The Final Circle of Paradise

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I intentionally did not set the thermo-regulator, so that when the water cooled off, I returned to consciousness. The radio was still shrieking and the sparkle of white light on the walls hurt my eyes. I was thoroughly chilled and covered with goose bumps. Switching off the radio, I turned on the hot water and remained in the bath, basking in the flooding warmth and a very strange, very novel sensation of total, cosmically enormous emptiness. I expected a hangover, but there wasn’t any. I simply felt good. And there were very many memories.

Also my thoughts flowed inordinately well, as though after a long rest in the mountains.

In the middle of the last century, Olds and Miller had conducted experiments on brain stimulation. They inserted electrodes into the brains of white rats. They employed a primitive technology and a barbarous methodology, but having located pleasure centers in the rats’ brains, they succeeded in having the animals press the lever which closed the contacts to the electrodes, hour after hour, producing up to eight thousand auto-excitations per hour. These rats did not need anything in the real world. They weren’t in the slightest interested in anything but the lever. They ignored food, water, danger, females; they were indifferent to everything except the stimulation lever. Later, these experiments were tried on monkeys and produced the same results. Rumors were about that someone carried out similar experiments on criminals condemned to death…

That was a difficult time for mankind: a time of struggle against atomic destruction, a time of increasing limited wars over the entire face of the planet, a time when the majority of mankind was starving, but even so, the contemporary English writer and critic Kingsley Amis, having learned of the experiments with rats, wrote: “I cannot be sure that this frightens me more than a Berlin or a Taiwan crisis, but it should, I believe, frighten me more.” He feared much about the future, this brilliant and venomous author of New Maps of Hell, and: in particular, he foresaw the possibilities of brain stimulation for the creation of an illusory existence, just as intense as the actual, or more intense.

By the end of the century, when the first triumphs of wave psychotechnology were realized, and when psychiatric wards began to empty, amid the chorus of exulting cries of science commentators, the little brochure by Krinitsky and Milanovitch had sounded like an irritating dissonance. In its concluding section the Soviet educators wrote approximately as follows: In the overwhelming majority of countries, the education of the young exists on the level of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This ancient system of education always did and continues to posit as its objective, first of all and above all, the preparation for society of qualified but stupefied contributors to the production process. This system is not interested in all the other potentialities of the human mind, and for this reason, outside of the production process, man, en masse, remains psychologically a cave dweller, Man the Uneducated. The disuse of these potentialities causes the individuals’ inability to comprehend our complex world in all its contradictions, to correlate psychologically incompatible concepts and phenomena, to obtain pleasure from the examination of connections and laws when these do not pertain directly to the satisfaction of the most primitive social instincts. In other words, this system of education for all practical purposes does not develop in man pure imagination, untrammeled vision, and as an immediate consequence, the sense of humor.

The Uneducated Man perceives the world as some sort of essentially trivial, routine, and traditionally simple process, a world from which it is possible only by dint of great effort to extract pleasures which are, in the end, also compulsively routine and traditional. But even the unutilized potentialities remain, apparently, a hidden reality of the human brain. The problem for scientific education consists precisely in initiating the action of these possibilities, in teaching man to dream, in bringing the multiordinality and variety of psychic associations into quantitative and qualitative coordination with the multiordinality and variety of interrelationships in the world of reality. This problem is the one which, as is well known, must become the fundamental one for mankind in the coming proximate epoch. But until this problem is resolved, there remains some basis to fear that the successes of psychotechnics will lead to such methods of electrical stimulation as will endow man with an illusory existence which can exceed the real existence in intensity and variety by a considerable margin. And if one remembers that imagination allows man to be both a rational being and a sensual animal, and if one adds to that the fact that the psychic subject matter evoked by the Uneducated Man for his illusory life of splendor derives from the darkest, most primitive reflexes, then it is not hard to perceive the awful temptation hidden in such possibilities.

And therefore — slug.

It is now understandable, I thought, why they write the word “slug” on fences.

Everything is now understandable. It’s odious, that I understand… Better if I understood nothing, better if, upon regaining consciousness, I shrugged my shoulders and climbed out of the bath. Would it have been understandable to Strogoff and Einstein and Petrarch? Imagination is a priceless gift, but it must not be given an inward direction. Only outward, only outward… What a tasty worm some corrupter has dropped from his rod into this stagnant pool! And how accurately timed! Yes indeed, if I were commander of Wells’ Martians, I would not have bothered with fighter tripods, heat rays, and other such nonsense. Illusory existence… no, this is not a narcotic, a narcotic has a long way to go to approach it. In a. way this is exactly appropriate. Here. Now. To each time its own. Poppy seeds and hemp, the kingdom of sweet blurred shadows and peace — for the beggar, the worn-out, the downtrodden… But here no one wants peace, here no one is dying of hunger, here is simply a bore. A well-fed, well-heated, drunken bore. It’s not that the world is bad, it’s just plain dreary. World without prospects, world without promise. But in the end man is not a carp, he still remains a man. Yes, it is no kingdom of shades, it is indeed the real existence, without detraction, without dreary confusion. Slug is moving on the world and the world will not mind subjecting itself to it.

Suddenly, for a fraction of a moment, I felt that I was lost. And it was cozy to be destroyed. Fortunately I grew angry. Splashing out water, I climbed out of the bath, cursing and stoking my ire, pulled my shorts and shirt over my wet body, and grabbed my watch. It was three o’clock, and it could have been three in the afternoon or three the following morning or three o’clock after a hundred years. Idiot, I thought, pulling on my trousers. Softened up and let Buba go when he was ready to give me the address of the gangsters’ den. The operatives could have been there by now and we could have nabbed the whole accursed nest, the vile nest. The vermin nest.

The repulsive cloaca… And at this instant against the very depth of my consciousness, like a dancing spot of light, flicked a very calm thought. But I could not fasten upon it.

I located some Potomac in the medicine cabinet, the strongest stimulant which I could find in it. I started into the living room, but the youngsters were snoring away there, so I climbed out the window. The city was resting, of course.

Guffawing louts hung around under the street lamp on Waterway, bawling crowds surged on the brightly lit avenues. Somewhere songs were shouted, somewhere they were yelling “Shivers!”

Somewhere glass was being broken. I picked out a chauffeurless taxi, found the index for Sunshine Street, and dialed it on the control console. The car took off across town. The cab smelled sour and bottles rolled underfoot. At one intersection it almost plowed into a daisy chain of howling humanity, and at another there was the rhythmic flashing of colored lights — apparently it was possible to set up the shivers elsewhere than the plaza. They were resting, resting with all their might, these benevolent patrons from the Happy Mood Salons, these polite customs inspectors, clever barbers, tender mothers and manly fathers, innocent youths and maidens — they all exchanged their diurnal aspects for the nocturnal, they all worked hard to have fun and so that it wouldn’t be necessary to think about a thing…

The taxi braked. It was the very same place. It even seemed as though there was that same burning smell…

… Peck registered a hit on the armored carrier with the Fulminator. It spun on a single tread, hopping in the piles of broken bricks, and two fascists immediately jumped out in their unbuttoned camouflage shirts, flung a grenade apiece in our direction, and sped off into the darkness. They moved knowingly and adeptly, and it was obvious that these were not youngsters from the Royal Academy or lifers from the Golden Brigade, but genuine full-blown tank corps officers. Robert cut them down point-blank with a burst from his machine gun. The carrier was bulging with cases of beer. It struck us that we had been constantly thirsty for the last two days. Iowa Smith clambered into the carrier and began handing out the cans. Peck opened them with a knife. Robert, putting the machine gun against the carrier, punched holes into the cans with a sharp point on the armor. And the Teacher, adjusting his pince-nez, tripped on the Fulminator straps and muttered, “Wait a minute, Smith; can’t you see I’ve got my hands full?” A five-story building burned briskly at the end of the street, there was a thick smell of smoke and hot metal, and we avidly downed the warm beer, and were drenched through and through, and it was very hot and the dead officers lay on the broken and crushed bricks, with their legs identically flung out in their black pants, and the camouflage shirts bunched at their necks, and the skin still glistening with perspiration on their backs.

“They are officers,” said the Teacher. “Thank God. I can’t bear the sight of any more dead kids. Accursed politics! People forget God on account of it.”

“What god is that?” inquired Iowa Smith out of the carrier. “I’ve never heard of him.”

“Don’t jest about that, Smith,” said the Teacher. “This will all end soon, and from then on no one nowhere will be permitted to poison the souls of men with vanity.”

“And how then shall they multiply?” asked Iowa Smith. He bent over the beer again, and we could see the burn holes in his pants.

“I am talking about politics,” said the Teacher modestly.

“The fascists must be destroyed. They are beasts. But that is not enough. There are many other political parties, and there is no place for them and all their propaganda in our land.” The Teacher came from this town and lived within two blocks of our post. “Social anarchists, technocrats, communists, are of course — “

“I am a communist,” announced Iowa Smith, “at least by conviction. I am for the commune.”

The Teacher looked at him in bewilderment.

“Also I am a godless man,” added Iowa Smith. “There is no god, Teacher, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

At which point we all began to say that we were all atheists, and Peck said that on top of that he was for technocracy, while Robert announced that his father was a social anarchist and his grandfather was a social anarchist and he, Robert, probably could not escape being a social anarchist, although he didn’t know what it was all about.

“Well now, if the beer would get ice-cold, said Peck pensively, “I would at once believe in God with great delight.”

Teacher smiled embarrassedly and kept wiping his glasses.

He was a good man and we always kidded him, but he never took offense. From the very first night I observed that his courage was not great, but he never retreated without being commanded.

We were still chattering and joking when there was a thunderous crash, the burning building wall collapsed, and straight out of the swirling flames and clouds of smoke and sparks swam a Mammoth attack tank, floating a yard above the pavement. This was a new horror, the likes of which we hadn’t seen yet.

Floating out in the middle of the street, it rotated its thrower as though looking around, and then, hovering on its air cushion, began to move in our direction, screeching and clanking metallically. I regained my wits only by the time I was behind a gate post. The tank was now considerably closer, and at first I couldn’t see anyone at all, but then Iowa Smith stood up in full view out of the carrier, and propping the butt of the Fulminator against his stomach, took aim. I could see the recoil double him up. I saw a bright flash against the black brow of the tank. And then the street was filled with roar and flame, and when I raised my burned eyelids with great effort, the street was empty and contained only the tank. There was no carrier, no mounds of broken brick, no leaning kiosk by the neighboring house — there was only the tank. It was as though the monster had come awake and was spewing waterfalls of flame and the street ceased being a street and became a square.

Peck slapped me hard on the neck and I could see his glassy eyes right in front of my face, but there was no time to run toward the trench and break out the launcher.

We both picked up the mine and started running toward the tank, and all I remember is looking continually at the back of his head, and gasping for breath and counting steps, when the helmet flew off Peck’s head, and he fell, so I almost dropped the mine and fell on top of him. The tank was blown up by Robert and Teacher. I still don’t know how they did it or when; it must be they were running behind us with another mine. I sat until morning in the middle of the street holding Peck’s bandaged head on my knees and staring at the awesome treads of the tank sticking out of the asphalt lake. That same morning the whole bloody thing came to an end all at once. Zun Padana surrendered with all his staff and was shot in the street by some crazed woman when already a prisoner…

This was the very same place. I even thought I smelled smoke and burned metal. Even the kiosk stood on the corner, and it too was a bit crooked in the latest style of architecture.

The part of the street which the tank turned into a plaza remained a plaza, and on the site of the asphalt lake there was a small square in which someone was being beaten. Iowa Smith was an urban planner from Iowa, U.S.A., Robert Sventisky was a movie director form Krakow, Poland. The Teacher was a schoolteacher from this town. No one ever saw them again, even dead. And Peck was Peck, who had now become Buba. Buba lived in the same sort of cottage as I, and its front door was open. I knocked, but no one responded and no one came out to meet me. I entered the dark hall. The lights did not go on. The door to the right was locked, and I looked into the one on the left. In the living room a bearded man, in a jacket, but without pants, was sleeping on a tattered couch.

Someone’s feet stuck out from under the overturned table. There was a smell of brandy, tobacco smoke, and of something else, cloyingly sweet, like in Aunt Vaina’s room the other day. In the door to the study, I bumped into a handsome florid woman, who was not in the slightest surprised to see me.

“Good evening,” I said. Please excuse me, but does Buba live here?”

“Here,” she said, examining me out of glistening oily-looking eyes.

“Can I see him?”

“And why not — all you want.”

“Where is he?”

“Funny man. Where would he be?” she laughed.

I could guess where, but said, “In the bedroom?”

“You are warm,” she said.

“What do you mean — warm?”

“What a dunce, and sober yet! Would you like a drink?”

“No,” I said, angry. “Where is he? I need him right away.”

“Your prospects are poor,” she said gaily. “But search on, search on. As for me, I must go.”

She patted me on the cheek and went out.

The study was empty. There was a large crystal vase on the table with some kind of reddish fluid in it. Everything smelled of that nauseatingly sweet odor. The bedroom was also empty; crumpled sheets and pillows were scattered about. I approached the bathroom door. The door was full of holes, obviously made by bullets shot from the inside, judging by their shape. I hesitated, then took hold of the handle. The door was locked.

I opened it with considerable difficulty. Buba lay in the bath up to his neck in greenish water; steam rose from its surface. The radio howled and wheezed on the edge of the tub. I stood and looked at Buba. At the erstwhile cosmonaut experimenter, Peck Xenai. At the once-upon-a-time supple and well-muscled fellow, who at eighteen left his warm city by the warm sea, and went into space for the glory of man, and who at thirty returned to his country to fight the last of the fascists and to remain here forever. I was repelled to think that only an hour ago, I had looked like him. I touched his face and pulled his thin hair. He did not stir. Then I bent over him to let him sniff some Potomac, and suddenly saw that he was dead.

I knocked the radio off the edge of the tub and crushed it under heel. There was a pistol on the floor. But Peck had not shot himself; it must have been simply that someone interfered with him and he shot through the door in order to be left alone. I stuck my arms in the hot water, picked him up, and carried him to the bed. He lay there all limp and terrible, with eyes sunken under his brows. If only he were not my friend… if only he were not such a wonderful guy… if only he were not such an outstanding worker…

I called emergency aid on the phone and sat down beside Peck. I tried not to think of him. I tried to think about the business at hand. And I tried to be cold and harsh, because at the very bottom of my conscious mind, that flick of warm feeling, like a speck of light, flashed again, and this time I understood what the thought was.

By the time the doctor came, I knew what I was going to do. I would find Eli. I would pay any sum. Maybe I would beat him. If necessary, I would torture him. And he would tell me, whence this plague flows out upon the world. He would name names and addresses. He would tell me all. And we would find these men. We would locate and burn their secret laboratories, and as for themselves, we would ship them out so far that they would never return. Whoever they might be. We would catch them all, we would catch all who ever tried slug and isolate them, too. Whoever they were. Then I would demand that I, too, be isolated because I knew what slug was. Because I grasped what sort of thought I had, because I was socially dangerous, just as they all are. And all that would be only the beginning. The beginning of all beginnings, and ahead would remain that which was most important: to make it so that people would never, never, wish to know what slug was. Probably that would be outlandish. Probably many would say that it was too outlandish, too harsh, too stupid — but we would still have to do it if we wanted mankind not to stop…

The doctor, an old gray man, put down his white case, leaned over Buba, looked him over, and said indifferently, “Hopeless.”

“Call the police,” I said.

Slowly he put away his instruments.

“There is no need of that whatsoever,” he said. “There’s no criminal content, here. It is a neurostimulator…”

“Yes, I know.”

“There you are — the second case this night. They just don’t know when to stop.”

“When did it start?”

“Not very long ago… a few months.”

“Then why in hell do you keep it quiet?”

“Keep it quiet? I don’t understand. This is my sixth call tonight, young man. The second case of nervous exhaustion and four cases of brain fever. Are you a relative?”

“No.”

“Well, all right, I’ll send some men.” He stood awhile, looking at Peck. “Join some choruses,” he said. “Enter the League of Reformed Sluts…”

He was mumbling something else as he left, an old, bent, uncaring man. I covered Peck with a sheet, pulled the drape, and went out into the living room. The drunks were snoring obscenely, filling the air with alcoholic fumes, and I took them both by the heels and dragged them out in the yard, leaving them in the puddle by the fountain.

Dawn was breaking once more and the stars were dimming in the paling sky. I got into the taxi and dialed the old Subway on the console.

It was full of people. It was impossible to get through to the railing, although it seemed to me that only two or three men were filling out the forms, while the rest were just looking, stretching their necks eagerly. Neither the round-headed man nor Eli were to be seen behind the barrier, and no one knew where they could be found. Below, in the cross-passages and tunnels, drunken, shouting, half-crazed men and hysterical women were milling about. There were shots, distant and muffled and some loud and close, the concrete underfoot shook with the detonations, and a mixture of smells — gunpowder, sweat, smoke, gasoline, perfume, and whiskey — floated in the air.

Squealing and arm-waving teenagers surrounded a big fellow who dripped blood and whose pale face shone with a look of triumph. Somewhere wild beasts roared menacingly. In the halls, the audience was going wild in front of huge screens showing somebody blindfolded, firing a spray of bullets from a machine gun held against his belly, and someone else sat up to his chest in some black and heavy liquid, blue from the cold and smoking a crackling cigar, and another one with a tension-twisted face, suspended as though cast in stone in some sort of web of taut cords…

Then I found out where Eli was. I saw round-head by a dirty room full of old sandbags. He stood in the doorway, his face covered with soot, smelling of burnt gunpowder, the pupils of his eyes fully distended. Every few seconds he bent down and brushed his knees, not hearing me at all, so that I had to shake him to make him take notice of me.

“There is no Eli,” he barked. “Gone, do you understand? Nothing but smoke — get it? Twenty kilovolts, one hundred amperes, see? He didn’t leap far enough!”

He pushed me away vigorously and took off into the dirty room, jumping over the sandbags. Elbowing the curious out of the way, he got to a low metal door.

“Let me through,” he howled. “Let me at it once more. God favors a third time!”

The door shut heavily and the mob surged away, stumbling and falling over the bags. I didn’t wait for him to come out.

Or not to come out. He was no longer of any use to me. There was only Rimeyer left. There was also Vousi, but I couldn’t count on her. So there was really only Rimeyer. I was not going to wake him. I’d wait outside his room.

The sun was already up and the filthied streets were empty.

The auto-streetcleaners were coming out of their underground garages to do their job. All they knew was work; they had no potentialities to be developed, but they also had no primitive reflexes. Near the Olympic, I had to stop for a long chain of red and green men followed by a string of people enclosed in some sort of scales, who dragged their shuffling feet from one street into the next, leaving behind a stench of sweat and paint. I stood and waited for them to pass, while the sun had already lit up the huge mass of the hotel and shone gaily in the metallic face of Yurkovsky, who, as he had while alive, looked out over the heads of all men. After they passed, I went into the hotel. The clerk was dozing behind his counter.

Awaking, he smiled professionally and asked in a cheery voice, “Would you like a room?”

“No,” I replied, “I am visiting Rimeyer.”

“Rimeyer? Excuse me — room 902?”

I stopped.

“I believe so. What’s the matter?”

“I beg your pardon, but he is not in.”

“What do you mean, not in?”

“He checked out.”

“Can’t be, he has been ill. You are not mistaken? Room 902?”

“Exactly right, 902, Rimeyer. Our perpetual client. It’s an hour and a half since he left. More accurately, flew away. His friends helped him down and aboard a copter.”

“What friends?” I asked hopelessly.

“Friends, as I said, but, excuse me, they were acquaintances. There were three of them, two of whom I really don’t know. Just young athletic-looking men. But I do know Mr. Pebblebridge, he was our permanent guest. But he signed out today.”

“Pebblebridge?”

“Exactly. Lately he has been meeting Rimeyer quite often, so I concluded that they were quite well acquainted. He stayed in room 817. A fairly imposing gentleman, middle-aged, red-headed…”

“Oscar!”

“Exactly, Oscar Pebblebridge.

“That makes sense,” I said, trying to keep a hold on myself. “You say they helped him?”

“That’s right. He has been very sick and they even sent a doctor up: to him yesterday. He was still very weak and the young men held him up by his elbows, and almost carried him.”

“And the nurse? He had an attendant nurse with him?”

“Yes, there was one. But she left right after them — they let her go.”

“And what is your name?”

“Val, at your service.”

“Listen, Val,” I said. “You are sure it didn’t look like they were taking him away forcibly?”

I looked hard at him. He blinked in confusion.

“No,” he said. “Although, now that you have mentioned it…”

“All right,” I said. “Give me the key to his room and come with me.”

Clerks are, as a rule, quite savvy types. Their sense of smell, at least for certain things, is quite impressive. It was perfectly obvious that he had guessed who I was. And maybe even where I came from. He called a porter, whispered something to him, and we went up to the ninth floor.

“What currency did he pay in?” I asked.

“Who? Pebblebridge?”

“Yes.”

“I think… ah yes, marks, German marks.”

“And when did he arrive here?”

“One minute… it will come to me… sixteen marks… precisely four days ago.”

“Did he know that Rimeyer stayed with you?”

“Excuse me, but I can’t say. But the day before yesterday, they had dinner together. And yesterday, they had a long talk in the foyer. Early in the morning while everybody was still up.”

It was unusually clean and tidy in Rimeyer’s room. I walked about looking over the place. Suitcases stood in the closet. The bed was rumpled, but I could see no signs of struggle. The bathroom also was clean and tidy. Boxes of Devon were stacked on the shelf.

“What do you think — should I call the police?” asked the clerk.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “Check with your administration.”

“You understand that I am in doubt again. True, he didn’t say goodbye. But it all looked completely innocent. He could have given me a sign, and I would have understood him — we have known each other a long time. He was pleading Mr.

Pebblebridge: ‘The radio, please don’t forget the radio.’”

The radio lay under the mirror, hidden by a negligently thrown towel.

“Yes?” I said. “And what did Mr. Pebblebridge say to that?”

Mr. Pebblebridge was soothing him, saying, “Of course, of course, don’t worry…”

I took the radio, and leaving the bathroom, sat down at the desk. The clerk looked back and forth from the radio to me.

So, I thought, now he knows why I came here. I turned it an. It moaned and howled. They all know about slug. No need for Eli, nor Rimeyer; you can take anyone at random. This clerk, for instance. Right now, for instance. I turned it off and said, “Please be good enough to turn on the combo.”

He ran over to it with mincing steps, turned it on, and eyed me questioningly.

“Leave it on that station. A little softer. Thank you.”

“So you don’t advise me to call the police?”

“As you wish.”

“It seemed you had something quite definite in mind when you questioned me.”

“It only seemed so,” I said coldly. “It’s just that I dislike Mr. Pebblebridge. But that does not concern you.”

The clerk bowed.

“I’ll stay here for a while, Val,” I said. “I have a notion that this Mr. Pebblebridge will be back. It won’t be necessary to announce that I am here. In the meantime, you are free to go.”

“Yes, sir,” he said.

When he left, I rang up the service bureau and dictated a telegram; “Have found the meaning of life but am lonely brother departed unexpectedly come at once Ivan.” Then I turned on the radio again, and again it howled and screeched. I took off the back and pulled out the local oscillator-mixer. It was no mixer. It was a slug. A beautiful precision subassembly, of obviously mass-produced derivation, and the more I looked at it, the more it seemed that somewhere, sometime, long before my arrival here, and more than once, I had already seen these components in some very familiar device. I attempted to recollect where I had seen them, but instead, I remembered the room clerk and his face with a weak smile and his understanding, commiserating eyes. They are all infected. No, they hadn’t tried slug — heaven forbid! They hadn’t even seen one! It is so indecent! It is the worst of the worst! Not so loud, my dear, how can you say that in front of the boy… but I’ve been told it’s something out of this world… Me?… How can you think that, you must have a low opinion of me after all… I don’t know, they say over at the Oasis, Buba has it, but as for myself — I don’t know… And why not? I am a moderate man — if I feel something is not right, I’ll stop…

Let me have five packets of Devon, we have made up a fishing party (hee, hee!). Fifty thousand people. And their friends in other towns. And a hundred thousand tourists every year. The problem is not with the gang. That’s the least of our worries, for what does it take to scatter them? The problem is that they are all ready, all eager, and there is not the slightest prospect of the possibility to prove to them that it is terribly frightening, that it is the end, that it is the last debasement.

I clasped the slug in my fist, propped up my head on it, and stared at Rimeyer’s dress jacket with the ribbon bar on it, hanging on the back of the chair. Just like me, he must have sat in this chair a few months ago, and also held the slug and radio for the second time, and the same warm flick of desire wandered through the depths of his consciousness: there is nothing to worry about, because now there is light in any darkness, sweetness in any grief, joy in any pain…

…There, there, said Rimeyer. Now you have got it. You just have to be honest with yourself. It is a little shameful at first, and then you begin to understand how much time you have lost for nothing…

…Rimeyer, I said, I wasted time not for myself. This cannot be done, it simply cannot, it is destruction for everyone, you can’t replace life with dreams…

…Zhilin, said Rimeyer, when man does something, it is always for himself. There may be absolute egotists in this world, but perfect altruists are just impossible. If you are thinking of death in a bathtub, then, in the first place, we are all mortal, and in the second place, if science gave us slug, it will see to it that it will be rendered harmless. And in the meantime, all that is required is moderation. And don’t talk to me of the substitution of reality with dreams. You are no novice, you know perfectly well that these dreams are also part of reality. They constitute an entire world. Why do you then call this acquisition ruin?…

…Rimeyer, I said, because this world is still illusory, it’s all within you, not outside of you, and everything you do in it remains in yourself. It is the opposite of the real world, it is antagonistic to it. People who escape into this illusory world cease to exist in the real world. They become as dead. And when everyone enters the illusory world — and you know it could end thus — the history of man will terminate…

…Zhilin, said Rimeyer, history is the history of people. Every man wants to live a life which has not been in vain, and slug gives you such a life… Yes, I know that you consider your life as not having been in vain without slug, but, admit it, you have never lived so luminously, so fully as you have today in the tub. You are a bit ashamed to recollect it, and you wouldn’t risk recounting it to others. Don’t. They have their life, you have yours…

…Rimeyer, I said, all that is true. But the past! Space, schools, the struggle with fascists, gangsters — is all that for naught? Forty years for nothing? And the others — they did it all for nothing, too?…

…Zhilin, said Rimeyer, nothing is for nothing in history. Some fought and did not live long enough to have slug. You fought and lived long enough…

…Rimeyer, I said, I fear for mankind. This is really the end. It’s the end of man interacting with nature, the end of the interplay of man with society, the end of liaisons among individuals, the end of progress, Rimeyer. All these billions of people submerged in hot water and in themselves… only in themselves…

… Zhilin, said Rimeyer, it’s frightening because it’s unfamiliar. And as for progress — it will come to an end only for the real society, only for the real progress. But each separate man will lose nothing, he will only gain, since his world will become infinitely brighter, his ties with nature, illusory though they may be, will become more multifaceted; and ties with society, also illusory but not so known to him, will become more powerful and fruitful. And you don’t have to mourn the end of progress. You do know that everything comes to an end. So now comes the end of progress in the objective world. Heretofore, we didn’t know how if, would end, But we know now. We hadn’t had time to realize all the potential intensity of objective existence, it could be that we would have reached such knowledge in a few hundred years, but now it has been put in our grasp. Slug brings a gift of understanding of our remotest ancestors which you cannot ever have in real life. You are simply the prisoner of an obsolete ideal, but be logical, the ideal which slug offers you is just as beautiful. Hadn’t you always dreamed of man with the greatest scope of fantasy and gigantic imagination…

…Rimeyer, I replied, if you only knew how tired I am of arguing. All my life I have argued with myself and with others.

I have always loved to argue, because otherwise life is not worth living. But I am tired right now and don’t wish to argue over slug, of all things…

…Then go on, Ivan, said Rimeyer…

I inserted the slug into the radio. As he had then, I got up. As he did then, I was past thought, past belonging in this world, but I still heard him say: don’t forget to lock the door tight so that you won’t be disturbed.

And then I sat down…So that’s the way of it, Rimeyer! said I. So that’s how it went. You surrendered. You closed the door tight. And then you sent lying reports to your friends that there wasn’t any slug. And then again, after hesitating but a moment, you sent me to my death so that I wouldn’t disturb you. Your ideal, Rimeyer, is offal. If man has to perform what is base in the name of an ideal, then the worth of such ideal is — less than dross…

I glanced at the watch and shoved the radio in my pocket.

I was past waiting for Oscar. I was hungry. And beyond that I had the feeling that for once I had done something useful in this town. I left my phone number with the room clerk — in case Oscar or Rimeyer should return — and went out onto the plaza. I did not believe that Rimeyer would come back or even that I would ever see him again, but Oscar could hold to his promise, though more likely, I would have to seek him out. And probably not alone. And probably not here.