons, had guarded the laboratories and with them the imperial treasure house. Giuseppe Balsamo had created the first flying broom squadron, which had given a good account of itself in the battlefields of the Hundred Years’ War. But the squadron had fallen apart fairly quickly: some of the witches had married and the others had tagged along with the German cavalry regiments as camp followers. King Solomon had captured and enchanted a dozen times a dozen ifrits and hammered them into a special flame-throwing anti-elephant pursuit battalion. The young Cristóbal Junta had brought the forces of Charlemagne a Chinese dragon trained to fight Moors; on learning, however, that it was not the Moors that the emperor intended to fight but his fellow tribesmen the Basques, he had flown into a fury and deserted.

Throughout many centuries of history various magicians have suggested the use in battle of vampires (for night reconnaissance raids), basilisks (to terrify the enemy into a state of total petrification), flying carpets (for dropping sewage on enemy towns), magic swords of various calibers (to compensate for lack of numbers), and many other things. However, after the First World War, after Big Bertha, tanks, mustard gas, and chlorine gas, defensive magic had gone into decline. Staff began abandoning the department in droves.

The one who stayed longer than all the others was a certain Pitirim Schwarz, a former monk and the inventor of a musket stand, who had labored with selfless devotion on a project for genie bombardments. The essential idea of the project was to bomb the enemy’s cities with bottles containing genies who had been held in solitary confinement for at least three thousand years. It is a well-known fact that in a state of freedom, genies are only capable of either destroying cities or building palaces. A fully mature genie, so Pitirim Schwarz reasoned, would not start building palaces when he was freed from his bottle, and the enemy would find himself with a serious problem. A certain obstacle to the realization of this plan was presented by the small number of bottles containing genies, but Schwarz was counting on augmenting the reserves by deep trawling of the Red and Mediterranean Seas. They say that when he learned about the hydrogen bomb and bacteriological warfare, old Pitirim became mentally unbalanced, gave away the genies he had to various departments, and moved over to Cristóbal Junta’s team to investigate the meaning of life. No one had ever seen him again.

When I stopped in the doorway, the soldier looked up at me with one eye and croaked, “Not allowed, on your way…” and dozed off again. I glanced around the unoccupied room, cluttered with fragments of bizarre models and scraps of botched drawings, nudged a file lying by the entrance with the toe of my shoe, reading the blurred inscription TOP SECRET. BURN BEFORE READING, and went on. There was nothing here to switch off, and as for spontaneous combustion, everything that could combust spontaneously had done so many years ago.

The book depository was on the same floor. It was a rather gloomy, dusty space a bit like a lobby, but with substantially larger dimensions. They said that well inside, half a kilometer from the entrance, there was a fairly decent highway running along the shelves, complete with posts showing distances in versts. Oira-Oira had gone as far as post number 19, and the persistent Vitka Korneev, in search of technical documentation on the sofa-translator, had gotten hold of some seven-league boots and run as far as post number 124. He would have gone even farther, but his way was blocked by a brigade of Danaids in padded work jackets with jackhammers. Under the supervision of the fat-faced Cain, they were breaking up the asphalt and laying some kind of pipes. The Academic Council had several times raised the question of building a high-voltage power line along the highway to transmit clients of the depository through the wires, but every positive proposal had foundered on a lack of funding.

The depository was crammed full of extremely interesting books in all languages of the history of the world, from the tongue of the ancient Atlanteans to pidgin English inclusive. But what interested me most of all was a multivolume edition of the Book of Fates.

The Book of Fates was printed in brevier type on super-thin rice paper and contained in chronological order more or less complete data on the 73,619,024,511 members of the genus Homo. The first volume began with the pithecanthropus Aiuikh. (“Born 2 Aug. 965543 BC, died 13 Jan. 965522 BC. Parents ramapithecines. Wife a ramapithecus. Children: male Ad-Amm, female E-Ua. Lived nomadically with a tribe of ramapithecines in the valley of Mount Ararat. Ate, drank, and slept to his heart’s content. Drilled the first hole in stone. Eaten by a cave bear during a hunt.”) The last name in this publication’s latest volume, published the year before, was Francisco Caetano Agostinho Lucia e Manuel e Josefa e Miguel Luca Carlos Pedro Trinidad (“Born 16 Jul. 1491 AD, died 17 July 1491 AD. Parents: Pedro Carlos Luca Miguel e Josefa e Manuel e Lucia Agostinho Caetano Francisco Trinidad and Maria Trinidad. Portuguese. Acephaloid. Cavalier of the Order of the Holy Spirit, Colonel of the Guards”).

The publishing data informed me that the Book of Fates was published in an edition of 1 (one) copy and this latest volume had been sent to press at the time of the Montgolfier brothers’ flights. Evidently in order to satisfy the demand of their own contemporaries, the publishers had begun issuing the occasional special edition, which listed only the years of birth and death. In one of these volumes I found my own name. However, hasty work has led to many errors finding their way into these volumes, and I was amazed to learn that I would die in 1611. Eight volumes of misprints have been identified to date, but they still haven’t gotten as far as my name yet.

The Book of Fates used to be consulted by a special group in the Department of Predictions and Prophecies, but now the department was impoverished and deserted. It had never really recovered following the brief reign of sir citizen Merlin. The Institute had repeatedly advertised to fill the vacant position of head of department, and every time the only person to apply had been Merlin. The Academic Council always conscientiously reviewed the application and safely rejected it—43 votes “against” and 1 “for.” (By tradition Merlin was also a member of the Academic Council.)

The Department of Predictions and Prophecies occupied the entire third floor. I walked past the doors with the plaques that read COFFEE GROUNDS GROUP, AUGURS’ GROUP, PYTHIAS’ GROUP, METEOROLOGICAL GROUP, SOLITAIRE GROUP, SOLOVETS ORACLE. I didn’t have to disconnect anything here, since the department worked by candlelight. On the doors of the weather forecasting group a fresh inscription in chalk had already appeared: “Dark waters in the clouds.” Every morning Merlin, cursing the intrigues of the envious, wiped this inscription away with a damp rag, and every night it was renewed.

I simply couldn’t understand what the authority of this department rested on. From time to time its members gave papers on strange subjects such as “Concerning the Expression of the Augur’s Eye” or “The Predictive Qualities of Mocha Coffee from the Harvest of 1926.” Sometimes the group of Pythias managed to predict something correctly, but every time it happened the Pythias themselves seemed so astonished and frightened by their success that the whole effect was totally ruined. S-Janus, an individual of supreme tact, was remarked on numerous occasions to be unable to restrain an ambiguous smile whenever he attended the augurs’ and Pythias’ seminars.

On the fourth floor I eventually found something to do: I switched off the light in the cells of the Department of Eternal Youth. There were no young people in this department, and these old men suffering from a thousand years of arteriosclerotic dementia were always forgetting to turn the lights off after themselves. I suspected that in fact it wasn’t just a matter of forgetfulness. Many of them were afraid of getting an electric shock. They still called the suburban electric trains iron horses. In the sublimation lab a dejected model of an eternally youthful young man was wandering around between the desks, yawning with his hands stuck in his pockets. His six-foot-long gray beard dragged along the floor and snagged on the legs of the chairs. Just to be on the safe side I put the demijohn of hydrochloric acid that was standing on a stool away in a cupboard before setting off for my own workplace in the computer room.

This was where my Aldan stood. I admired it for a moment—so compact and handsome, gleaming mysteriously. The attitudes taken toward us by people in the Institute had varied. The Accounts Department, for instance, had greeted me with wide-open arms, and the senior accountant, smiling stingily, had immediately lumbered me with his tedious expense and profitability calculations. Gian Giacomo, the head of the Department of Universal Transformations, was also happy to see me at first, but when he realized the Aldan was not even capable of calculating the elementary transformation of a cubic centimeter of lead into a cubic centimeter of gold, he became less enthusiastic about my electronics and favored us only with occasional, incidental tasks. But his subordinate and favorite pupil, Vitka Korneev, snowed me under. And Oira-Oira was always putting the pressure on with his mind-bending problems from the field of irrational metamathematics. Cristóbal Junta, who liked to be the leader in all things, made it a rule to connect the machine to his central nervous system at night, so that all next day there was something constantly buzzing and clicking away in his head, and the confused Aldan, instead of calculating in the binary system, would shift in some way I couldn’t understand into the ancient sexagesimal system and also change its logic, totally rejecting the law of the excluded middle. Fyodor Simeonovich Kivrin amused himself playing with the machine as if it were a toy. He could spend hours playing it at odds and evens; he taught it to play Japanese chess, and to make things more interesting he installed someone’s immortal soul in the machine—quite a cheerful and industrious soul, in fact. Janus Polyeuctovich (I can’t remember if it was A or S) only used the machine once. He brought in a small, translucent box and connected it to the Aldan. After about ten seconds of working with this peripheral, every fuse in the machine blew, following which Janus Polyeuctovich apologized, took his little box, and went away. But despite all the little obstacles and unpleasantnesses, despite the fact that the newly animated Aldan sometimes printed out “I’m thinking. Please do not disturb,” despite the shortage of spare units and the feeling of helplessness that overwhelmed me when I was required to perform a logical analysis of “noncongruent transgression in the psifield of incubotransformation”—despite all of that, the work here was exceptionally interesting, and I was proud to feel that I was obviously needed.

I carried out all the calculations in Oira-Oira’s work on the mechanism of heredity in bipolar homunculi. For Vitka Korneev I drew up the stress tables for the M-field of the sofa-translator in nine-dimensional magospace. I performed the operational calculations for the Institute’s fish processing plant. I calculated the flowchart for the most economical mode of transportation of the Children’s Laughter elixir. I even calculated the probability of winning games in the different versions of solitaire—“big elephant,” “State Duma,” and “Napoleon’s tomb”—for the jokers from the solitaire group and performed all the quadratures for Cristóbal Junta’s numerical method, for which he taught me how to enter Nirvana. I was contented, the days were all too short, and my life was full of meaning.

It was still early, not yet seven o’clock. I switched on the Aldan and did a little bit of work. At nine o’clock in the evening I pulled myself together, regretfully closed down the computer room, and set off toward the fifth floor. The blizzard had still not abated. It was a genuine New Year’s blizzard. It howled and screeched in the old disused chimneys, piled up snowdrifts under the windows, and tugged furiously at the old street lamps, swaying them to and fro.

I passed the premises of the Department of Buildings and Contents. The entrance to Modest Matveevich’s waiting room was blocked off with crisscrossed metal I beams, and standing at the sides, sabers at the ready, were two massive ifrits in turbans and full battle gear. Both of their noses, red and swollen from colds, were pierced with massive gold rings with a tin inventory number. There was a smell of sulfur, scorched wool, and streptocide ointment in the air. I lingered for a while, examining them, because in our latitudes ifrits are rare beings. But the one standing on the right, with unshaven cheeks and a black eye patch, began glaring at me with his one eye. There were bad rumors about him—supposedly he used to eat people—so I hurried on my way. I could hear him snuffling and smacking his lips behind my back.

In the premises of the Department of Absolute Knowledge all the small upper windows were open, because the smell of Professor Vybegallo’s herring heads was seeping in. There was snow heaped up on the windowsills and there were dark puddles under the radiators of the central steam heating system. I closed the windows and walked between the virginally clean desks of the department’s staff members. Standing on the desks were brand-new ink sets that had never seen ink, but there were cigarette butts spilling out of the inkwells. This was a strange department. Its motto was “The cognition of infinity requires an infinite amount of time.” I could hardly dispute that assertion, but the staff drew an unexpected conclusion from it: “And therefore it makes no difference whether you work or not.” So in the interest of not adding to the amount of entropy in the universe, they didn’t work. At least, most of them didn’t. Not en masse, as Vybegallo would have said. Reduced to essentials, their task consisted of analyzing the curve of relative cognition in the region of its asymptotic approximation of absolute truth. Therefore some members of the department were always occupied with dividing zero by zero on their desktop calculators, and others kept requesting study assignments to eternity. They returned from their trips cheerful and overfed and immediately took time off on health grounds. In the gaps between assignments they wandered around from department to department, sat on other people’s desks smoking cigarettes, and told jokes about evaluating indeterminate forms with L’Hopital’s rule. They were easy to recognize from the empty look in their eyes and the cuts on their ears from constant shaving. In the six months I’d been at the Institute they’d only come up with a single job for the Aldan, and that boiled down to the same old division of zero by zero and involved absolutely no truth quotient at all. Perhaps some of them also did some real work, but I didn’t know anything about it.

At half past ten I stepped onto Ambrosius Ambroisovich Vybegallo’s floor. Covering my face with my handkerchief and trying to breathe through my mouth, I headed straight for the lab known to the staff of the Institute as the Nursery. Here, according to Professor Vybegallo, models of the ideal man were born in retorts. Hatched out… er… so to speak. Comprenez-vous?

The laboratory was stuffy and dark. I switched on the light, illuminating the smooth, gray walls decorated with portraits of Aesculapius, Paracelsus, and Ambrosius Ambroisovich himself. Ambrosius Ambroisovich was depicted in a black cap set on noble curls, with some kind of medal gleaming illegibly on his chest. There had once been another portrait on the fourth wall, but now all that was left was a dark rectangle and three rusty, bent nails.

There was an autoclave standing in the center of the laboratory, and another, somewhat larger, in the corner. There were loaves of bread lying on the floor around the central autoclave, beside zinc buckets of bluish skim milk and a huge tub full of steamed bran. Judging from the smell, the herring heads were somewhere close by too, but I couldn’t figure out exactly where. The laboratory was silent except for the rhythmic popping sounds coming from inside the central autoclave.

Going across to that autoclave on tiptoe, I don’t know why, I glanced in through the viewing port. I was already feeling nauseous from the smell, and now I began to feel really bad, although I hadn’t seen anything particularly special—something white and formless slowly heaving in the green gloom. I switched off the light, went out, and carefully locked the door. “Smack him in the chops,” I recalled. I was troubled by vague presentiments. I had only just noticed the thick magic line drawn around the threshold, traced out in cramped cabalistic symbols. On looking closer I realized that it was a spell against a gaki, a hungry demon of hell.

With a feeling of some relief I took my leave of Vybegallo’s domain and began climbing up to the sixth floor, where Gian Giacomo and his colleagues dealt with the theory and practice of Universal Transformations. Hanging on the landing was a colorful poster in verse, appealing for the establishment of a communal library. The idea had come from the local trade union committee; the verse was mine:

I blushed and went on. As I set foot on the sixth floor, I immediately saw that the door of Vitka’s laboratory was slightly ajar and I heard hoarse singing. I crept stealthily toward it.

3

Vitka had told me he was going to join a group of friends and he was leaving a double working in the lab. A double is a very interesting kind of thing. As a rule it is a rather specific copy of its creator. Let’s say someone has too much to handle—he creates himself a double, mindless and submissive, who only knows how to solder contacts or carry heavy weights, or write to dictation, but who does it well. Or say someone requires a model anthropoid for some kind of experiment—he creates himself a double, mindless and submissive, who only knows how to walk on the ceiling or receive telepathemes, but who does it well. Or take the simplest case. Let’s say someone wants to collect his pay, but he doesn’t want to waste any time, and he sends a double in his place, one who knows nothing except how to make sure no one jumps the line, sign the register, and count the money without leaving the cash desk. Of course, not everyone can create doubles. I still couldn’t, for instance. What I’d managed to produce so far didn’t know how to do anything, not even walk. And I’d be standing there in the line, and Vitka and Roman and Volodya Pochkin would all apparently be there, but there was no one to talk to. They just stood there like stones, not blinking or breathing, not shifting their feet, and there wasn’t even anyone to ask for a cigarette.

The genuine masters can create highly complex, multiprogrammed, self-teaching doubles. Roman sent one of those super models off in the car instead of me in the summer. And not one of the guys even guessed it wasn’t me. The double drove my Moskvich magnificently, swore when the mosquitoes bit him, and really enjoyed a good sing-along. When he got back to Leningrad he dropped everyone off at their homes, returned the rented car, paid the bill, and immediately disappeared in front of the very eyes of the astounded director of the car rental office.

At one time I used to think that A-Janus and S-Janus were a double and an original. But that wasn’t it at all. First, both directors had passports, diplomas, passes, and other essential documents. Not even the most complex doubles could possess any identity documents. At the sight of an official stamp on their photographs they flew into a rage and immediately tore the documents to shreds. Magnus Redkin had spent a lot of time studying this mysterious property of doubles, but the task was clearly beyond him.

In addition, the Januses were protein-based entities. To this day the philosophers and cyberneticists haven’t managed to agree whether doubles should be regarded as alive or not. Most of the doubles were organo-silicon structures; there were also germanium-based doubles, and just recently aluminium polymer doubles have become fashionable.

Finally, and most important, neither A-Janus nor S-Janus was ever artificially created by anyone. They weren’t a copy and an original; they weren’t twin brothers. They were one man—Janus Polyeuctovich Nevstruev. Nobody in the Institute understood this, but they all knew it so well that they didn’t even try to understand.

Vitka’s double was standing leaning with his open palms on the lab table and staring fixedly at a small Ashby homeostat. At the same time he was purring a song set to a tune that was once popular:

I’d never heard any doubles sing before, but you could expect anything at all from Vitka’s doubles. I remember one of them who even dared to wrangle with Modest Matveevich himself over the excessive consumption of psychic energy—and even the pitiful specimens I created, without any arms or legs, were pathologically afraid of Modest Matveevich. It was clearly instinctive.

Standing under a canvas cover in the corner to the right of the double was the TDK-80E translator, the useless product of the Kitezhgrad Magotechnical Plant. Beside the laboratory table was my old friend the sofa, its patched leather gleaming in the light of three spotlights. Perched on top of the sofa was a child’s bathtub full of water, and floating belly up in the water was a dead perch. The laboratory also contained shelves crammed with instruments and, right beside the door, a large green-glass carboy covered in dust. There was a genie sealed inside the carboy; you could see him swirling around inside with his eyes glittering.

Vitka’s double stopped watching the homeostat, sat down on the sofa beside the bath, and, fixing the same stony stare on the dead fish, sang the following verse:

The perch remained as it was. Then the double thrust his hand deep into the sofa and began breathing hard and straining as it twisted something inside there.

The sofa was a translator. It created around itself an M-field that, putting it simply, translated genuine reality into fairy tale reality. I had experienced the result that memorable night when I lodged with Naina Kievna, and the only thing that had saved me then was that the sofa was operating at a quarter power, on dark current, otherwise I would have woken up as some little Tom Thumb in thigh boots. For Magnus Redkin the sofa was the possible receptacle of the long-sought White Thesis. For Modest Matveevich, it was a museum exhibit, inventory number 1123, the improper appropriation and exploitation of which was prohibited. For Vitka it was instrument number 1. That was why Vitka stole the sofa every night, Magnus Fyodorovich jealously reported this to comrade Demin, the head of personnel, and Modest Matveevich directed his energies to putting an end to all of the foregoing. Vitka had carried on stealing the sofa until Janus Polyeuctovich intervened. Acting in close cooperation with Fyodor Simeonovich, with the support of Gian Giacomo, on the authority of an official letter from the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences signed in person by four academicians, the director had eventually managed to neutralize Redkin completely and shift Modest Matveevich slightly from his entrenched position.

Modest Matveevich declared that he, as the individual bearing material responsibility, wouldn’t hear of anything else but the sofa, inventory number 1123, being located in the premises specifically designated for it. And if that was not done, Modest Matveevich threatened, then be it on the heads of all of them, up to and including the academicians. Janus Polyeuctovich agreed to take it on his own head, and so did Fyodor Simeonovich, and Vitka quickly moved the sofa into his own laboratory. Vitka was a serious scientist, not like those idle loafers from the Department of Absolute Knowledge, and his intention was to transform all the water in the seas and oceans of our planet into living water. As yet, however, he was still at the experimental stage.

The perch in the bathtub began to stir and turned belly down. The double removed his hand from the sofa. The perch fluttered its fins apathetically, yawned, slumped over onto its side, and turned belly up again.

“Bastard!” the double said emphatically.

That immediately put me on my guard. It had been said with feeling. No lab double could have said it like that. The double stuck its hands in its pockets, slowly stood up, and saw me. We looked at each other for a few seconds. Then I inquired acidly, “Working, are we?”

The double stared at me stupidly.

“OK, drop it, drop it,” I said. “Your cover’s blown.”

The double said nothing. He stood there like stone, not even blinking.

“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “It’s well after ten already. I’ll give you ten more minutes. Tidy everything up, dump that carrion, and go off dancing. I’ll disconnect everything myself.”

The double thrust out its lips as if it were playing the flute and began backing away. It stepped back very carefully, rounded the sofa, and stood so that the lab table was between us. I glanced pointedly at my watch. The double muttered an incantation and a calculator, a fountain pen, and a pile of clean paper appeared on the desk. Bending his knees and floating into the air, the double began writing something, glancing warily at me from time to time. It was all very convincing, and it almost had me fooled for a moment. But in any case, I had a sure way of finding out the truth. As a rule, doubles are entirely insensitive to pain. I fumbled in my pocket, pulled out a small pair of sharp pincers, and advanced on the double, clicking them suggestively. The double stopped writing. Looking him hard in the eyes, I snipped off the head of a nail that was protruding from the tabletop and said: “Weeell?”

“Why couldn’t you just leave me alone?” Vitka asked. “Can’t you see when someone’s working?”

“You’re a double,” I said. “Don’t you dare make conversation with me.”

“Put away the pincers,” he said.

“You shouldn’t go playing the fool,” I said. “Some double you are.”

Vitka sat on the edge of the table and rubbed his ears wearily. “Nothing’s going right for me today,” he declared. “Today I’m an idiot. I created a double and it turned out absolutely brainless. Dropped everything, sat on the plywitsum, a real brute. I smashed it over the head, broke its arm off… And the perch just keeps on dying all the time.”

I went across to the sofa and glanced into the bathtub. “What’s wrong with it?”

“How should I know?”

“Where did you get it?”

“At the market.”

I picked the perch up by the tail. “What did you expect? It’s just an ordinary dead fish.”

“Blockhead,” said Vitka. “That’s living water.”

“Aha,” I said, and started wondering what advice to give him. I have only the vaguest idea about the effects of living water. Mostly from the fairy tale about Tsarevich Ivan and the Gray Wolf.

Every now and then the genie in the carboy would start trying to wipe away the dust on the outside of the glass with his hand. “You could at least wipe the bottle,” I said when I failed to come up with anything.

“What?”

“Wipe the dust off the bottle. He’s bored in there.”

“To hell with him, let him be bored,” Vitka said absentmindedly. He thrust his hand back into the sofa and twisted something in there again. The perch came to life.

“See that?” said Vitka. “When I give it maximum intensity, there’s no problem.”

“It’s a bad specimen,” I said, guessing in the dark.

Vitka pulled his hand out of the sofa and fixed his gaze on me.

“The specimen…” he said. “Is a bad one…” His eyes glazed over like a double’s. “Specimen specimini lupus est.”

“And then it was probably frozen,” I said, growing bolder. Vitka wasn’t listening to me.

“Where can I get a fish?” he said, gazing around and slapping his pockets. “I need a little fishie…”

“What for?” I asked.

“That’s right,” said Vitka. “What for? Since there isn’t any other fish,” he reasoned, “then why not change the water? That makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“Er, no,” I objected. “That won’t do it.”

“What will then?” Vitka asked eagerly.

“Clear out of here,” I said. “Get off the premises.”

“Where to?”

“Wherever you like.”

He clambered over the sofa and grabbed me by the lapels. “You listen to me, all right?” he said threateningly. “Nothing in the world is identical to anything else. Everything’s distributed according to the Gaussian curve. Water’s not like other water… This old fool forgot all about the dispersion of qualities…”

“Come on, old man,” I appealed to him. “It’s almost New Year’s! Don’t get so carried away.”

He let go of me and started fumbling about. “Where did I put it? What a dumb hick! Where did I stick it? Ah, there it is…”

He dashed across to the table, where the plywitsum was standing upright. The same one. I jumped back to the door and said imploringly, “Come to your senses! It’s after eleven already! They’re waiting for you! Vera’s waiting!”

“Naah,” he answered. “I sent them a double. A fine double, a good talker… The life and soul… tells jokes, stands on his hands, dances like a lunatic…” He twisted the plywitsum in his hands, figuring something out, weighing something up, screwing up one eye.

“Clear out of here, I told you,” I roared in desperation.

Vitka shot me a rapid glance and I bit my tongue. The joking was over. Vitka was in that state of mind in which magicians obsessed with their work turn the people around them into spiders, wood lice, lizards, and other quiet animals. I squatted down beside the genie and watched.

Vitka froze in the classical pose for a material incantation. A pink vapor rose up from the table, shadows that looked like bats began flitting up and down, the calculator disappeared, the paper disappeared, and suddenly the entire surface of the table was covered with vessels full of transparent liquids. Vitka dumped the plywitsum on a chair without looking, grabbed one of the vessels, and started examining it closely. He was obviously never going to leave the place now. He grabbed the bathtub off the sofa, then leaped across to the shelves in a single bound and lugged a cumbersome copper aquavitometer back to the table. I was about to make myself more comfortable and clean off a little observation window for the genie when I suddenly heard voices, the clattering of feet, and doors slamming in the corridor. I leaped up and dashed out of the lab.

The huge building’s aura of nocturnal emptiness and tranquil darkness had disappeared without a trace. There were lamps blazing brightly in the corridor. Someone was dashing crazily up the stairs; someone else was shouting, “Valka! The voltage has dropped! Run to the electrical room!”; someone was shaking off a fur coat on the landing, sending wet snow flying in all directions. Walking toward me with a thoughtful expression on his face was Gian Giacomo, and trotting along behind him with his huge portfolio under its arm and his cane in its mouth was a gnome. We exchanged bows. The great prestidigitator smelled of good wine and French fragrances. I didn’t dare try to stop him, and he walked straight through the locked door into his office. The gnome stuck his briefcase and cane through the closed door and then dived into the radiator.

“What the hell?” I shouted, and ran toward the stairs.

The Institute was overflowing with members of staff. There seemed to be even more of them than on an ordinary working day. In the offices and laboratories lights were blazing; doors were standing wide open. The usual buzz of work filled the air: crackling electrical discharges, monotonous voices dictating figures and intoning spells, the sharp chatter of typewriters. And above it all Fyodor Simeonovich’s booming, triumphant growl: “’At’s good, ’at’s just grand! Well done there, good boy! But what fool turned off the generator?”

Somebody poked me in the back with the hard corner of something and I grabbed hold of the banister, feeling really furious now. It was Volodya Pochkin and Edik Amperian, carrying a coordinate-measuring machine that weighed half a ton.

“Ah, Sasha,” Edik said pleasantly. “Hi there, Sasha.”

“Sashka, get out of the way!” yelled Volodya Pochkin, edging along backward. “Higher, higher!”

I grabbed him by the collar. “Why are you in the Institute? How did you get in?”

“Through the door, through the door, let go…” said Volodya. “Edka, more to the right! Can’t you see it’s not fitting through?”

I let go of him and dashed down to the entrance hall, seething with administrative indignation. “I’ll teach you,” I muttered, jumping four steps at a time. “I’ll teach you, you idle loafers, I’ll teach you to go just letting in all and sundry!”

Instead of doing their job, the macrodemons Entrance and Exit were playing roulette, trembling with excitement and phosphorescing feverishly. In front of my very eyes Entrance, totally oblivious to his duties, broke the bank to win about seventy billion molecules from the equally oblivious Exit. I recognized the roulette wheel immediately. It was mine; I had made it myself for a party and kept it behind a cupboard in the computer room, and the only person who knew about it was Vitka Korneev. A conspiracy, I thought. I’ll sling the whole lot of you out now. But the red-cheeked, jolly, snow-covered members of staff just kept on pouring in through the vestibule.

“It’s really blowing out there! My ears are all clogged up…”

“So you left too, then?”

“Well, it’s so boring… Everyone got drunk. So I thought, why don’t I go in and do a bit of work instead. I left them a double and took off…”

“You know, there I am dancing with her and I can just feel myself turning hairy all over. I took a shot of vodka, but it didn’t do any good…”

“What about an electron beam? A large mass? Try photons, then…”

“Alexei, have you got a laser you’re not using? Even a gas one would do…”

“Galka, how come you left your husband?”

“I left an hour ago, if you must know. I fell into a snowdrift, you know, almost got buried in it…”

I realized I’d failed in my duty. There was no point now in taking the roulette wheel away from the demons. The only thing I could do was go and have a blazing fight with that agent provocateur Vitka; the rest was out of my hands. I waved my fist at the demons and set off back upstairs, trying to imagine what would happen if Modest Matveevich happened to drop into the Institute just then.

On my way to the director’s waiting room I stopped in the test lab, where they were pacifying a genie released from a bottle. The huge genie, blue with rage, was dashing around inside a cage walled off with shields of Jan ben Jan and closed off above by a powerful magnetic field. They were zapping the genie with high-voltage shocks. He howled, cursed in several dead languages, bounded about, and belched tongues of flame. In his vehement fury he began building palaces and then immediately destroying them, until finally he gave up, sat down on the floor, shuddering from the electrical discharges, and howled plaintively. “That’s enough, no more, I’ll behave myself… Hey, hey, hey… Look, see how calm I am…”

The imperturbable, unblinking young men standing at the control panel of the discharge generator were all doubles. The originals were crowded around the vibration table, glancing at their watches and opening bottles.

I went over to them. “Ah, Sashka!” “Sashentsiya, they tell me you’re on watch today… I’ll drop by your room a bit later.” “Hey, someone create him a glass, my hands are full here…”

I was so dumbfounded I didn’t even notice the glass appear in my hand. The corks clattered against the shields of Jan ben Jan; the ice cold champagne hissed as it flowed. The discharges stopped crackling, the genie stopped wailing and began sniffing, and at that very second the Kremlin clock started chiming twelve.

“Right, guys! Long live Monday!”

Glasses clinked together. Then someone cast an eye over the bottles and said, “Who created the wine?”

“I did.”

“Don’t forget to pay tomorrow.”

“Well, how about another bottle?”

“No, that’s enough, we’ll catch a chill.”

“Some genie we’ve got here… Seems a bit high strung.”

“Never look a gift horse…”

“Never mind, he’ll fly like a good’un. Forty turns and his nerves will soon be in order.”

“Guys,” I said timidly, “it’s night outside, and a holiday. Why don’t you all just go home?”

They looked at me, slapped me on the shoulder, and told me, “Don’t worry about it, it’ll pass”—and the whole gang moved across to the cage. The doubles rolled aside one of the shields and the originals surrounded the genie, took a firm grasp of his arms and legs, and carried him across to the vibration table. The genie muttered timidly and uncertainly, promising everyone the treasures of the kings of the Earth.

I stood alone at one side and watched as they strapped him down and attached microsensors to various parts of his body. Then I touched the shield. It was immense and heavy, pitted with dents from the impact of ball lightning, and some spots were carbonized. The shields of Jan ben Jan were made of seven dragon skins, glued together with the bile of a patricide, and were designed to resist a direct lightning strike. All the shields in the Institute had originally been taken from the treasure house of the Queen of Sheba by either Cristóbal Junta or Merlin. Junta never spoke about it, but Merlin boasted about it at every opportunity, always citing the dubious authority of King Arthur. There were tin-plate inventory-number tags attached to each shield with upholstery nails. In theory there ought to have been images of all the famous battles of the past on the fronts of the shields and images of all the great battles of the future on the reverse. In practice, what I could see on the front side of the shield I was looking at was something like a jet plane strafing a refueling station, and its inside was covered with strange swirls and streaks reminiscent of an abstract painting. They started shaking up the genie on the vibration table. He giggled and squealed: “Hey, that tickles! Hey, stop it!”

I went back into the corridor. It smelled of fireworks. There were firecrackers zooming around in circles under the ceiling, and rockets darting about, banging against the walls and leaving trails of colored smoke behind them. I ran into a double of Volodya Pochkin lugging along a gigantic incunabulum with brass clasps, two doubles of Roman Oira-Oira struggling under the weight of a massively heavy metal C beam, then Roman himself with a heap of bright blue files from the archives of the Department of Unsolvable Problems, and then a fierce-looking lab assistant from the Department of the Meaning of Life, herding a flock of cursing ghosts in crusaders’ cloaks to an interrogation with Junta… Everybody was working hard.

The labor regulations were being deliberately and ubiquitously flouted, but I no longer felt the slightest desire to combat these infringements, since these people had fought their way here through a blizzard at midnight on New Year’s Eve because they were more interested in finishing up some useful job of work or starting up a completely new one than in dissolving their wits in vodka, jerking their legs about moronically, playing forfeits, and flirting with varying degrees of frivolity.

These people had come here because they preferred being together to being apart and because they couldn’t stand Sundays of any kind, because on Sunday they felt bored. These were Magicians, People with a capital P, and their motto was “Monday starts on Saturday.” Yes, they knew a few spells, they could turn water into wine, and it would have been no problem for any one of them to feed a thousand people with five loaves. But that wasn’t why they were magicians. That was just the shell, the exterior. They were magicians because they knew a great deal, so much indeed that this huge quantity of theirs had made the leap of conversion into quality, and their relationship with the world had become different from that of ordinary people. They worked in an institute that was concerned first and foremost with the problems of human happiness and the meaning of human life, but even in their ranks there was no one who knew for certain what happiness is and what exactly is the meaning of life. And they had accepted as a working hypothesis that happiness lies in the constant cognition of the unknown, which is also the meaning of life. Every man is a magician in his heart, but he only becomes a magician when he starts thinking less about himself and more about others, when his work becomes more interesting to him than simply amusing himself according to the old meaning of that word. And their working hypothesis must have been close to the truth, because just as labor transformed ape into man, so the absence of labor transforms man into ape or something even worse, only far more rapidly.

We don’t always notice this in life. The idler and sponger, the debauchee and careerist, continue to walk on their hind extremities and articulate speech quite clearly (although their range of subjects becomes extremely narrow), and as for the drainpipe trousers and passion for jazz that used to be cited as a measure of the extent of an individual’s anthropoidicity, it became clear fairly quickly that these are to be found even among the very finest magicians. But in the Institute it was impossible to disguise retrogression.

The Institute offered unlimited opportunities for the transformation of man into magician. However, it was ruthless with apostates and marked them out unfailingly. A member of staff only had to indulge for an hour in egotistical and instinct-driven activity (or sometimes merely thoughts) and he would be horrified to notice that the fluff in his ears was growing thicker. It was a warning. Just as the militiaman’s whistle warns of a possible fine and pain warns of a possible injury. It was all left up to you.

A man is frequently incapable of resisting his embittered thoughts, for as a man he embodies the transitional stage between Neanderthal and Magician. But he can act despite these thoughts, and then he still has a chance. Or he can give way, give up on everything (“You only live once,” “You have to take what life has to offer,” “Nihil humanum mihi alienum est”) and then there’s only one thing left for him to do: leave the Institute as soon as possible. Outside it, he can at least still be a respectable philistine, earning his wages honestly, if somewhat listlessly. But it’s hard to bring yourself to leave. The Institute’s a warm, cozy place, the work’s clean and it’s respectable, the pay’s not bad, and the people are wonderful, so you can put up with the shame—after all, it won’t kill you. They slouch along the corridors and through the laboratories, followed by sympathetic or disapproving glances, their ears covered with coarse gray fur, confused and incoherent, gradually losing the power of articulate speech, growing stupider. And these are the ones you can still pity and still try to help; you can still hope to restore their humanity…

There are others. With empty eyes. Who know for certain which side their bread is buttered on. In their own way very far from stupid. In their own way accomplished connoisseurs of human nature. Calculating and unprincipled, acquainted with the full power of human weaknesses, able to turn any evil to their own advantage and indefatigable in so doing. They shave their ears thoroughly and frequently invent wonderful potions for eliminating body hair. They wear corsets made of dragons’ whiskers to disguise the curvature of their spines; they envelop themselves in immense medieval robes and boyars’ fur coats, proclaiming their devotion to national tradition. They complain loudly in public of chronic rheumatic pains and wear tall felt boots soled with leather in both winter and summer. They are undiscriminating as to their means and as patient as spiders in achieving their ends. And very often they achieve truly significant results and major successes in their basic goal—the construction of a bright future in a single apartment and on a single village plot, fenced off from the rest of humanity by electrified barbed wire…

I went back to my post in the director’s waiting room, dumped the useless keys in the box, and read a few pages of J. P. Nevstruev’s classic work Equations of Mathematical Magic. This book read like an adventure novel, because it was absolutely chock-full of unsolved problems. I felt a burning desire to do some work, and I had just decided to say nuts to the management and go back to my Aldan when Modest Matveevich phoned.

Munching and crunching down the line, he inquired angrily, “Where have you been wandering about, Privalov? This is the third time I’ve called. It’s outrageous!”

“Happy New Year, Modest Matveevich,” I said.

He chewed without saying anything for a while, then answered in a voice one tone lower: “Likewise. How’s the shift going?”

“I’ve just completed a round of the premises,” I said. “Everything’s fine.”

“There weren’t any cases of spontaneous combustion?”

“None at all.”

“Is the power off everywhere?”

“Briareos has broken a finger,” I said.

He was alarmed. “Briareos? Hold on just a moment… Aha, inventory number 1489… Why?”

I explained.

“What measures did you take?”

I told him.

“A correct decision,” said Modest Matveevich. “Continue with your watch. That’s all.”

Immediately after Modest Matveevich, Edik Amperian called from the Department of Linear Happiness and politely asked me to calculate the optimal coefficient of frivolity for managerial staff. I agreed, and we arranged to meet in the computer room in two hours’ time. Then a double of Oira-Oira came in and asked in a colorless voice for the keys to Janus Polyeuctovich’s safe. I refused. It tried to insist. I refused and threw it out.

A minute later Roman himself came dashing in. “Give me the keys.”

I shook my head. “I won’t.”

“Give me the keys!”

“You can go soak your head. I’m the individual with material responsibility.”

“Sashka, I’ll take the safe away!”

I chuckled and said, “Be my guest.”

Roman glared at the safe and strained hard, but the safe was either under a spell or bolted to the floor.

“What is it you want in there?” I asked.

“The documentation on the RU-16,” said Roman. “Come on, give me the key!”

I laughed and reached out a hand toward the box of keys. But at that very instant there was a blood-curdling howl from somewhere upstairs. I leaped to my feet.

4

“He’s hatched,” Roman said calmly, looking up at the ceiling.

“Who?” I was really on edge: it was a woman who had screamed.

“Vybegallo’s upyr,” said Roman. “Or rather, cadaver.”

“But why did that woman scream?”

“You’ll see soon enough,” said Roman.

He took hold of my arm and jumped into the air, and we went soaring up through the stories of the Institute building, piercing the ceilings and slicing through the floors like a hot knife through frozen butter, bursting out into the air with a plopping sound and tearing into the next ceiling. In the darkness between the floors little gnomes and mice shied away from us with startled squeaks, and as we flew through laboratories and offices Institute staff looked up with puzzled faces.

In the “Nursery” we elbowed our way through a crowd of curious onlookers and saw Professor Vybegallo sitting at the laboratory table, absolutely naked. His bluish-white skin glistened damply, his wet wedge-shaped beard drooped limply, and his wet hair was glued to his low forehead, on which an actively volcanic pustule blazed bright red. His empty, transparent eyes blinked occasionally as they roamed senselessly around the room.

Professor Vybegallo was eating. On the table in front of him steam was rising from a large photographic developing tray, filled up to the top with steamed bran. Without paying any particular attention to anyone else, he scooped the bran up with his broad palm, kneaded it in his fingers like pilaf, and dispatched the resulting lump into the cavity of his mouth, sprinkling his beard liberally with crumbs in the process. At the same time he crunched, squelched, grunted, and snorted, inclining his head to one side and grimacing as though in immense delight. From time to time, without stopping his swallowing and choking, he would get excited and grab hold of the edges of the tub of bran and one of the buckets of skim milk that were standing on the floor beside him, every time pulling them closer and closer to himself. Standing at the other end of the table, pale and tearful, her lips trembling, was the pretty young trainee witch Stella, with her pristine pink ears. She was slicing loaves of bread in immense slabs and presenting them to Vybegallo, turning her face away from him. The central autoclave was open and there was a wide green puddle surrounding it.

Vybegallo suddenly muttered indistinctly, “Hey, girl… er… give me some milk! Pour it… you know… right in here, in the bran… S’il vous plaît…”

Stella hastily snatched up the bucket and splashed skim milk into the tray.

“Eh!” exclaimed Professor Vybegallo. “The crock’s too small, you know. You, girl, whatever your name is… er… pour it straight in the tub. We’ll eat, you know, straight from the tub.”

Stella began emptying the bucket into the tub of bran, and the professor grabbed the tray like a spoon and began scooping up bran and dispatching it into his jaws, which had suddenly opened incredibly wide.

“Phone him, will you!” Stella shouted plaintively. “He’ll finish everything in a minute!”

“We have phoned him already,” said someone in the crowd. “But you’d better move away from him. Come over here.”

“Well, is he coming? Is he coming?”

“He said he was just leaving. Putting on his galoshes… you know… and leaving. Come away from him, I told you.”

I finally realized what was going on. It wasn’t Professor Vybegallo, it was a newborn cadaver, a model of Gastrically Unsatisfied Man. Thank God for that—there I was thinking the professor had developed palsy as a result of his intensive labors. Stella cautiously moved away. People grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her into the crowd. She hid behind my back, clutching my elbow tight, and I immediately straightened up my shoulders, although I still didn’t understand what the problem was and what she was afraid of. The cadaver guzzled. The lab was full of people, but an astonished silence reigned and the only sound that could be heard was the cadaver snorting and munching like a horse and the scraping of the tray on the walls of the tub. We watched. He got down off his chair and stuck his head into the tub. The women turned away. Lilechka Novosmekhova began to feel unwell, and they took her out into the corridor. Then Edik Amperian’s clear voice spoke up: “All right. Let’s be logical. First he’ll finish the bran, then he’ll eat the bread. And then?”

There was a movement in the front rows. The crowd pressed toward the doors. I began to understand. Stella said in a thin little voice, “There are the herring heads as well…”

“Are there a lot of them?”

“Two tons.”

“Riiight,” said Edik, “And where are they?”

“They’re supposed to be delivered by the conveyor,” said Stella. “But I tried and the conveyor’s broken.”

“By the way,” Roman said loudly, “I’ve been trying to pacificate him for two minutes now, with absolutely no result.”

“Me too,” Edik.

“Therefore,” said Roman, “it would be a very good idea if one of the more squeamish among us were to try to repair the conveyor belt. To give us a bit of time. Are there any of the masters here? I can see Edik. Is there anybody else? Korneev! Victor Pavlovich, are you here?”

“He’s not here. Maybe someone ought to go for Fyodor Simeonovich?”

“I don’t think there’s any need to bother him yet. We’ll manage somehow. Edik, let’s try focusing on it together.”

“What mode?”

“Physiological inhibition mode. All the way down to tetanic contraction. All of you guys who can, give us a hand.”

“Just a moment,” said Edik. “What happens if we damage him?”

“Oh yes, yes,” I said. “You’d better not do that. Better just let him eat me instead.”

“Don’t worry, don’t worry. We’ll be careful. Edik, let’s do it with rapid strokes. In a single flurry.”

“OK, let’s go,” said Edik.

It went even quieter. The cadaver was scrabbling in the tub, and on the other side of the wall the volunteers were talking as they fiddled with the conveyor. A minute went by. The cadaver pulled his head out of the tub, wiped his beard, looked at us sleepily, and suddenly, stretching out his arm an unbelievable distance, grabbed up the last loaf of bread. Then he belched thunderously and leaned back against his chair, folding his arms across his massive, swollen belly. Bliss flooded across his features. He snuffled and smiled inanely. He was undoubtedly happy, in the way an extremely tired man is happy when he finally reaches his longed-for bed.

“Looks like it worked,” someone in the crowd said with a sigh of relief.

Roman pressed his lips together doubtfully.

“That’s not quite the impression I get,” Edik said politely.

“Perhaps his spring’s run down?” I said hopefully.

Stella announced plaintively, “It’s just temporary relaxation… an acute fit of satisfaction. He’ll wake up again soon.”

“You masters are a useless waste of time,” said a manly voice. “Let me through there, I’ll go and call Fyodor Simeonovich.”

Everyone looked around, smiling uncertainly. Roman was toying pensively with the plywitsum, rolling it around on his palm. Stella shuddered and whispered, “What’s going to happen? Sasha, I’m afraid!” As for me, I thrust out my chest, knitted my brows, and struggled with a compulsive urge to phone Modest Matveevich. I desperately wanted to shift the responsibility on to somebody else. It was a weakness, and I was powerless against it. Modest Matveevich appeared to me now in a very special light, and I recalled with a feeling of hope the master’s degree thesis someone had recently defended on the subject of “The Correlation Between the Laws of Nature and the Laws of Administration,” which attempted to demonstrate that by virtue of their specific inflexibility, administrative laws are frequently more efficacious than the laws of nature and magic. I was convinced that Modest Matveevich only had to turn up and yell at the upyr, “Now that’s enough of that, comrade Vybegallo!” for the upyr to decide it really was enough.

“Roman,” I said casually, “I suppose that in an emergency you can dematerialize it?”

Roman laughed and slapped me on the shoulder. “Don’t be such a coward,” he said. “This is just a bit of fun and games. Only I don’t much fancy getting involved with Vybegallo… It’s not this guy you ought to be afraid of, but that one!” He pointed to the second autoclave crackling peacefully in the corner.

Meanwhile the cadaver suddenly began stirring uneasily. Stella squealed quietly and pressed herself against me. The cadaver’s eyes opened. First he leaned over and glanced into the tub. Then he rattled the empty buckets. Then he froze and sat there for a while without moving. The expression of satisfaction on his face was replaced by an expression of bitter resentment. He half-raised himself out of his chair and sniffed the table rapidly, flaring his nostrils, then stretched out his long red tongue and licked up the crumbs.

“Watch out now, guys,” someone whispered in the crowd.

The cadaver stuck his hand into the tub, pulled out the tray, examined it from every angle, and cautiously bit off the edge. His eyebrows shot up in a martyred expression. He bit off another piece and began crunching it. His face turned blue as though from extreme exasperation and his eyes became moist, but he bit again and again until he had chewed up the entire tray. He sat there thoughtfully for about a minute, running his fingers over his teeth, then slowly ran his gaze over the motionless crowd. It was not a nice gaze; it seemed too appraising and selective. Responding automatically, Volodya Pochkin said, “Now then, calm down…” And then the empty transparent eyes locked on to Stella, and she let out a howl, that same blood-curdling howl bordering on ultrasonic frequencies that Roman and I had already heard in the director’s waiting room three stories below. I shuddered. It embarrassed the cadaver too: he lowered his eyes and began drumming nervously on the table with his fingers.

There was a noise in the doorway, everybody squeezed together, and Ambrosius Ambroisovich Vybegallo, the real one, came walking through the crowd, pushing aside the dawdlers and pulling the icicles out of his beard. He smelled of vodka, a coarse cloth overcoat, and frost.

“My dear fellow!” he yelled. “What is all this? Quelle situation? Stella, what are you… er… thinking of! Where are the herrings? He has needs! And they’re expanding! You should read my works!”

He approached the cadaver and the cadaver immediately started sniffing him. Vybegallo gave him his coat.

“Needs have to be satisfied!” he said, hastily clicking the switches on the conveyor’s control board. “Why didn’t you give him them straightaway? Oh, always les femmes, les femmes! Who said it was broken? It’s not broken at all, it’s bewitched. So, you know, not just anybody can use it, because… er… everybody has needs, but the herrings are for the model.”

A little window opened in the wall, the conveyor started muttering, and a stream of fragrant herring heads poured straight out onto the floor. The cadaver’s eyes glittered. He went down on all fours, trotted smartly over to the little window, and got to work. Vybegallo stood beside him, clapping his hands, crying out in delight, and just occasionally, overcome by his feelings, scratching the cadaver behind the ear.

The crowd sighed in relief and began shuffling about. It turned out that Vybegallo had brought with him two correspondents from the regional newspaper, our old acquaintances G. Pronitsatelny and B. Pitomnik. They also smelled of vodka. They blitzed away with their flashguns, taking photographs and making notes in their little books. G. Pronitsatelny and B. Pitomnik specialized in science. G. Pronitsatelny was renowned for the phrase “Oort was the first to glance up at the starry sky and notice that the galaxy rotates.” He was also the author of a literary account of Merlin’s journey with the chairman of the district soviet and an interview (conducted out of ignorance) with one of Oira-Oira’s doubles. The interview was called “‘Man’ with a Capital Letter” and began, “Like any genuine scientist he was sparing with words…” B. Pitomnik was parasitical on Vybegallo. His militant essays on self-donning footwear, carrots that were self-pulling and self-loading-into-trucks, and other projects undertaken by Vybegallo were well known throughout the district, and his article “The Wizard from Solovets” had even appeared in one of the major national magazines.

When the cadaver’s next acute fit of satisfaction set in and he dozed off, Vybegallo’s lab assistants, who had turned up after being dragged away from their festive New Year’s tables and were not in a very friendly mood, hastily dressed him in a black suit and shoved a chair underneath him. The journalists stood Vybegallo beside him, put his hands on the cadaver’s shoulders, pointed their lenses at him, and asked him to continue.

“What is the most important thing of all?” said Vybegallo, readily complying. “The most important thing is for man to be happy. Let me observe in parenthesis: happiness is a human concept. And what is man, philosophically speaking? Man, comrades, is Homo sapiens, the creature who can achieve and who desires. He can achieve everything that he desires, and he desires everything that he can achieve. N’est-ce pas, comrades? If he—that is, man—can achieve everything that he desires and desires everything that he can achieve, then he is happy. This is how we shall define him. What is this that we have here before us, comrades? We have here a model. But this model, comrades, desires, and that is already good. Exquis, excellent, charmant, so to speak. And again, comrades, you can see for yourselves that it can achieve. And that is even better, because… because in that case it—he, that is—is happy. There is a metaphysical transition from unhappiness to happiness and this comes as no surprise to us, because people are not born happy, they… er… become happy. Thanks to proper care and attention being paid. Look, now it’s waking up… it desires. And therefore for the moment it is unhappy. But it can achieve, and this ability can produce a sudden dialectical leap. There, there! Look! See how it can achieve! Oh, you little darling, my happy little one! Look! Look! See how well it can achieve. It can achieve for a whole ten or fifteen minutes… You there, comrade Pitomnik, put down your little camera and pick up the movie camera, because here we have a process… everything we have here is in motion! For us the state of rest is relative, as it ought to be, and movement is absolute. Indeed so. Now it has achieved and it is making the dialectical transition to happiness. To satisfaction, that is. Look, it has closed its eyes. It is delighted. It feels good. I can tell you quite scientifically that I would gladly change places with it. At the present moment, of course… You, comrade Pronitsatelny, write down everything I say, and then give it to me. I’ll straighten it out and put in the references… There, it’s dozing now, but that’s not all there is to this process. Our needs must grow and expand in depth as well as in breadth. Otherwise, you know, the process will not be correct. On dit que Vybegallo is supposedly against the world of the mind. That, comrades, is a crude label. It is high time for us, comrades, to forget such manners in scientific discussion. We all know that the material comes first and the spiritual comes afterward. Satur venter, as we all know, non studet libenter.[1] Which, with regard to the present case, we can translate thus: a hungry fox is always thinking of bread.”

“The opposite way round,” said Oira-Oira.

Vybegallo stared vacantly at him for a short while, then said, “Comrades, we shall dismiss that undisciplined remark from the audience with the contempt it deserves. Let us not be distracted from the main thing—from practice. Let us leave the theory to those who have not yet mastered it sufficiently. To continue, I now move on to the next stage of the experiment. Let me elucidate for the press. Proceeding from the materialist idea that the temporary satisfaction of material needs has taken place, we may proceed to the satisfaction of spiritual needs. That is, watching films and television, listening to folk music or singing it yourself, and even reading some kind of book or, let’s say, the magazine Crocodile or a newspaper… Comrades, we do not forget that you have to possess the abilities for all of this, whereas the satisfaction of material needs does not require any special abilities—they are always present, for nature follows materialism. As yet we can say nothing about the spiritual abilities of this particular model, insofar as the rational core of its being is gastric dissatisfaction. But we will now identify its spiritual abilities.”

The morose laboratory assistants laid out a tape recorder, a radio, a film projector, and a small portable library on the tables. The cadaver cast an indifferent eye over these instruments of culture and tried the magnetic tape to see how it tasted. It became clear that the model’s spiritual abilities would not manifest themselves spontaneously. Then Vybegallo gave the order to commence what he called the forcible inculcation of cultural skills. The tape recorder began crooning sweetly, “My darling and I parted, swearing eternal love…” The radio began whistling and hooting. The film projector began showing the cartoon The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats on the wall. Two laboratory assistants holding magazines stood on each side of the cadaver and began reading out loud across each other…

As was only to be expected, the gastric model remained absolutely indifferent to all this racket. Just as long as it wanted to gobble it couldn’t give a damn for its spiritual world, because its desire was to gobble and it could achieve that desire. But when it was sated, it totally ignored its spiritual world, because it was feeling drowsy and for the time being it didn’t want anything else. Even so, the sharp-eyed Vybegallo managed to spot an undeniable connection between the beating of a drum (on the radio) and a reflex twitching of the model’s lower extremities. This twitching threw him into raptures of delight.

“The leg!” he shouted, grabbing hold of B. Pitomnik’s sleeve. “Film the leg! In close-up! La vibration de son mollet gauche est un grand signe. That leg will sweep aside all their machinations and tear away all the labels that they hang on me! Oui, sans doute, a man who is not a specialist might perhaps be surprised by my reaction to that leg. But after all, comrades, all the great things are manifested in small things, and I must remind you that the model in question is a model with limited needs—to be specific, only one need, and to put it simply, our way, calling things by their own names, without any of these veiled hints: it is a model of gastric need. That is why it is so limited in its spiritual needs. Let me elucidate for the press, using a clear example. If, let us say, it were to have a strongly pronounced need for the given ‘Astra-7’ tape recorder for 140 rubles—which need must be understood by us as material—and if it were to acquire that tape recorder, then it would play the tape recorder in question, because, as you know yourselves, there is nothing else you can do with a tape recorder. And if it were to play it, then it would be with music, and if there is music, then you have to listen to it and perhaps dance… and what, comrades, is listening to music, either dancing or not dancing? It is the satisfaction of spiritual needs. Comprenez-vous?”

I had noticed quite a while before this that the cadaver’s behavior had changed significantly. Perhaps something inside it had stopped functioning properly, or perhaps it was the way things were supposed to happen, but its relaxation times were getting shorter and shorter, so that by the end of Vybegallo’s speech it was no longer leaving the conveyor even for a moment. Or perhaps it had simply begun to find it difficult to move.

“May I ask a question?” Edik said politely. “How do you account for the cessation of the acute fits of satisfaction?”

Vybegallo stopped speaking and looked at the cadaver. The cadaver was guzzling. Vybegallo looked at Edik.

“I’ll tell you how,” he said smugly. “That is a correct question, comrades. Yes, I would even call it an intelligent question, comrades. We have before us a concrete model of constantly expanding material needs. And only the superficial observer can believe that the acute fits of satisfaction have supposedly ceased. In actual fact they have made the dialectical transition from quantity to a new quality. They have extended, comrade, to the very process of the satisfaction of needs. Now it is not enough for it to be satisfied. Its needs have grown, so that now it has to eat all the time—now it has self-educated itself and it knows that chewing is also good. Is that clear, comrade Amperian?”

I looked at Edik. Edik was smiling politely. Standing beside him, hand in hand, were doubles of Fyodor Simeonovich and Cristóbal Joséevich. Their heads had wide-set ears and they were turning on their axes, like the radar antennae at airports.

“May I ask another question?” said Roman.

“By all means,” said Vybegallo with an expression of weary condescension.

“Ambrosius Ambroisovich,” said Roman, “what will happen when it has consumed everything?”

Vybegallo’s gaze became wrathful. “I ask everyone present to take note of this provocative question, which reeks a mile away of Malthusianism, neo-Malthusianism, pragmatism, existentio-…-oa-…-nalism, and disbelief, comrades, in the inexhaustible powers of humanity. What is it you are suggesting by asking this question, comrade Oira-Oira? That a moment can come in the activity of our scientific institution, a crisis, a retrogressive development, when there will not be enough consumer products for our consumers? Wrong, comrade Oira-Oira! You haven’t thought it through properly! We cannot permit labels to be hung on our work and aspersions cast upon it. And we shall not permit it, comrades.”

He took out a handkerchief and wiped his beard. G. Pronitsatelny asked the next question, screwing up his face with the intellectual effort: “Of course, I’m not a specialist. But what future has the model in question? I understand that the experiment is proceeding successfully. But it is consuming very energetically.”

Vybegallo laughed bitterly. “There, you see, comrade Oira-Oira, that’s the way unsavory sensations are started. You asked a question without thinking. And our rank-and-file comrade here is already disoriented. Facing toward the wrong ideal… You are facing toward the wrong ideal, comrade Pronitsatelny!” he said, addressing the journalist directly. “The model in question represents a stage that is already past! Here is the ideal toward which we must turn our faces!” He went across to the second autoclave and set his ginger-haired hand against its polished side. His beard jutted out. “This is our ideal!” he declared. “Or, to be more precise, this is the model of our ideal, yours and mine. Here we have the universal consumer who desires everything and can, accordingly, achieve everything he desires. All the needs that exist in the world are embodied in him. And he can satisfy all those needs. With the help of our science, naturally. Let me elucidate for the press. The model of the universal consumer contained in this autoclave—or, to use our term, self-sealing vessel—desires without any limitation. We are all of us, comrades, with all due respect to ourselves, simply nothing in comparison with it. Because it desires things that we have absolutely no concept of. And it will not wait for favors from nature. It will take from nature everything that it needs for its complete happiness—that is, for satisfaction. Material-magic forces will simply extract from surrounding nature everything that it needs. The happiness of this model will be indescribable. It will know neither hunger nor thirst, nor toothache, nor other unpleasantnesses. All of its needs will be instantly satisfied as they arise.”

“Excuse me,” Edik said politely, “but will all of its needs be material?”

“Well, of course,” Vybegallo yelled, “its intellectual needs will develop accordingly! As I have already remarked, the more material needs there are, the more varied the intellectual needs will be. It will be a mental giant and an intellectual luminary!”

I looked around at the people there. Many of them looked absolutely dumbfounded. The correspondents were scribbling away desperately. I noticed that some people were glancing from the autoclave to the incessantly guzzling cadaver and back again, with a strange expression on their faces. Stella was pressing her forehead against my shoulder, sobbing and whispering, “I’ve got to get out of here, I can’t take any more…” I think I was also beginning to understand just what Oira-Oira was afraid of. I pictured an immense maw gaping wide to receive a magically generated stream of animals, people, cities, continents, planets, the sun…

“Ambrosius Ambroisovich,” said Oira-Oira. “Could the universal consumer create a stone so heavy that even he would be unable to lift it, no matter how strong his desire?”

Vybegallo pondered that, but only for a second. “That isn’t material need,” he replied. “That’s caprice. That’s not the reason I created my doubles, for them to go getting, you know, capricious.”

“Caprice can be a need too,” Oira-Oira objected.

“Let’s not get involved in scholastics and casuistry,” Vybegallo proposed. “And let’s not start drawing analogies with religious mysticism.”

“No, let’s not,” said Oira-Oira.

B. Pitomnik glanced around and addressed Vybegallo again: “When and where will the demonstration of the universal model take place, Ambrosius Ambroisovich?”

“The answer,” said Vybegallo, “is that the demonstration will take place right here in my laboratory. The press will be informed of the time later.”

“But will it be just a matter of a few days?”

“It could well be a matter of a few hours. So it would be best for the comrades of the press to stay and wait.”

At this point, as though on command, the doubles of Fyodor Simeonovich and Cristóbal Joséevich turned and walked out of the room. Oira-Oira said, “Does it not seem to you, Ambrosius Ambroisovich, that holding such a demonstration in the Institute, here in the center of town, is dangerous?”

“We have nothing to be concerned about,” said Vybegallo. “It’s our enemies who should be feeling concerned.”

“Do you remember I told you there might possibly—”

“You, comrade Oira-Oira, possess an inadequate, you know, grasp of the matter. It is essential, comrade Oira-Oira, to distinguish possibility from reality, theory from practice, and so forth…”

“Nonetheless, perhaps the firing range—”

“I am not testing a bomb,” Vybegallo said haughtily. “I am testing a model of the ideal man. Are there any other questions?”

Some bright spark from the Department of Absolute Knowledge began asking about the operating mode of the autoclave, and Vybegallo happily launched into explanations. The morose lab assistants were gathering up their spiritual needs satisfaction technology. The cadaver was guzzling. The black suit he was wearing was splitting and coming apart at the seams. Oira-Oira watched him closely. Suddenly he said in a loud voice, “I have a suggestion. Everyone who is not directly involved should leave the premises immediately.”

Everyone turned to look at him.

“It’s going to get very messy,” he explained. “Quite incredibly messy.”

“That is provocation,” Vybegallo responded pompously.

Roman grabbed me by the hand and dragged me to the door. I dragged Stella after me. The other onlookers hurried after us. People in the Institute trusted Roman. They didn’t trust Vybegallo. The only outsiders left in the laboratory were the journalists; the rest of us crowded together in the corridor.

“What’s happening?” we asked Roman. “What’s going to happen? Why is it going to get messy?”

“He’s about to blow,” Roman answered, keeping his eyes fixed on the door.

“Who is? Vybegallo?”

“I feel sorry for the journalists,” said Edik. “Listen, Sasha, is our shower working today?”

The door of the lab opened and two lab assistants came out, carrying the tub and the empty buckets. A third lab assistant was fussing around them, glancing behind him apprehensively and muttering, “Let me help, guys, let me help, it’s heavy…”

“Better close the doors,” Roman advised.

The nervous lab assistant hastily slammed the door shut and came over to us, pulling out his cigarettes. His eyes were rolling and staring wildly. “Any moment now…” he said. “The smart-ass, I tried to tip him off… The way it guzzles! It’s insane, the way it guzzles.”

“It’s twenty-five past two—” Roman began.

Suddenly there was a loud boom and a jangling of broken glass. One of the lab doors gave a sharp crack and flew off its hinges. A camera and someone’s tie were blown out through the gap. We jumped back. Stella squealed again.

“Keep calm,” said Roman. “It’s all over now. There’s one less consumer in the world.”

The lab assistant, his face as white as his coat, dragged incessantly on his cigarette. From inside the lab we heard sniveling, coughing, and muttered curses. There was a bad smell. I murmured uncertainly, “Perhaps we ought to take a look.”

No one replied. Everyone just looked at me pityingly. Stella was crying quietly, holding on to my jacket. Someone explained to someone else, “He’s on watch today, get it? Someone has to go and clear it all up.”

I took a few hesitant steps in the direction of the doorway, but just then the journalists and Vybegallo came stumbling out of the lab, clutching onto each other.

My God, the state they were in!

Recovering my wits, I pulled the platinum whistle out of my pocket and blew it. The brownie emergency sanitation team came dashing to my side on the double, pushing their way through the crowd of staff.

5

What astounded me most of all was that Vybegallo was not discouraged in the least by what had happened. While the brownies worked on him, spraying him with absorbing agents and plastering him with fragrances, he piped in a falsetto voice, “You, comrades Oira-Oira and Amperian, you were apprehensive as well. Wondering what would happen, and how he could be stopped… You suffer, comrades, from a certain unhealthy, you know, skepticism. I’d call it a certain distrust of the forces of nature and human potential. And where is it now, this distrust of yours? It has burst! It has burst, comrades, in full view of the wider public, and splattered me and these comrades of the press.”

The press maintained a dismayed silence as it obediently presented its sides to the hissing jets of absorbents. G. Pronitsatelny was shuddering violently. B. Pitomnik was shaking his head and involuntarily licking his lips.

When the brownies had restored a first approximation of order in the lab, I glanced inside. The emergency team was briskly replacing windows and burning what was left of the gastric model in a muffle furnace. There wasn’t much left: a little heap of buttons with the English inscription FOR GENTLEMEN, the sleeve of a jacket, a pair of incredibly stretched suspenders, and a set of false teeth resembling the fossilized jaws of Gigantopithecus. Everything else had apparently been reduced to dust in the blast. Vybegallo inspected the second autoclave, the so-called self-sealing vessel, and declared that everything was in order. “Would the press please join me?” he said. “And I suggest that everyone else should return to their own duties.”

The press pulled out its notebooks; the three men sat down at a table and set about defining the details of an essay titled “The Birth of a Discovery” and an article titled “Professor Vybegallo’s Story.” The audience dispersed. Oira-Oira left after taking the keys to Janus Polyeuctovich’s safe from me. Stella left in despair because Vybegallo had refused to let her transfer to a different department. The lab assistants left, noticeably more cheerful now. Edik left, surrounded by a crowd of theoreticians, figuring out in their heads as they walked along what was the minimum stomach pressure at which the cadaver could have exploded. I left too, and went back to my post, having first made sure that the testing of the second cadaver would not take place before eight o’clock in the morning.

The experiment had left me feeling very unsettled. I lowered myself into an immense armchair in the director’s waiting room and tried for a while to understand whether Vybegallo was a fool or a cunning demagogue and hack. The total scientific value of all his cadavers was quite clearly zero. Any member of the Institute who had successfully defended his master’s thesis and taken the two-year special course in nonlinear transgression was capable of creating models based on his own doubles. And it was no problem either to endow these models with magical properties, because there were handbooks, tables, and textbooks for use by postgraduate magicians. In themselves these models had never proved anything, and from a scientific point of view they were of no more interest than card tricks or sword swallowing.

Of course, I could understand all these pitiful journalists who stuck to Vybegallo like flies on a dung heap. Because from the viewpoint of the nonspecialist it all looked very impressive; it inspired a frisson of admiration and vague presentiments of immense possibilities. It was harder to understand Vybegallo, and his morbid obsession with organizing circus performances and public explosions to satisfy people who could not possibly understand (and had no desire to understand) the essence of what was happening. Apart from two or three Absolutists who were exhausted by their research trips and loved to give interviews on the state of affairs in infinity, no one else in the Institute abused their contacts with the press. It was considered bad form—and that disapproval derived from a profound internal logic.

The problem is that the most interesting and elegant scientific results frequently possess the property of appearing abstruse and drearily incomprehensible to the uninitiated. In our time people who have no connection with science expect it to produce miracles and nothing but miracles, but they’re practically incapable of distinguishing a genuine scientific miracle from a conjuring trick or intellectual acrobatics. The science of sorcery and wizardry is no exception. There are plenty of people who can organize a conference of famous ghosts in a television studio or drill a hole in a fifty-centimeter wall just by looking at it, which is no good at all to anyone, but it produces an ecstatic response from our highly esteemed public, which has no real idea of the extent to which science has interwoven and blended together the concepts of fairy tale and reality. But just you try to define the profound internal connection between the drilling capacity of the human glance and the philological characteristics of the word concrete—just try to answer this one discrete little question, which is known as Auer’s Great Problem! Oira-Oira solved it by creating the theory of fantastical totality and founding an entirely new branch of mathematical magic. But almost no one has ever heard of Oira-Oira, and everyone knows all about Professor Vybegallo. (“Ah, so you work at NITWiT? How’s Vybegallo doing? What else has he discovered now?”) This happens because there are only two or three hundred people in the entire world capable of grasping Oira-Oira’s ideas, and while these two or three hundred include many corresponding members of the Academy of Sciences, they do not, alas, include a single journalist. But in its time Vybegallo’s classic work “Fundamentals of Technology for the Production of Self-Donning Footwear,” which is crammed full of demagogic nonsense, was a great sensation, thanks to the efforts of B. Pitomnik. (It later emerged that self-donning shoes cost more than a motorcycle and are easily damaged by dust and moisture.)

It was getting late. I was seriously tired and I dozed off without realizing it. I dreamed about some kind of fantastic vermin—gigantic multilegged mosquitoes with beards like Vybegallo’s—talking buckets of skim milk, a tub with short little legs running down the stairs. Occasionally some indiscreet brownie glanced into my dream, but when he saw these horrors, he bolted in fright. I was woken by a pain and opened my eyes to see beside me a macabre bearded mosquito trying to sink its proboscis, as thick as a ballpoint pen, into my calf.

“Shoo!” I roared, and punched it in its bulging eye.

The mosquito gurgled resentfully and ran away a few steps. It was as big as a dog, ginger with white spots. I must have pronounced the materialization formula without realizing it while I was asleep and unwittingly summoned this macabre beast out of nonexistence. I tried to drive it back into nonexistence but failed. Then I armed myself with the heavy volume Equations of Mathematical Magic, opened the small window, and drove the mosquito out into the frost. The blizzard immediately whirled it away, and it disappeared into the darkness. That’s the way unsavory sensations are started, I thought.

It was six in the morning and the Institute was absolutely quiet. Either everyone was working hard or they’d all gone home. I was supposed to make one more round, but I didn’t want to go anywhere and I wanted something to eat, because the last time I’d eaten was eighteen hours earlier. So I decided to send a double instead.

I’m really still a very weak magician. Inexperienced. If there’d been anybody else there with me, I’d never have taken the chance of exposing my ignorance. But I was alone, and I decided to risk it and get in a bit of practice at the same time. I found the general formula in Equations of Mathematical Magic, entered my own parameters into it, performed all the required manipulations, and pronounced all the required expressions in ancient Chaldean. Hard study really does pay dividends. For the first time in my life I managed to make a decent double. He had everything in the right place and he even looked a little bit like me, except that for some reason his left eye didn’t open and he had six fingers on his hands. I explained his task to him and he nodded, shuffled one foot across the floor, and set off, staggering as he walked. We never met again. Perhaps he somehow ended up in the Gorynych Wyrm’s bunker, or perhaps he embarked on an infinite journey on the rim of the Wheel of Fortune—I don’t know, I just don’t know. But as a matter of fact, I very quickly forgot all about him, because I decided to make myself breakfast.

I’m not a very fussy person. All I wanted was a piece of bread with a slice of “doctor’s” sausage and a cup of black coffee. I don’t understand how it happened, but what first appeared on the table was a doctor’s white coat thickly spread with butter. When the first shock of natural amazement had passed, I took a close look at the white coat. The greasy substance wasn’t actually butter and it wasn’t vegetable oil either. At this point I ought to have destroyed the white coat and started all over again. But in my heinous conceit I imagined I was God the Creator and chose the route of sequential transformations. A bottle of black liquid appeared beside the white coat, and after a brief pause the coat itself began charring at the edges. I hastily refined my conceptual formulations, laying special emphasis on the images of the mug and the meat. The bottle changed into a mug but the liquid remained unchanged; one of the coat’s sleeves bent up, extended, turned reddish, and began twitching. I broke into a sweat when I saw it was a cow’s tail. I got up out of the armchair and moved away into the corner. The change didn’t go any further than the tail, but even so it was a pretty horrendous sight. I tried again, and the tail sprouted ears of grain. I got a grip on myself, squeezed my eyes shut, and tried to picture as clearly as possible a slice of ordinary rye bread being sliced off the loaf and spread with butter from a crystal butter dish, and a round slice of sausage being set on it. Never mind the “doctor’s” sausage, it could be ordinary Poltava sausage, semismoked. I decided to wait for a while with the coffee. When I cautiously half-opened my eyes, there was large piece of rock crystal lying on the white coat, with something dark inside it. I picked up the crystal and the coat came with it, having become attached to it in some mysterious way, and inside the crystal I could make out my much-coveted sandwich, looking very much like the real thing. I groaned and mentally attempted to shatter the crystal. It became covered with a dense network of cracks, so that the sandwich was almost hidden from view. “You dunce,” I said to myself, “you’ve eaten thousands of sandwiches and you can’t even manage a half-decent visualization of one. Don’t worry, there’s no one here—no one can see you. It’s not a test or a piece of course work or an exam. Try it again.” So I did.

It would have been better if I hadn’t. My imagination somehow began running riot, and the most unexpected associations flared up and faded away in my brain. As I continued my efforts, the reception room filled up with the most peculiar objects. Many of them had clearly emerged from my subconscious, out of the teeming jungles of hereditary memory, from behind the primordial terrors long ago suppressed by higher education. They had limbs on which they moved about restlessly; they made repulsive sounds; they were obscene; they were aggressive and kept fighting all the time. I gazed around me, worn out. The scene reminded me very vividly of old engravings showing the temptations of Saint Anthony. One especially unpleasant item was an oval plate on spider’s legs with thin, coarse fur around its edge. I don’t know what it wanted from me, but it kept retreating into the far corner of the room, taking a run at me, and smashing into me full steam below the knees, until I finally trapped it against the wall with my armchair. Eventually I managed to eliminate some of the items and the rest wandered off into the corners and hid. I was left with the plate, the white coat with the crystal, and the mug with the black liquid, which had expanded to the size of a jug. I picked it up with both hands and took a sniff. I believe it was black ink for fountain pens. The dish wriggled behind my armchair, scratching at the patterned linoleum with its feet and hissing loathsomely. Things were looking very bleak.

I heard footsteps and voices in the corridor, and the door opened. Janus Polyeuctovich appeared in the doorway and, as always, said, “I see.” I was thrown into confusion. Janus Polyeuctovich walked through into his office, having liquidated my entire cabinet of curiosities on the way with a single multifunction movement of one eyebrow. He was followed by Fyodor Simeonovich, Cristóbal Junta with a thick black cigar in the corner of his mouth, a sullen, scowling Vybegallo, and a determined-looking Roman Oira-Oira. They were all greatly preoccupied and in a great hurry, so they paid no attention at all to me. The office door was left open. With a sigh of relief, I settled back into my former position, only to discover a large porcelain mug of steaming hot coffee and a plate of sandwiches waiting for me. One of the titans at least must have felt some concern for me, but I don’t know which. I tucked into my breakfast, listening to the voices coming out of the office.

“Let us begin,” said Cristóbal Junta, speaking with icy disdain, “with the fact that your ‘Nursery’—begging your pardon—is located directly below my laboratory. You have already succeeded in producing one explosion, with the result that I was obliged to wait for ten minutes while the shattered windows in my office were replaced. I strongly suspect that you will not pay any attention to arguments of a more general nature, and I am therefore basing my comments on purely egotistical considerations—”

“My dear fellow, what I do in my own lab is my own business,” Vybegallo replied in a thin falsetto. “I don’t interfere with your floor, although just recently living water’s been leaking through continuously. It’s soaked my entire ceiling, and it encourages bedbugs. But I don’t interfere with your floor, so don’t you interfere with mine.”

“Dear fellow,” rumbled Fyodor Simeonovich, “Ambrosius Ambroisovich! You must take into account the possible complications… After all, no one works with the dragon, for instance, in the building, even though we have heatproof materials, and—”

“I don’t have a dragon, I have a happy human being! A giant of the mental life! Your reasoning is rather strange, comrade Kivrin: you draw rather strange comparisons, not our kind at all! A model of an ideal man—and some déclassé fire-breathing dragon!”

“Dear fellow, the point is not that he has no social class, it’s that he could cause a fire—”

“There you go again! An ideal man could cause a fire! You haven’t bothered to think it through, Fyodor Simeonovich!”

“I was talking about the dragon.”

“And I’m talking about your incorrect orientation! You’re blurring boundaries, Fyodor Simeonovich! Doing everything possible to plaster over differences! Of course, we do eliminate contradictions between… the mental and the physical… between town and country… between man and woman, even… But we won’t allow you to plaster over an abyss, Fyodor Simeonovich!”

“What abyss? What sort of idiocy is this, Roman, tell me? I was there when you explained it to him! I am saying, Ambrosius Ambroisovich, that your experiment is dangerous, do you understand? It could do damage to the town, do you understand?”

“I understand everything, all right. And I won’t allow the ideal man to hatch out in a bare, windswept field!”

“Ambrosius Ambroisovich,” said Roman, “I can run through my arguments again. The experiment is dangerous because—”

“There you are, Roman Petrovich. I’ve been watching you for a long time and I just can’t understand how you can use expressions like that about the ideal man. Hah, he thinks the ideal man is dangerous!”

At this point Roman ran out of patience, no doubt due to his youth. “It’s not the ideal man!” he yelled. “It’s just your ultimate consumer genius!”

There was an ominous silence.

“What did you say?” Vybegallo inquired in a terrible voice. “Repeat that. What did you call my ideal man?”

“Janus Polyeuctovich,” said Fyodor Simeonovich, “this really won’t do, my friend—”

“It certainly won’t!” exclaimed Vybegallo. “Quite right, comrade Kivrin, it won’t do! We have an experiment of global scientific significance! This titan of the mental world must make his appearance here, within the walls of our Institute! It is symbolic! Comrade Oira-Oira with his pragmatic deviation from the party line is taking a narrow, utilitarian view, comrades! And comrade Junta is also adopting a lowbrow approach! Don’t you look at me like that, comrade Junta, the czar’s gendarmes didn’t frighten me, and you won’t frighten me either! Is it really in the spirit of our work, comrades, to be afraid of an experiment? Of course it is excusable for comrade Junta, as a former foreigner and employee of the Church, to go astray at times, but you, comrade Oira-Oira, and you, Fyodor Simeonovich, you are simple Russian folk!”

“Enough of your demagogy!” Fyodor Simeonovich finally exploded. “Aren’t you ashamed to spout such gibberish? What kind of simple man of the people am I? And what kind of word is that—simple? It’s your doubles that are simple!”

“I have just one thing to say,” Cristóbal Joséevich stated indifferently. “I am a simple former grand inquisitor, and I shall block all access to your autoclave until such time as I receive a guarantee that the experiment will take place on the firing range.”

“And at least five kilometers away from the town,” added Fyodor Simeonovich. “Or even ten.”

Evidently the last thing Vybegallo wanted to do was to drag all his equipment and himself all the way out to the firing range, while there was a blizzard raging and the light was too poor to film the event. “I see,” he said. “I understand. You’re fencing our science off from the people. In that case, why ten kilometers, why not ten thousand kilometers, Fyodor Simeonovich? Somewhere on the other side? Somewhere in Alaska, Cristóbal Joséevich, or wherever it is you’re from? Just tell us straight out. And we’ll note it down!” Silence fell again, and I could hear Fyodor Simeonovich, deprived of the gift of speech, breathing loudly and menacingly through his nose.

“Three hundred years ago,” Junta said in a chill voice, “for those words I would have invited you to take a walk in the country, where I would have shaken the dust off your ears and run you through.”

“Oh no, oh no,” said Vybegallo. “You’re not in Portugual now. You don’t like criticism. Three hundred years ago I wouldn’t have wasted any more time on you than all the rest of the Catholics.” The feeling of hate was choking me. Why didn’t Janus say anything? How long could this go on?

I heard footsteps in the silence, then Roman came out into the reception room, pale and scowling. With a click of his fingers, he created a double of Vybegallo. Then with obvious pleasure he grabbed the double by the chest, shook it rapidly, then grabbed its beard and yanked it passionately several times before annihilating the double and going back into the office.

“You should be thrown out, Vybegallo,” said Fyodor Simeonovich in an unexpectedly calm voice. “It turns out you are a most unpleasant character.”

“Criticism—you can’t stand criticism,” answered Vybegallo, puffing himself up.

And then at last Janus Polyeuctovich spoke. His voice was as powerful and steady as the voices of Jack London’s sea captains. “As Ambrosius has requested, the experiment will be held today at ten hundred hours. In view of the fact that the experiment will be accompanied by extensive destruction, which will come close to causing human casualties, I set the site of the experiment as a point fifteen kilometers from the town boundary, in the farthest sector of the firing range. I wish to take this opportunity to thank Roman Petrovich in advance for his resourcefulness and courage.”

For some time they were evidently all digesting this decision. There was certainly no doubt that Janus Polyeuctovich expressed his thoughts in a strange manner. But everyone willingly accepted that he knew best. There had been precedents.

“I’ll go and call for a truck,” Roman said suddenly, and he must have gone out through the wall, because he didn’t appear in the reception room again.

Fyodor Simeonovich and Junta no doubt nodded in agreement, and Vybegallo recovered his wits and cried, “A correct decision, Janus Polyeuctovich! You have given us a very timely reminder of the need to restore vigilance. As far away as possible from prying eyes. Only I shall need porters. My autoclave is heavy, you know—five tons, after all…”

“Of course,” said Janus. “Issue instructions.”

The armchairs in the office began moving, and I hurriedly finished off my coffee.

For the next hour I hung around the entrance with the other people still left in the Institute and watched the autoclave and the stereoscopic telescopes being loaded up, with the armored shields and some warm old coats just in case. The blizzard had died down and it was a clear, frosty morning.

Roman drove up a truck on caterpillar treads. The vampire Alfred brought the loaders, who were the hekatonheirs. Kottos and Gyges came willingly, chattering excitedly with all their hundred throats and rolling up their numerous sleeves on the way, but Briareos lagged behind, thrusting out his gnarled finger ahead of him and whining that it hurt, that several of his heads were feeling dizzy and he hadn’t gotten any sleep last night. Kottos took the autoclave and Gyges took all the rest. When Briareos saw that there was nothing left for him, he started giving instructions and helpful advice. He ran ahead and opened doors, now and then squatting on his haunches and glancing underneath, shouting, “That’s got it! That’s got it!” or “Farther to the right! You’re getting snagged!” Eventually his hand got trodden on and he himself got jammed between the autoclave and the wall. He burst into sobs, and Alfred led him back down to the vivarium.

There were quite a number of people squeezed into the truck. Vybegallo climbed into the driver’s seat. He was feeling very dissatisfied and kept asking everyone what time it was. The truck set off, only to return five minutes later because they realized they’d forgotten the journalists. While they were looking for them, Kottos and Gyges started a snowball fight to keep warm and broke two windows. Then Gyges got into a tussle with an early drunk, who shouted, “All of you against just one of me, eh?” They pulled Gyges off and shoved him back into the truck. He rolled his eyes and swore menacingly in ancient Hellenic. G. Pronitsatelny and B. Pitomnik appeared, still yawning and shivering with sleep, and the truck finally left.

The Institute was left empty. It was half past nine. The entire town was asleep. I’d really wanted to go off to the firing range with everyone else, but there was nothing to be done about it. I sighed and set off on my second round.

I walked along the corridors, yawning and turning lights off everywhere until I reached Vitka Korneev’s lab. Vitka took no interest in Vybegallo’s experiments. He said that people like Vybegallo ought to be summarily handed over to Junta for experimental investigation to determine whether they were lethal mutants. So Vitka hadn’t gone anywhere; he was sitting on the sofa-translator, smoking a cigarette and chatting idly with Edik Amperian. Edik was lying beside him, staring pensively at the ceiling and sucking on a fruit drop. On the table the perch was swimming around cheerfully in its bathtub.

“Happy New Year,” I said.

“Happy New Year,” Edik replied affably.

“Let’s ask Sashka, then,” Korneev suggested. “Sasha, is there such a thing as nonprotein life?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t seen it. Why?”

“What does that mean, you haven’t seen it? You’ve never seen an M-field either, but you calculate its intensity.”

“So what?” I said. I looked at the perch in the bathtub. The perch was swimming round and round, banking steeply on the tight corners, and then you could see it had been gutted. “Vitka,” I said, “so it worked after all?”

“Sasha doesn’t want to talk about nonprotein life,” said Edik. “And he’s right.”

“You can live without protein,” I said, “but how come he’s alive without any insides?”

“Well, comrade Amperian here says that life isn’t possible without protein,” said Vitka, making a jet of tobacco smoke curl into a tornado and wander around the room, avoiding objects.

“I say that life is protein,” protested Edik.

“I don’t see what the difference is,” said Vitka. “You say that if there’s no protein, there’s no life.”

“Yes.”

“Right, then what’s this?” asked Vitka. He gestured vaguely with his hand.

A repulsive creature appeared on the table beside the bathtub. It looked like a hedgehog and a spider at the same time.

Edik lifted himself up and glanced toward the table. “Ah,” he said, and lay back down again. “That’s not life. That’s nonlife. Koschei the Deathless isn’t a nonprotein being, surely?”

“Just what do you want?” asked Korneev. “Can it move? It can. Can it eat? It can. And it can reproduce too. Would you like it to reproduce now?”

Edik raised himself up again and glanced toward the table. The hedgehog-spider was marking time on the spot. It looked as though it wanted to run off in all four directions at once. “Nonlife is not life,” said Edik. “Nonlife only exists insofar as rational life exists. I can put it even more precisely: insofar as magicians exist. Nonlife is a product of the activity of magicians.”

“All right,” said Vitka. The hedgehog-spider disappeared. In its place a little Vitka Korneev appeared on the table, a precise copy of the real one, but only the size of his hand. He snapped his little fingers and created a microdouble that was even smaller. The microdouble snapped his fingers and a double the size of a fountain pen appeared, then one the size of a matchbox. Then one the size of a thimble.

“Is that enough?” asked Vitka. “Each one of them is a magician. But not one contains a molecule of protein.”

“A poor example,” Edik said regretfully. “First, in principle they are in no way different from a programmable lathe. Second, they are not products of development but of your protein-based skills. It’s hardly worth arguing about whether self-reproducing lathes with programmable controls are capable of generating evolution.”

“You don’t have a clue about evolution,” said the loutish Korneev. “Some Darwin you are! What difference does it make whether it’s a chemical process or conscious activity? Not all of your ancient ancestors are protein-based either. I’m prepared to admit that your great-great-great-great-foremother was pretty complex, but she wasn’t a protein molecule. And maybe our so-called conscious activity is just another variety of evolution. How do we know that the goal of nature is to create comrade Amperian? Maybe the goal of nature is to create nonlife with the hands of comrade Amperian? Maybe—”

“I get it, I get it. First a protovirus, then a protein, then comrade Amperian, and then the entire planet is populated with nonlife.”

“Precisely,” said Vitka.

“And then we’re all extinct because we’ve outlived our usefulness.”

“And why not?” said Vitka.

“There’s a friend of mine,” said Edik, “who claims that man is only an intermediate link required by nature to create the crown of creation: a glass of cognac with a slice of lemon.”

“Well, after all, why not?”

“Because I don’t want it,” said Edik. “Nature has its goals, and I have mine.”

“Anthropocentrist!” Vitka said in disgust.

“Yes,” Edik said proudly.

“I don’t wish to engage in discussion with anthropocentrists,” said the coarse Korneev.

“Then let’s tell jokes instead,” Edik suggested calmly, and stuck another fruit drop in his mouth.

On the table Vitka’s doubles carried on working. The smallest was already only the size of an ant. While I was listening to the dispute between the anthropocentrist and the cosmocentrist, a thought occurred to me.

“Guys,” I said with bogus vivacity, “why didn’t you go to the firing range?”

“What for?” asked Edik.

“Well, surely it’s interesting.”

“I never go to the circus,” said Edik. “Ubi nihil vales, ibi nihil velis.”[1]

“Do you mean yourself?” asked Vitka.

“No. I meant Vybegallo.”

“Guys,” I said, “I’m just crazy about the circus. And what difference does it make to you where you tell your jokes?”

“Meaning?” said Vitka.

“You cover my shift, and I’ll dash over to the firing range.”

“What do we have to do?”

“Cut the power off, put out any fires, and remind everyone about the labor regulations.”

“It’s cold,” Vitka reminded me. “It’s frosty. It’s Vybegallo.”

“I really want to go,” I said. “It’s all very mysterious.”

“Shall we let the child go out to play?” Vitka asked Edik.

Edik nodded.

“Off you go then, Privalov,” said Vitka. “It’ll cost you four hours of machine time.”

“Two,” I said quickly. I’d been expecting something of the kind.

“Five,” Vitka said cheekily.

“OK, three,” I said. “I spend all my time working for you anyway.”

“Six,” Vitka said coolly.

“Vitka,” said Edik, “you’ll grow fur in your ears.”

“Ginger,” I said gloatingly. “With a greenish tinge, maybe.”

“OK,” said Vitka, “go on the cheap, then. Two hours will do for me.”

We walked down to the director’s waiting room together. On the way the two masters struck up an incomprehensible argument about “cyclotation” or some such thing, and I had to interrupt to get them to transgress me to the firing range. They were fed up with me by then and in their haste to get rid of me they performed the transgression with such high energy that before I even had time to put on my coat I found myself flying backward into the crowd of onlookers.

At the firing range everything was ready. The audience was sheltering behind the armored shields. Vybegallo’s head protruded from a freshly dug trench, peering rakishly into a large stereoscopic telescope. Fyodor Simeonovich and Cristóbal Junta were conversing quietly in Latin, holding 40x magnification binoculars. Janus Polyeuctovich was standing indifferently at one side in his large fur coat and prodding at the snow with his cane. B. Pitomnik was squatting on his haunches beside the trench with an open notebook and fountain pen at the ready. And G. Pronitsatelny was standing behind him, hung all over with still cameras and movie cameras, rubbing his frozen cheeks, grunting, and knocking his feet together.

A full moon was sinking toward the west in a clear sky. The nebulous streaks of the northern lights appeared, glimmering between the stars, and then disappeared again. The snow gleamed white on the level land, and the large, rounded cylinder of the autoclave was clearly visible a hundred meters away from us.

Vybegallo tore himself away from the stereoscopic telescope, cleared his throat, and said, “Comrades! Comrades! What do we observe in this stereoscopic telescope? In this stereoscopic telescope, comrades, we, overwhelmed by an entire complex of feelings, rooted to the spot in anticipation, observe the protective hood beginning automatically to unscrew itself… Write, write,” he said to B. Pitomnik. “And get it right… Automatically, you know, unscrew itself. In a few minutes the ideal man will make his appearance among us—a chevalier, you know, sans peur et sans reproche. We shall have here with us our model, our symbol, our most exalted dream! And we, comrades, must greet this giant of needs and capacities in an appropriate manner, with no polemics, petty wrangling, or other outbursts. Let our dear giant see us as we really are, drawn up in closed ranks in tight formation. Let us conceal our capitalist birthmarks, comrades, those of us who still have them, and reach out our arms to our dream!”

Even with my unaided eye I saw the hood of the autoclave unscrew itself and fall soundlessly into the snow. A long jet of steam shot up out of the autoclave, all the way to the stars.

“Allow me to elucidate for the press—” Vybegallo began, when suddenly there was a hideous bellow.

The ground shifted and began to tremble. An immense cloud of snow flew up into the air. Everyone fell on top of everyone else and I was thrown over and sent rolling. The bellowing kept growing louder, and when I managed to clamber to my feet by clutching at the caterpillar tracks of the truck, I saw the edge of the horizon creeping toward me horrifyingly, like the rim of a gigantic chalice in the dead light of the moon, folding over and in on itself, the armored shields swaying menacingly, onlookers scattering and running, falling and jumping up again, covered in snow. I saw Fyodor Simeonovich and Cristóbal Junta, standing under the rainbow hoods of a defensive field, stagger back under the impact of the hurricane as they raised their hands, struggling to extend the protection over all the others, but the whirlwind ripped their defenses to shreds, and the shreds went hurtling off across the plain, like huge soap bubbles, and then burst in the starry sky. I saw the raised collar of Janus Polyeuctovich, who was standing with his back to the wind and his cane firmly braced against the denuded earth, looking at his watch. And now where the autoclave had been there was a dense, swirling cloud of steam lit with a red light from within, and the horizon was curling back in on itself tighter and tighter, and we all seemed to be on the bottom of a colossal jug.

And then suddenly, right beside the epicenter of this cosmic outrage, there was Roman with his green coat almost torn off his shoulders by the wind. He swung his arm out wide and tossed something large that glinted like a bottle into the steam, then immediately fell flat on his face, covering his head with his hands. The ugly features of a genie, contorted in frenzied rage, appeared out of the cloud, his eyes rolling in silent fury. Opening his jaws in soundless laughter, he flapped his massive, hairy ears, there was a smell of burning, the transparent walls of a magnificent palace flashed above the blizzard, quivered, and collapsed, and the genie, transformed into a long tongue of orange flame, disappeared into the sky. For a few seconds it was quiet, and then the horizon settled back down with a heavy rumbling. I was thrown high into the air, and when I came to I found I was sitting not far from the truck with my hands braced against the ground.

The snow had disappeared. All around us the ground was black. Where the autoclave had stood only a minute ago there was a large gaping crater with white smoke rising out of it. The air was filled with the smell of burning.

The onlookers began getting to their feet, everyone with grimy and contorted faces. Many had lost their voices. They were coughing, spitting, and groaning quietly. They began cleaning themselves off and discovered that some had been left in nothing but their underwear. First there was murmuring, and then shouts: “Where are my pants? Why don’t I have any pants? I was wearing pants!”; “Comrades, has anyone seen my watch?”; “And mine?”; “And mine’s missing too!”; “My platinum tooth’s gone, I only had it put in last summer…”; “Hey, and my ring’s disappeared… And my bracelet!”; “Where’s Vybegallo? This is an outrage! What does it all mean?”; “To hell with the watches and the teeth! Is everybody all right? How many of us were there?”; “But what was it that happened? Some kind of explosion… A genie… And where’s the titan of the mental world?”; “Where’s the consumer?”; “Where’s Vybegallo, come to think of it?”; “Did you see the horizon? Do you know what it was like?”; “A folding of the spatial continuum, I know about these things…”; “I’m cold in this vest, give me something…”; “Where’s that Vybegallo? Where has that fool gone to?”

The earth stirred and Vybegallo climbed out of his trench. His felt boots were gone.

“Allow me to elucidate for the press,” he said hoarsely.

But he wasn’t allowed to elucidate. Magnus Fyodorovich Redkin, who had come especially to find out at last what genuine happiness was, bounded up to him, waving his clenched fists, and howled, “You charlatan! You’ll answer for this! This circus! Where’s my cap? Where’s my fur coat? I’m going to make an official complaint about you! Where’s my cap, I said!”

“In complete conformity with the program of the project,” Vybegallo muttered, gazing around, “our dear titan—”

Fyodor Simeonovich advanced on him: “You, my dear chap, have been hiding your talent in the ground. You ought to reinforce the ranks of the Department of Defensive Magic. Your ideal people should be dropped on enemy bases. To strike terror into the aggressor.”

Vybegallo staggered back, shielding himself with the sleeve of his rough coat. Cristóbal Joséevich approached him, looked him over from head to toe, tossed a pair of soiled gloves at his feet, and walked away. Gian Giacomo, who was hastily creating the appearance of an elegant suit for himself, shouted from a distance, “This is absolutely phenomenal, signore! I have always felt a certain antipathy toward him, but I could never even imagine anything like this…”

At this point G. Pronitsatelny and B. Pitomnik finally grasped the situation. So far they had been smiling uncertainly and gaping at everyone in the hope of understanding something. But now they realized that things were not proceeding “in complete conformity” after all. G. Pronitsatelny walked up to Vybegallo with a firm stride, tapped him on the shoulder, and said in a voice of iron, “Comrade Professor, where can I get my cameras back? Three still cameras and one movie camera.”

“And my wedding ring,” added B. Pitomnik.

“Pardon,” said Vybegallo pompously. “On vous demandera quand on aura besoin de vous.[2] Wait for the explanations.”

The journalists’ courage failed them. Vybegallo turned and walked toward the crater. Roman was already standing at the top of it. “There’s everything you could possibly imagine in here,” he said from afar.

The titanic consumer was not in the crater. But everything else was, and a great deal more besides. There were cameras and movie cameras, wallets, fur coats, rings, necklaces, trousers, and a platinum tooth. Vybegallo’s felt boots were there, and so was Magnus Fyodorovich’s cap. My platinum whistle for summoning the emergency brigade was in there too. And in addition we found two Moskvich automobiles, three Volga automobiles, an iron safe with seals from the local savings bank, a large piece of roasted meat, two crates of vodka, a crate of Zhigulevskoye beer, and an iron bed frame with nickel-plated knobs.

Vybegallo pulled on his felt boots and declared with a condescending smile that now they could proceed with the discussion. “I’ll take questions,” he said. But the discussion never got going. The infuriated Magnus Fyodorovich had called the militia, and young Sergeant Kovalyov came racing up in a little jeep. We all had to give our names as witnesses. Sergeant Kovalyov walked around the crater, trying to discover any traces of the criminal. He found an immense set of false teeth that set him pondering deeply.

Their equipment having been restored to them, the journalists had suddenly begun to see things in a different light and were listening attentively to Vybegallo, who was once again spouting his demagogic trash about unlimited and diversified needs. Things were getting boring and I was freezing.

“Let’s go home,” said Roman.

“Yes, let’s,” I said. “Where did you get the genie from?”

“I signed him out of the store yesterday. For entirely different purposes.”

“But what actually happened? Did this one overeat as well?”

“No, Vybegallo’s just an idiot,” said Roman.

“Well that’s obvious,” I said. “But what caused the cataclysm?”

“The same reason,” said Roman. “I told him a thousand times: ‘You’re programming a standard super egocentric. He’ll just grab all the material valuables he can lay his hands on, then he’ll roll up space, wrap himself up like a pupa, and halt time.’ But Vybegallo just can’t grasp that a genuine mental giant is less interested in consuming than in thinking and feeling.”

“That’s all simple stuff,” he continued after we’d flown to the Institute. “It’s quite clear enough to everyone. But can you tell me how S-Janus knew that everything would turn out exactly that way, and not any other? He foresaw it all. The massive destruction, and me suddenly realizing how to put an end to the giant in the cradle.”

“That’s right,” I said. “He even expressed his gratitude to you. In advance.”

“That is strange, isn’t it?” said Roman. “It all needs thinking through very carefully.”

So we started thinking it through very carefully. It took us a long time. In fact it wasn’t until spring—and then only by chance—that we managed to figure everything out.

But that’s an entirely different story.