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"If Nikodimov can prove his hypothesis," Galya finally admitted, "then
it will turn physics upside down. It will be the greatest upset that ever
occurred in our knowledge of the world. If he proves it, of course," she
added stubbornly. "The experiment on Sergei is still not proof."
"But I'm interested in something else," said Klenov thoughtfully. "If
you accept the truth of the hypothesis a priori, another question arises
that's of no less importance: how did life develop on every space phase? Why
are they so similar? I'm not referring to the physical but their social
aspect. Why is it that each transformed Moscow of Sergei's is a present-day,
post-war Moscow which is capital of the Soviet Union and not tsarist Russia?
Look, if Nikodimov's hypothesis is proved, do you realize what they will ask
about in the West, before anything else? Politicians, historians, church
dignitaries and journalists will ask: is it obligatory that all worlds have
a similar social structure? Is it absolutely certain that their historical
development has been identical?"
"Nikodimov spoke of still other worlds from different currents of time,
perhaps even with counter-times. In that case, one might hit on Neanderthal
man or on the first of Earth's stellar flights."
"That isn't my point," Klenov said impatiently. "However brilliant
Nikodimov and Zargaryan's discovery may be, it does not reduce the
importance of the question of social systems in every world. According to
Marxism, all is clear: the physical similarity presupposes a social
similarity. Everywhere the development of productive forces determines the
character of production relations. But can you imagine the song that will be
sung by those adherents of the cults of personality and chance? The
barbarians might not have reached Rome, and the Tatars, Kalka. Washington
might have lost the war of American independence, and Napoleon might have
won at Waterloo. Luther might not have become head of the Reformation, and
Einstein might not have discovered the theory of relativity. Bradbury
carried this dependence of historical development on blind chance to the
absurd. A traveller in time accidentally kills a butterfly in the Jurassic
period, and it leads to a change in the American presidential election
campaign: in place of a progressive and radical candidate, they elect a
fascist and obscurantist as President. We know, of course, that Gold-water
wouldn't have been elected any way even if all the dinosaurs of the Jurassic
period had been killed. And we know that if Napoleon had won at Waterloo, he
would probably have been defeated somewhere near Liege. And somebody else
would have headed the Reformation instead of Luther; and if Einstein hadn't
discovered the theory of relativity, someone else would have done so. Even
not rising to the heights of historical materialism, Belinsky wrote more
than a hundred years ago that blind chance did not rule either in nature or
in history, but strict, irrevocable, inner necessity did."
Klenov spoke with that professional erudition of a lecturer, which so
annoyed me at editorial meetings, and I cut in purely in the spirit of
contradiction.
"Well, but just imagine if there had never been a Hitler in some
neighbouring world? He was never born. Would there have been war or not?"
"Can't you answer that yourself? And Goering, Hess, Goebbels, Rommel,
and lastly Strasser? The Krupps would have passed the conductor's baton to
somebody. And I visualize you as a great delegate with a mission, Sergei.
Don't laugh - truly great. Not only in helping to prove Nikodimov's
hypothesis, but in the fact that you will be strengthening the position of
the Marxist conception of history. That everywhere and always, under similar
conditions of life on our planet, no matter what changes, phases or whatever
you call them take place, the class struggle always determined and still
determines social development until it becomes a classless society."
At this moment Zargaryan appeared with a bouquet of chrysanthemums. In
ten minutes he won over Olga and Galya, and Klenov's professional erudition
changed into the respectful attention of a college freshman.
Zargaryan gathered up all the threads of the talk at once, spoke of the
proposed Nobel prize winners, of his recent trip to London, interchanged
remarks with Galya about the future of laser technology. With Olga he
discussed the role of hypnosis in paediatrics. Then he praised Klenov's
article in the journal Science and Life. But he purposely, or so it seemed
to me, diverted the conversation from my part in the scientific experiment.
However, when it struck eleven he caught my perplexed glance and said
with his characteristic smile: "I know, d'you see, what you're thinking. Why
is Zargaryan silent about the experiment? Am I right? Actually, old chap, I
didn't want to leave right away, because further conversation will be
impossible after I've said my say. Intriguing?" he laughed. "It's simple
enough, really. You see, tomorrow we intend making a new experiment, and we
are asking you to take part."
"I'm ready," I said, repeating what I had already told him in the
restaurant.
"Don't be in a hurry," Zargaryan stopped me, and now there was a note
of seriousness in his voice which I had noticed once before, and agitation
as well. "First, the new experiment is to be much longer than the previous
one. Maybe it will last several hours, perhaps even twenty-four.... Second,
the test will cover more remote phases. I say 'remote' only to keep it
within the bounds of comprehension. The point is hardly a matter of
distances, the more so that we cannot determine them; and besides, what we
mean by distances is of no importance for the activities of the biocurrents.
The diffusion of the radiation is practically instantaneous and does not
depend either on the spatial arrangement of the phase or on the sign of the
field. But I must honestly warn you that we do not know the degree of risk
involved."
"So it's dangerous?" asked Galya.
Olga asked no questions, though the pupils of her eyes seemed a shade
larger.
"I cannot answer that definitely." Apparently Zargaryan had no desire
to conceal anything from me. "If the aiming is not accurate enough, our
converter might lose control of the superposed biofield. What the results
would be to the test-subject, we don't know. Now imagine something else: in
this world he is unconscious, in the other his conscious mind has been
imparted to a certain person ... let's say somebody travelling by plane.
What would happen to Sergei's conscious mind if there were a crash, we don't
know. Would the converter manage to switch over the biofield in time, or
would two people die, one in that world and one in this?"
Zargaryan was answered with silence. He stood up, and resumed.
"I've already told you that after my explanation the small talk would
end. You are free, Sergei, to make your decision. I'll come for you in the
morning and hear it with full respect even if it is a refusal."
We saw him out in silence, returned to the table in silence, and the
conversation was not resumed for a long time.
Finally, Galya asked me point-blank: "You're waiting for my advice, I
suppose?"
I silently shrugged my shoulders. What did it matter whether she
advised me or not?
"I already started believing in this delirium," she continued. "Just
imagine - I believed it. And if I were suitable for the test and had
received the offer you have... I should not think twice about my answer. But
as to advice.... Well, that's Olga's job."
"I won't talk you out of it, Sergei," said Olga. "Decide for yourself."
I still kept silent, not taking my eyes off my empty glass. I waited to
hear what Klenov would say.
"You know, it would be interesting to know..." he suddenly began, not
speaking to anyone in particular. "That is, I wonder if Gagarin thought it
over when they offered him the chance to make the first flight into space?"
It is not enough to have this
globe, or a certain time - I will
have thousands of globes, and all time.
Walt Whitman, Poem of Joys
But, looking into the future,
As through a mirage-like prism,
What a supreme paradise I desire-
Out of one eye to glimpse communism.
Ilya Selvinsky, Sonnet
Zargaryan came for me in the morning before Olga left for work. We had
both got up early, as we always do when one of us is leaving on a holiday or
a business trip. But the feeling of the abnormality and strangeness of this
morning, compared to other such moments in the past, cast a darkness over
the window, the sky, and the spirit. We purposely didn't speak of what lay
ahead but conversed as usual in little more than monosyllables. I kept
looking for my missing toothbrush and Olga couldn't get the water to run at
the proper temperature.
"Now it's hot, now it's cold. You try the taps."
I tried my hand at it, and got nowhere.
"Are you nervous?"
"Not a bit."
"But I'm afraid."
"Wasted emotion. Nothing happened before. T sat a couple of hours in
the chair, and that's all there was to it. Fell asleep and woke up. Didn't
even have a headache afterwards."
"But you know this time it won't be for two hours. Maybe ten, maybe
twenty-four. A long experiment. I can't even understand how they could
permit it."
"If it's permitted, then everything's okay. You needn't have any
doubts."
"But I do have doubts." Her voice rang a bit shrilly. "First, I doubt
it as a doctor. Twenty-four hours without consciousness. Without the
supervision of a doctor...."
"Why without a doctor?" I interrupted. "Outside of his speciality,
Zargaryan has had medical training. Besides, there's lots of pick-ups to
keep everything under control - pressure, heart and breathing. What else do
you want?" Her eyes shone suspiciously close to tears. "And if you don't
return...." "From where?"
"Do you know from whore? You haven't the faintest idea. Some sort of
transferred biofield. Worlds. A wandering conscious mind. It's terrifying to
think of."
"Then don't think of it. People fly in aeroplanes. It's also
terrifying, but they do it. And nobody worries over it."
Her lips trembled, the towel slipped from her hand to the floor. I was
glad when the telephone rang and I could avoid a recurrence of the dangerous
topic.
It was Galya. She wanted lo come over, but was afraid she mightn't make
it in time." "Zargaryan isn't there yet?"
"Not so far. We're waiting." "How's your mood?" "Not bad. Olga's
crying." "How silly. In her place I'd be glad - her man off on a feat of
glory."
"Let's not overdo it, Galya." "Why not? That's how they'll see it when
it's all over. No other way. A leap into the future. The very thought of
such a chance is enough to make your head swim."
"Why into the future?" I laughed, wanting to tease her. "What if it's
into some Jurassic period? With pterodactyls!"
"Don't talk nonsense," interrupted Galya. Doubting Thomas has now
turned fanatic. "Don't you dare even think it."
"Man proposes, God disposes. Well, let's say chance rather than God."
"What did you learn in the faculty of journalism? A fine Marxist I've
found!"
"Look, baby," I prayed. "Don't force me to repent of my political
mistakes right now. I'll do that when I come back."
She laughed, as if we were talking about a trip to the cottage.
"Well, good luck, you hear? And bring me back a souvenir."
"It would be interesting to know what souvenir I could bring her," I
told Klenov who had joined Olga and I for morning coffee. "A
pterodactyl-claw or a dinosaur-tooth?"
I was touched. He hadn't been too lazy to come to see me off on my
rather unusual journey, and had even managed to calm Olga down.
The tears had gone from her eyes.
"To get a gander at dinosaurs wouldn't be bad," observed Klenov
philosophically. "You could organize some kind of safari in time. That would
make a big noise."
I sighed.
"There'll be no noise, Klenov. And no safari. I'll meet you somewhere
in an adjacent bit of life. We'll go to the cinema and see Child of
Montparnasse. We'll drink palinka again. Or Hungarian tsuika."
"You have no imagination," said Klenov angrily. "They won't send you
into an adjacent little world. Remember what Zargaryan said? It's quite
possible there are worlds moving in some other course of time. Let's suppose
their time is behind ours. But not by a million years! What if it's a half
century behind? You look around and on the streets it's October 1917."
"And if it's a hundred years ago?"
"That wouldn't be bad either. You'll go to work at the Sovremennik
magazine ( The Contemporary.-Tr.) Maybe they put out a Sovremennik with the
same trend? Probably. And there you 'll see Chernyshevsky sitting at a desk.
Interesting, right? You're not drooling at the mouth?"
"Drooling."
We both laughed, and loudly enough to upset Olga.
"I want to cry, and they laugh!"
"We have a shortage of sodium chloride in our bodies," said Klenov. "So
our tear ducts have dried up. And, by the way, Olga, tears from a hero's
wife are contra-indicated. Better have a drink of cognac. What if you wake
up in the future and find there's a dry law?"
I had to refuse the cognac, because Zargaryan was already ringing at
the front door. He looked severe and official, and never dropped a word all
the way to the institute. I was silent, too. Only when he had parked his
Volga car alongside its twins in the institute's parking lot, and we were
going up the granite steps to the door, did bespeak. There was no smile, no
funny accent, none of the usual whimsy that accompanied his sly remarks or a
laugh.
"Don't think I'm afraid or disturbed. It's Nikodimov who figures it is
possible that a certain per cent of risk is involved. The problem, he says,
is not yet mastered, too few experiments. And I think that everything is in
our hands, that it's a hundred per cent ours. I'm sure of success.
Absolutely!" The last he cried so that it echoed through the near-by grove
of trees. "And I'm silent because one is sparing of words before the battle.
Got that, Sergei?"
"Absolutely, Ruben."
We shook hands on it, and were silent till we reached the laboratory.
Nothing had changed since my last visit. There was the same soft-toned
plastic, the golden gleaming copper, shining nickel, the smoke-coloured
glass panels reminiscent of television screens only several times larger. My
chair stood in its usual place in the network of coloured lead-in wires,
both thick and thin, some as tiny as spider-webs. The spider was in ambush
awaiting his victim. But the soft, comfortable chair, lit from the window by
an unexpectedly appearing sun, did not incite alarm or suspicion. It
reminded me more of a heart set in a nest of blood vessels. As yet the heart
did not beat: I was not sitting there.
Nikodimov met me in his stiffly starched white gown, and with a smile
that was just as stiff and starched.
"I should be glad, of course, only glad that you've agreed to
participate in this risky experiment," he told me after an exchange of
friendly compliments. "For me, as a scientist, this may be the final and
decisive step toward my goal. But I must ask you to consider your decision
once more, weigh all the pros and cons before we begin this particular
test."
"But it's already decided," I said.
"Wait. Think it over. What urges you to agree to it? Curiosity? To tell
the truth, that's not a very admirable stimulus."
"And scientific interest?"
"You have none."
"What drives journalists to go, let us say, to the Antarctic or into
the jungles?" I parried. "They don't have scientific interests either."
"So, it's inquisitiveness. I agree. And a love for sensation, which all
reporters have in common to some degree, even in the best sense of the word.
Stanley was chasing sensation when he went to Africa to search for the lost
Livingston, and as a result won equal fame. Perhaps that's what is turning
your head, I don't know. I can imagine how Ruben talked with you," laughed
Nikodimov, continuing in Zargaryan's voice: '"Yes, d'you see, it's a daring
feat - one never yet seen in the annals of science! The glory of a
globetrotter in time, equal to that of the first man to fly into space!' I'm
sure he called it just that, didn't he? Globetrotter in time?"
I glanced sidewise at Zargaryan who was listening, not at all put out
and even smiling. Nikodimov caught my glance.
"Of course he said it! That's what I thought. A barrel of honey. And I
will now add to it my spoonful of tar. I cannot, my dear fellow, promise you
either the fame of a time-globetrotter or a ceremonial meeting on the Red
Square. I don't even promise there'll be a special article in your honour.
In the best case, you will return home with a fund of sharp sensations, and
with the knowledge that your part in the experiment has been of some use to
science."
"And is that so little?" I asked.
"It depends. You see, only we three will know of your valuable
contribution. Your oral testimonial is still not proof where science is
concerned. You will always find sceptics who might declare it a hoax, arid
they probably will. The same goes for apparatus which could describe and
reproduce the visual images arising in your conscious mind - to our sorrow,
we have nothing like that as yet."
"It's possible to obtain another form of evidence," put in Zargaryan.
Nikodimov pondered. I impatiently awaited his answer. What evidence did
Zargaryan have in mind? All the material evidence of my being in adjacent
worlds remained there: the probe I had dropped during the operation, my note
on the hospital writing pad, and Mikhail's split lip. I had brought nothing
back but memories.
"Now I'll explain to you what Ruben means," pronounced Nikodimov
slowly, as if to stress each word he said. "He has in mind the possibility
of your penetrating a world far ahead of us in time and development. If such
a possibility happens and you can make use of it, then your conscious mind
might take images of not merely visual objects but abstract ones -
mathematical ones, let us say. For example, the formula of a physical law or
an equation expressing in conventional mathematical symbols something as yet
unknown to us in cognition of the surrounding world. But all this is pure
supposition, only theory. No better than telling fortunes from
tea-leaves.... We shall try to transmit your conscious mind somewhere
farther than the immediate worlds bordering our three-dimensional one, but
we cannot even tell you what this 'farther' means. Distance in these
measurements is not counted in microns, or kilometres or even par-sees. Some
other system of measuring distance acts here, and so far we have no
knowledge of it. But most important, we don't know what you risk by
undergoing this experiment. Before, we did not lose sight of your energy
field, but is there any guarantee we won't lose it this time? In a word, I
won't at all be offended if you say 'let's put off the test'."
I smiled. Now Nikodimov awaited an answer. Not one wrinkle on his face
deepened, not one hair of his long, poetical locks stirred, not one crease
in his gown moved. How different he was from Zargaryan! Here was true prose
and poetry, ice and flame. And the flame behind me was already flaring up -
the chair fell over as Zargaryan stood up.
"Well then, let's put off..." I spoke slowly, deliberately, slyly
glancing at Nikodimov. "Let's put off ... all this talk about risk till the
experiment's over."
All that happened afterwards was condensed into a few minutes, perhaps
seconds.... I don't remember. The chair, the helmet, the pick-ups, the
darkness, the scraps of conversation about scales, visuality, the certain
ciphers accompanied by familiar Greek letters - perhaps pi or psi - and
finally Boundlessness, blackness, and the coloured mist swirling upward.
The swirling stopped, the mist acquired a transparency and dullish grey
shade resembling a spring rather than a winter morning. I could see a
cluttered yard all in puddles that were sheeted with bluish ice, also the
dirty-red crust on the melting snow by a fence and a dark green van right
beside me. The back doors were wide open.
A heavy blow on the back knocked me to the ground. I fell into a
puddle, the ice crackled, and the left sleeve of my quilted jacket was wet
through.
"Aufstehen!" came a cry from behind.
I got up with difficulty, hardly keeping my legs, and before I could
look behind me another blow on the spine threw me against the van.
Somebody's hand reached out from its dark maw, caught me and pulled me
inside. The doors were immediately clapped to, and the heavy bolts clanged.
Then I heard the purr of a motor, the metallic creaking of the van, and
the crunch of ice under its wheels. As it turned sharply, I fell over and
hit my head on a bench. I groaned.
And again the familiar hands reached for me, raised me and sat me on
the bench. In the semi-darkness around us, I couldn't make out the face of
the man sitting opposite.
"Hold on to the bench," he warned. "The road here is God knows what."
"Where are we?" I asked, in what seemed to me to be a strange voice,
hollow and hoarse.
"Perfectly clear where. In the death car." My neighbour sniffed the
air. "No-o-o.... It seems there's no smell. So they're taking us to
confession."
"Where are we?" I asked again. "What town?"
"Kolpinsk. Regional centre before. Look out the small window - and
you'll see."
I stretched up toward the little square opening, unpaned, with three
iron bars across it. Past the small opening flashed by a water-pump, an
entrance path to the gap in a fence, one-storey squat cottages, a sign on a
second-hand store printed in black on a yellow matting, then naked poplars
by the curb of a muddy pavement.
The deserted little street stretched out, long and unsightly. The rare
passers-by, it seemed, were in no hurry.
"You'll have to excuse me," I told my companion, "apparently
something's happened to my memory."
"Not only the memory suffers here - they kill the soul," he replied
briskly.
"I can't remember a thing. What year it is, or the month, the day....
Don't be afraid, I'm not crazy."
"I'm not afraid of anything now. Besides, it's easier dealing with a
lunatic than a Judas. This is a hard year - forty-three. It's either the
very end of January or the beginning of February. There's no use remembering
what day it is, it's all one for we won't live till morning. What's your
cell number?"
"I don't know," I answered.
"Six, probably. Yesterday they brought in a pilot that was shot down.
Right from the town hospital. Patched him up and brought him in. Was that
you?"
I was silent. Now I remembered how it was, or rather how it might have
been. In January of forty-three, I was flying home from the Skripkin pine
forest in the partisan area north-west of the Dnieper. Somewhere near
Kolpinsk we had run into heavy flak from a German anti-aircraft battery. The
plane broke out of it almost by a miracle and made home base safely. But in
this phase of space-time, we probably hadn't got through. And it was
probably the wounded passenger who was taken to the town hospital and not
the pilot. From the hospital to cell six, and from there to 'confession' as
my companion called it. What he meant needed no exact definition.
We didn't talk any more, and only when the van stopped and the bolts
clattered on the doors did he whisper something in my ear, but what it was I
couldn't make out and never managed to ask. He had already jumped onto the
road and, pushing aside the convoy, helped me down. A blow on the back from
a gun stock threw him toward the entrance. I followed him, and the German
soldiers hurried along beside us screaming shrilly: "Schnell! Schnell!"
We were separated on the ground floor. My companion - I never even got
a look at his face - was led off somewhere down the corridor. And I was
dragged upstairs to the first floor, literally dragged, because every kick
was for me a knockdown. So it went on till I got to a room with blue
wallpaper where a fat blond officer sat behind a desk, his boyish blue eyes
matching the paper. His black SS-jacket fitted him like a schoolboy's
uniform, and he himself was like the plump schoolboy pictured in German
confectionery shop advertisements.
"You have the right to sit down. Right here. Here," he repeated in
German and pointed at a plush chair by the table. The chair must have been
requisitioned from the local town theatre. My legs were shaking, my head
spinning, and I sat down without concealing my relief which was at once
noticed.
"You are completely recovered. Very good.
And now tell the truth. Wahrheit!" said the boyish SS-man, and fell
into an expectant silence.
I was silent too. I had no fear. I was saved from that by the feeling
that all this was illusory; I felt remote from all that was going on. This
wasn't, you see, happening in my life and not to me; this puny, emaciated
body in a dirty quilted jacket and broken army boots did not belong to me
but to another Sergei Gromov living in another time and space. Thus I
comforted myself with the help of physics and logic, but physiology
painfully refuted them with every breath I drew, with every movement I made.
For now this body was mine and it had to take what was destined for it. I
asked myself in alarm whether I had, in the long run, enough strength and
will, enough endurance, courage and inner pride.
In the war days it had been easier. We were all prepared for such a
contingency by all the conditions of the war years, by the way of life, by
the spirit of the times - severe and hard as they were. I was ready then,
and probably so was the Sergei Gromov whose place I now occupied in this
room. But was I ready now? I felt chilled for an instant and, I'm afraid to
confess it, terribly frightened.
"You understand me?" asked the SS-man.
"Perfectly," I nodded.
"Then talk. Wieviel Soldaten hat er? Stolbikov? What detachment?
Soldier, partisan? Number of men?"
"I don't know," I said.
I was not lying. I honestly didn't know the strength of all partisan
formations under Stolbikov's command. It continually changed. Now a number
of groups would go scouting deep in the rear and not return for weeks, now a
detachment would be reinforced by formations operating in neighbouring
sections. Besides, my Stolbikov had one complement of men, but the Stolbikov
living in this space-time might have another, either more or less. If I told
all I knew, it would be interesting to know whether it would coincide with
the reality the SS-man was interested in. Judging by his insignia, he was an
Obersturmfuhrer.
"Tell the truth," he repeated severely. "It's better that way. Wahrheit
ist besser."
"But I honestly don't know."
His blue eyes became noticeably blood-shot.
"Where are your documents? Here," he cried, and threw my wallet on the
desk. I wasn't sure it was mine, but I presumed it was. "We know everything.
Alles."
"If you already know, then why ask?" I said quietly.
Before he could answer, the field-telephone buzzed on the desk. With an
agility that surprised me, he grabbed the receiver and stood at attention.
His face was transformed into a mixture of servility and delight. He kept
repeating 'Ja, Ja', in German and clicked his heels. Then he put my wallet
into a drawer and pushed a buzzer.
"They will take you away now," he told me in bad Russian. "Keine Zeit.
Three hours in a cell."
He indicated where with his thumb.
"Think, remember, and we'll talk some more. Otherwise, it will be the
worse for you. Zehr schlecht."
I was taken into the cellar and pushed into a barn-like room with no
window. I felt the walls and the floor. The first were of stone, sticky with
mould, and the Door was covered with wet mud. My legs would no longer
support me, but I did not risk lying down. I sat against the wall on my
hands, just the same it was drier.
The reprieve I got aroused the hope of a safe way out. The experiment
might end, and the lucky Hyde abandon the Jekyll buried here in the mud. But
I was immediately ashamed of my thoughts.... Both Galya and Klenov would
have called me a coward without blinking an eye. Zargaryan and Nikodimov
wouldn't have said it, but would have thought it. Maybe, somewhere in the
depths of her soul, Olga would as well. Thank goodness I had thought of this
in time. I began to think of a lot of things. About the fact that now I had
to answer for two - for him and me. How he would have behaved, I could
guess: I might even say I knew. You see, he was myself, the same particle of
material in one of the forms of its existence beyond our three-dimensional
world. Chance might change his lot, but not his character, not his line of
conduct. So it was all clear: I had no choice, not even the right to desert
with the help of Nikodimov's wizardry. If I were returned now, I would beg
Nikodimov to send me back to this hole.
I must have fallen asleep there, despite the damp and cold, because
dreams overtook me. His dreams. A bearded Stolbikov in a sheepskin hat, a
middle-aged woman in a padded jacket with a tommy-gun slung from her
shoulder who was slicing or shredding a round loaf of rye bread. Naked
children were on the bank of pond covered with green duckweed. I immediately
recognized the pond with the crooked pines on the shore, could see the road
between steep clay cliffs leading down to it. It was my dream, long
remembered and always incomprehensible. Now I knew where it came from.
The dreams shortened my reprieve. Again the boyish SS-man demanded my
presence. This time he was not smiling.
"Well?" he shot out. "Are we going to talk?"
"No," I said.
"Schade," he drawled. "A pity. Put your hand on the table. Your fingers
so." He snowed me how with his puffy palm and wide-spread sausage-like
fingers.
I obeyed. Not without fear, I admit; but going to the dentist is also
terrifying at times.
Fatty pulled from beneath the table a piece of wood with a handle,
something like an ordinary joiner's wooden hammer, and cried:
"Ruig!"
The wooden hammer smashed deliberately down on my little finger. The
bone crunched and a savage pain shot up my arm to the shoulder. I could
barely restrain a scream.
"Ve-ry good?" he asked, stressing the syllables with satisfaction.
"Will you talk or not?"
"No," I repeated.
Again the hammer was raised, but I involuntarily pulled back my hand.
Fatty laughed.
"You can save your hand, but not your face," he said, and instantly
slashed me across the face.
I lost consciousness, but came to almost at once. Somewhere close by I
heard Nikodimov and Zargaryan talking.
"There's no field."
"None at all?"
"No."
"Try another screen."
"The same thing."
"And if we try more power?"
Silence. Then Zargaryan answered: "Got it. But very weak visuality.
Maybe he's sleeping?"
"No. We registered the activity of the hypno-genetic system a half hour
ago. Then he woke up."
"And now?"
"I can't see it."
"I'll give more power."
I couldn't interfere. I could not feel my body. Where was it? In the
lab chair or the torture chamber?
"Got the field," said Zargaryan.
I opened my eyes, or rather I partly opened them. Even the slightest
movement of my eyelids aroused a sharp, piercing agony. Something warm and
salty trickled from my lips. My hand seemed to be burning over a fire.
The whole room, from floor to ceiling, seemed full of turbid, quivering
water through which I could dimly make out two figures in black uniforms.
One was my fat man, the other looked slender and more symmetrically built.
They were talking abruptly and fast, in German. My German is poor, so I
didn't listen. But I thought the conversation was about me. First I heard
Stolbikov's name mentioned and then mine.
"Sergei Gromov?" repeated the thin one in surprise, and said something
to the other.
Then he ran over to me and carefully wiped my face with a handkerchief
that smelled of perfume and sweat. I did not stir.
"Gromov ... Sergei..." repeated the second SS-man in pure Russian, and
bent over me. "Don't you know me?"
I looked at him and recognized the man's face; though older, it still
retained the long-remembered features of my former classmate, Genya Muller.
"M tiller," I whispered, and lost consciousness again.
I woke up in a different room in someone's dwelling. Not a cosy room,
but one furnished with the pretentiousness of vulgar chic. A potbellied
cabinet filled with crystal glasses, a redwood buffet, plush sofa with round
bolsters, branching deer-horns over the door, and a copy of Murrillo's
Madonna in a large gilded frame. All this had either been accumulated by
some local official or brought here from various flats by requisition of the
Hauptsturmfiihrer to make a quiet little nest for top brass.
The Hauptsturmfiihrer himself, in an opened jacket, was sprawled lazily
on the sofa looking at an illustrated magazine, and I stole a look at him
from the morocco leather chair in which I sat beside a table laid for
supper. My bandaged hand was no longer painful. But I was devilishly hungry.
However, I kept silent and did not stir, hoping to avoid showing it in the
presence of my former classmate.
I had known Genya Muller from the age of seven. Together we entered the
same school situated in a quiet Arbat side-street, and had shared all our
joys and troubles right through to the ninth form. Muller senior, a
specialist in weaving looms, had come to Moscow from Germany soon after the
Treaty of Rapallo. He had first worked in the Altman Concession and later on
somewhere in the Mostrikotazh, the Moscow Weaving Mills. Genya was born in
Moscow and in school nobody counted him a foreigner. He spoke Russian as
well as we did, studied the same things, read the same books, sang the same
songs. He was not liked in school, and I hadn't liked his arrogance and
boastfulness either. But we lived in the same block of flats, sat at the
same desk, and were considered friends. With the years our friendship had
dwindled away through a rising difference in viewpoint and interests. And
when the Hitlerites had occupied Poland, the Muller family moved to Germany,
and Genya even forgot to say goodbye to me when he left.
True, my Genya Muller wasn't this Muller who now lay on the sofa with
his boots off. and I also wasn't this Gromov, all in bandages, who sat
opposite him in the red morocco chair. But as the experiments had shown,
phases of adjacent existences do not change a man's temperament or
character. So even my Genya Miiller had all the grounds to grow up into
Heinz Muller, Hauptsturmfuhrer in the Nazi stormtroopers and chief of the
Kolpinsk Gestapo. And, as a result, I could conduct myself with him
accordingly.
He lowered the magazine and our eyes met.
"So you've woken up at last," he said.
"Regained consciousness, rather."
"Don't put on. After our sorcerer and magician Dr. Getsch amputated
your finger and did a good job of cosmetic stitching, you slept for two
hours. Like a log."
"But what for?"
"What d'you mean - what for?"
"Why the cosmetic stitching?"
"To fix your face. Kreiman overdid it with his hammer. Well, so now
you're a good-looking fellow again."
"Maybe Herr Muller has a fiancee he wants to marry off. If so, he's too
late."
"Gut out the Herr business. Here it's Genya Muller and Sergei Gromov.
Somehow they ought to be able to get together."
"But why, I'd like to know?" I asked.
Muller got up and stretched.
"Isn't that enough of your 'why's and wherefore's'? I pulled you out of
the grave today. And you still can ask 'why'?"
"Then I won't ask. You want to make me an informer, or some other kind
of rat. I'm no good for that."
"You're good for the grave."
"So are you," I parried. "We'll still make it. And now I could eat a
horse."
He laughed. "You sure hit the nail - we'll still make the grave all
right."
He sat at the table and poured cognac for us both.
"Our vodka's junk, but the cognac's excellent. Right from Paris.
Martel. What'll we drink to?"
"Victory," I said.
He laughed even louder. "You amuse me, Sergei. A clever toast. I drink
to it." He drank, and added with a crooked smile, "And next I'll drink to
getting out of this dirty hole fast. I've got an uncle in Berlin, who has
connections. Promised me a transfer this summer. To Paris, or Athens. A
little farther from the firing line."
"So they're bothering you?"
"Of course they are. Any minute some skunk may throw a grenade from
round a corner! They got my predecessor. And sentenced me."
"So you won't live long," I observed indifferently.
Without taking a bite, he again filled the glasses. His hands shook.
"That's why I'm hurrying up my transfer. If only they don't drag it out,
I'll be sitting there in Paris and, before I can look round, the war will be
over."
"We'll still keep fighting," I said. "You'll have to wait for two and a
half years."
His hand holding the glass froze in mid-air above the table.
"To be precise," I explained, "two and a half years from now on May 8,
1945, an agreement of unconditional surrender will be signed. And wouldn't
you like to know who will surrender? The Germans, friend, the Germans. And
where do you think this will happen? Right in Berlin, almost on the ruins of
your imperial chancellery."
Without tasting his cognac, Muller slowly put his glass back on the
table. At first he was amazed, then frightened. I intercepted his glance
directed at the small table by the sofa where his Walther pistol lay.
Probably he thought I'd gone crazy and immediately remembered his gun.
Before he could reply, the buzzer of the intercom-phone went. He
grabbed the receiver, gave his name, listened and said something fast in
German. I caught one word: Stalingrad. Then I remembered what my companion
had said in the Gestapo's dark-green 'Black Maria' - 'now it's either the
very end of January or the beginning of February'. And it was.
Muller returned to the table with a gloomy face.
"Stalingrad?" I inquired.
"Do you understand German?"
"No, I merely guessed. Your Paulus is done for. Kaput."
He tapped his knife cautiously on the plate.
"Don't talk nonsense. Paulus has just been made a General Fieldmarshal.
And Mannstein has already reached Kotelnikov."
"Your Mannstein has been defeated. Smashed and thrown back. As for
Paulus - it's the end. What's the date today?"
"February 2."
I laughed. How wonderful to know the future!
"Well then, this is the day that Paulus capitulated at Stalingrad, and
your Sixth Army, or what's left of it, have become prisoners with 'Heil,
Hitler' on their lips."
"Shut up!" he screamed, and took his pistol from the table. "I won't
forgive anybody who makes such jokes as that!"
"But I'm not joking," I said, putting a piece of tinned ham in my
mouth. "Can you check it somewhere? Go ahead, call up."
Muller thoughtfully played with his gun.
"All right. I'll check. I'll call von Hennert-he should know. Only get
this: if it's a hoax, I'll shoot you personally, and right now."
He went to the telephone, took a long time getting connected, and asked
something, standing as straight as if on review as he listened. Then he hung
up and tossed the pistol onto the sofa without deigning to glance at me.
"Well, was I right?"
"How did you know?" he asked, approaching me. His face was a picture of
astonishment and perplexity. He looked at me as if asking whether I was I or
a representative of the High Command in my person.
"Von Hennert was quite surprised that I knew. I had to do some quick
thinking on that score. It hasn't been proclaimed officially yet, but
Hennert knows."
"And did he say that Hitler had already ordered general mourning for
the Sixth Army?"
"You know that too?"
He continued to stand, not taking his eyes off me, puzzled and unable
to figure it out. "Come now, where did you get it from? You couldn't have
known yesterday, that's for sure. But today.... Who could have told you? You
were brought here with somebody else, I believe?"
"That was this morning," I said. "At that time, your Paulus was still
kicking back."
He blinked his eyes.
"Somebody might have picked up a Moscow broadcast?"
"Where?" I laughed. "In the Gestapo?"
"I don't get it." He spread his hands in a gesture of despair. "Nobody
knows about it yet in town. I'm convinced of that."
Suddenly I had an idea. It struck me that I might still save my unlucky
Jekyll. Nothing threatened him till morning, but he would meet the morning
fully conscious and free of my aggression. Then his life wouldn't be worth a
cent. Muller wouldn't stand on ceremony with him, the more so if he
explained that he remembered nothing of today's business. I had to think.
The play would be tough.
"Don't try guessing, Genya," I said. "You won't figure it out. It's
simply that I'm not the ordinary fellow you think I am."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Did you ever hear that in one of our scientific research institutes,"
I began, improvising as if inspired, "a research group was liquidated in
1940? There was a lot of fuss about it abroad. Putting it broadly, it was a
group of telepathists."
"No," he replied vaguely. "Never heard of it."
"But you know what telepathy is?"
"Something like transmitting thoughts at a distance?"
"Approximately, yes. It's not a new thing, even Sinclair wrote about
it. Only idealistically, with all kinds of other-world nonsense. But we made
experiments on specifically scientific grounds. The brain, you see, is
looked upon as a microwave radio-set, picking up idea-signals at any
distance like ultra-long wavelengths. A bit less than a micron. Everybody
has this inherent possibility, but in rudimentary form. However, it can be
developed if you find a precipient brain, that is, one specially tuned in to
inner induction. Many were tested, I among them. Well, so I turned out to be
an exceptional precipient."
Muller sat down and rubbed his eyes.
"Am I dreaming, or what? I don't get it."
I could already see by his face that I'd won the game: he almost
believed. Now I had to erase the 'almost'.
"Have you ever read about Gagliostro or St. Germain?" I asked. Noting
his naive and empty eyes I realized he hadn't.
"History cannot explain them, especially St. Germain," I continued.
"The count lived in the eighteenth century, and he could relate events of
the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centimes as if he had witnessed them.
He was considered a wizard, an astrologer, an Agaspherus, European monarchs
vied with each other in inviting him to their courts. He foretold the future
too, incidentally, and rather successfully. But nobody's been able to
explain what kind of man he was, not so far. Historians ignore him, or call
him a charlatan. But they should have used the term telepathist. That's it
in a nutshell. He received ideas from the past and the future. Just as I
do."
Muller was silent. I could not imagine what he was thinking of. Maybe
he guessed that I was a fake? But for all that, I had one irrefutable and
invincible trump - Stalingrad.
"The future?" he repeated thoughtfully. "So you can foretell the
future?"
"I mustn't go too far," I mused silently. "Muller's no fool and he's
used to down-to-earth thinking." And that was what I played on.
"It's not hard to foretell yours," I said aloud, no less craftily than
his sly question. "You know yourself that after Stalingrad the underground
and partisans will be more active everywhere. You won't live till summer,
Muller. You haven't a chance."
His mouth curved in an ironical smile, as if saying 'all the same I'm
it will turn physics upside down. It will be the greatest upset that ever
occurred in our knowledge of the world. If he proves it, of course," she
added stubbornly. "The experiment on Sergei is still not proof."
"But I'm interested in something else," said Klenov thoughtfully. "If
you accept the truth of the hypothesis a priori, another question arises
that's of no less importance: how did life develop on every space phase? Why
are they so similar? I'm not referring to the physical but their social
aspect. Why is it that each transformed Moscow of Sergei's is a present-day,
post-war Moscow which is capital of the Soviet Union and not tsarist Russia?
Look, if Nikodimov's hypothesis is proved, do you realize what they will ask
about in the West, before anything else? Politicians, historians, church
dignitaries and journalists will ask: is it obligatory that all worlds have
a similar social structure? Is it absolutely certain that their historical
development has been identical?"
"Nikodimov spoke of still other worlds from different currents of time,
perhaps even with counter-times. In that case, one might hit on Neanderthal
man or on the first of Earth's stellar flights."
"That isn't my point," Klenov said impatiently. "However brilliant
Nikodimov and Zargaryan's discovery may be, it does not reduce the
importance of the question of social systems in every world. According to
Marxism, all is clear: the physical similarity presupposes a social
similarity. Everywhere the development of productive forces determines the
character of production relations. But can you imagine the song that will be
sung by those adherents of the cults of personality and chance? The
barbarians might not have reached Rome, and the Tatars, Kalka. Washington
might have lost the war of American independence, and Napoleon might have
won at Waterloo. Luther might not have become head of the Reformation, and
Einstein might not have discovered the theory of relativity. Bradbury
carried this dependence of historical development on blind chance to the
absurd. A traveller in time accidentally kills a butterfly in the Jurassic
period, and it leads to a change in the American presidential election
campaign: in place of a progressive and radical candidate, they elect a
fascist and obscurantist as President. We know, of course, that Gold-water
wouldn't have been elected any way even if all the dinosaurs of the Jurassic
period had been killed. And we know that if Napoleon had won at Waterloo, he
would probably have been defeated somewhere near Liege. And somebody else
would have headed the Reformation instead of Luther; and if Einstein hadn't
discovered the theory of relativity, someone else would have done so. Even
not rising to the heights of historical materialism, Belinsky wrote more
than a hundred years ago that blind chance did not rule either in nature or
in history, but strict, irrevocable, inner necessity did."
Klenov spoke with that professional erudition of a lecturer, which so
annoyed me at editorial meetings, and I cut in purely in the spirit of
contradiction.
"Well, but just imagine if there had never been a Hitler in some
neighbouring world? He was never born. Would there have been war or not?"
"Can't you answer that yourself? And Goering, Hess, Goebbels, Rommel,
and lastly Strasser? The Krupps would have passed the conductor's baton to
somebody. And I visualize you as a great delegate with a mission, Sergei.
Don't laugh - truly great. Not only in helping to prove Nikodimov's
hypothesis, but in the fact that you will be strengthening the position of
the Marxist conception of history. That everywhere and always, under similar
conditions of life on our planet, no matter what changes, phases or whatever
you call them take place, the class struggle always determined and still
determines social development until it becomes a classless society."
At this moment Zargaryan appeared with a bouquet of chrysanthemums. In
ten minutes he won over Olga and Galya, and Klenov's professional erudition
changed into the respectful attention of a college freshman.
Zargaryan gathered up all the threads of the talk at once, spoke of the
proposed Nobel prize winners, of his recent trip to London, interchanged
remarks with Galya about the future of laser technology. With Olga he
discussed the role of hypnosis in paediatrics. Then he praised Klenov's
article in the journal Science and Life. But he purposely, or so it seemed
to me, diverted the conversation from my part in the scientific experiment.
However, when it struck eleven he caught my perplexed glance and said
with his characteristic smile: "I know, d'you see, what you're thinking. Why
is Zargaryan silent about the experiment? Am I right? Actually, old chap, I
didn't want to leave right away, because further conversation will be
impossible after I've said my say. Intriguing?" he laughed. "It's simple
enough, really. You see, tomorrow we intend making a new experiment, and we
are asking you to take part."
"I'm ready," I said, repeating what I had already told him in the
restaurant.
"Don't be in a hurry," Zargaryan stopped me, and now there was a note
of seriousness in his voice which I had noticed once before, and agitation
as well. "First, the new experiment is to be much longer than the previous
one. Maybe it will last several hours, perhaps even twenty-four.... Second,
the test will cover more remote phases. I say 'remote' only to keep it
within the bounds of comprehension. The point is hardly a matter of
distances, the more so that we cannot determine them; and besides, what we
mean by distances is of no importance for the activities of the biocurrents.
The diffusion of the radiation is practically instantaneous and does not
depend either on the spatial arrangement of the phase or on the sign of the
field. But I must honestly warn you that we do not know the degree of risk
involved."
"So it's dangerous?" asked Galya.
Olga asked no questions, though the pupils of her eyes seemed a shade
larger.
"I cannot answer that definitely." Apparently Zargaryan had no desire
to conceal anything from me. "If the aiming is not accurate enough, our
converter might lose control of the superposed biofield. What the results
would be to the test-subject, we don't know. Now imagine something else: in
this world he is unconscious, in the other his conscious mind has been
imparted to a certain person ... let's say somebody travelling by plane.
What would happen to Sergei's conscious mind if there were a crash, we don't
know. Would the converter manage to switch over the biofield in time, or
would two people die, one in that world and one in this?"
Zargaryan was answered with silence. He stood up, and resumed.
"I've already told you that after my explanation the small talk would
end. You are free, Sergei, to make your decision. I'll come for you in the
morning and hear it with full respect even if it is a refusal."
We saw him out in silence, returned to the table in silence, and the
conversation was not resumed for a long time.
Finally, Galya asked me point-blank: "You're waiting for my advice, I
suppose?"
I silently shrugged my shoulders. What did it matter whether she
advised me or not?
"I already started believing in this delirium," she continued. "Just
imagine - I believed it. And if I were suitable for the test and had
received the offer you have... I should not think twice about my answer. But
as to advice.... Well, that's Olga's job."
"I won't talk you out of it, Sergei," said Olga. "Decide for yourself."
I still kept silent, not taking my eyes off my empty glass. I waited to
hear what Klenov would say.
"You know, it would be interesting to know..." he suddenly began, not
speaking to anyone in particular. "That is, I wonder if Gagarin thought it
over when they offered him the chance to make the first flight into space?"
It is not enough to have this
globe, or a certain time - I will
have thousands of globes, and all time.
Walt Whitman, Poem of Joys
But, looking into the future,
As through a mirage-like prism,
What a supreme paradise I desire-
Out of one eye to glimpse communism.
Ilya Selvinsky, Sonnet
Zargaryan came for me in the morning before Olga left for work. We had
both got up early, as we always do when one of us is leaving on a holiday or
a business trip. But the feeling of the abnormality and strangeness of this
morning, compared to other such moments in the past, cast a darkness over
the window, the sky, and the spirit. We purposely didn't speak of what lay
ahead but conversed as usual in little more than monosyllables. I kept
looking for my missing toothbrush and Olga couldn't get the water to run at
the proper temperature.
"Now it's hot, now it's cold. You try the taps."
I tried my hand at it, and got nowhere.
"Are you nervous?"
"Not a bit."
"But I'm afraid."
"Wasted emotion. Nothing happened before. T sat a couple of hours in
the chair, and that's all there was to it. Fell asleep and woke up. Didn't
even have a headache afterwards."
"But you know this time it won't be for two hours. Maybe ten, maybe
twenty-four. A long experiment. I can't even understand how they could
permit it."
"If it's permitted, then everything's okay. You needn't have any
doubts."
"But I do have doubts." Her voice rang a bit shrilly. "First, I doubt
it as a doctor. Twenty-four hours without consciousness. Without the
supervision of a doctor...."
"Why without a doctor?" I interrupted. "Outside of his speciality,
Zargaryan has had medical training. Besides, there's lots of pick-ups to
keep everything under control - pressure, heart and breathing. What else do
you want?" Her eyes shone suspiciously close to tears. "And if you don't
return...." "From where?"
"Do you know from whore? You haven't the faintest idea. Some sort of
transferred biofield. Worlds. A wandering conscious mind. It's terrifying to
think of."
"Then don't think of it. People fly in aeroplanes. It's also
terrifying, but they do it. And nobody worries over it."
Her lips trembled, the towel slipped from her hand to the floor. I was
glad when the telephone rang and I could avoid a recurrence of the dangerous
topic.
It was Galya. She wanted lo come over, but was afraid she mightn't make
it in time." "Zargaryan isn't there yet?"
"Not so far. We're waiting." "How's your mood?" "Not bad. Olga's
crying." "How silly. In her place I'd be glad - her man off on a feat of
glory."
"Let's not overdo it, Galya." "Why not? That's how they'll see it when
it's all over. No other way. A leap into the future. The very thought of
such a chance is enough to make your head swim."
"Why into the future?" I laughed, wanting to tease her. "What if it's
into some Jurassic period? With pterodactyls!"
"Don't talk nonsense," interrupted Galya. Doubting Thomas has now
turned fanatic. "Don't you dare even think it."
"Man proposes, God disposes. Well, let's say chance rather than God."
"What did you learn in the faculty of journalism? A fine Marxist I've
found!"
"Look, baby," I prayed. "Don't force me to repent of my political
mistakes right now. I'll do that when I come back."
She laughed, as if we were talking about a trip to the cottage.
"Well, good luck, you hear? And bring me back a souvenir."
"It would be interesting to know what souvenir I could bring her," I
told Klenov who had joined Olga and I for morning coffee. "A
pterodactyl-claw or a dinosaur-tooth?"
I was touched. He hadn't been too lazy to come to see me off on my
rather unusual journey, and had even managed to calm Olga down.
The tears had gone from her eyes.
"To get a gander at dinosaurs wouldn't be bad," observed Klenov
philosophically. "You could organize some kind of safari in time. That would
make a big noise."
I sighed.
"There'll be no noise, Klenov. And no safari. I'll meet you somewhere
in an adjacent bit of life. We'll go to the cinema and see Child of
Montparnasse. We'll drink palinka again. Or Hungarian tsuika."
"You have no imagination," said Klenov angrily. "They won't send you
into an adjacent little world. Remember what Zargaryan said? It's quite
possible there are worlds moving in some other course of time. Let's suppose
their time is behind ours. But not by a million years! What if it's a half
century behind? You look around and on the streets it's October 1917."
"And if it's a hundred years ago?"
"That wouldn't be bad either. You'll go to work at the Sovremennik
magazine ( The Contemporary.-Tr.) Maybe they put out a Sovremennik with the
same trend? Probably. And there you 'll see Chernyshevsky sitting at a desk.
Interesting, right? You're not drooling at the mouth?"
"Drooling."
We both laughed, and loudly enough to upset Olga.
"I want to cry, and they laugh!"
"We have a shortage of sodium chloride in our bodies," said Klenov. "So
our tear ducts have dried up. And, by the way, Olga, tears from a hero's
wife are contra-indicated. Better have a drink of cognac. What if you wake
up in the future and find there's a dry law?"
I had to refuse the cognac, because Zargaryan was already ringing at
the front door. He looked severe and official, and never dropped a word all
the way to the institute. I was silent, too. Only when he had parked his
Volga car alongside its twins in the institute's parking lot, and we were
going up the granite steps to the door, did bespeak. There was no smile, no
funny accent, none of the usual whimsy that accompanied his sly remarks or a
laugh.
"Don't think I'm afraid or disturbed. It's Nikodimov who figures it is
possible that a certain per cent of risk is involved. The problem, he says,
is not yet mastered, too few experiments. And I think that everything is in
our hands, that it's a hundred per cent ours. I'm sure of success.
Absolutely!" The last he cried so that it echoed through the near-by grove
of trees. "And I'm silent because one is sparing of words before the battle.
Got that, Sergei?"
"Absolutely, Ruben."
We shook hands on it, and were silent till we reached the laboratory.
Nothing had changed since my last visit. There was the same soft-toned
plastic, the golden gleaming copper, shining nickel, the smoke-coloured
glass panels reminiscent of television screens only several times larger. My
chair stood in its usual place in the network of coloured lead-in wires,
both thick and thin, some as tiny as spider-webs. The spider was in ambush
awaiting his victim. But the soft, comfortable chair, lit from the window by
an unexpectedly appearing sun, did not incite alarm or suspicion. It
reminded me more of a heart set in a nest of blood vessels. As yet the heart
did not beat: I was not sitting there.
Nikodimov met me in his stiffly starched white gown, and with a smile
that was just as stiff and starched.
"I should be glad, of course, only glad that you've agreed to
participate in this risky experiment," he told me after an exchange of
friendly compliments. "For me, as a scientist, this may be the final and
decisive step toward my goal. But I must ask you to consider your decision
once more, weigh all the pros and cons before we begin this particular
test."
"But it's already decided," I said.
"Wait. Think it over. What urges you to agree to it? Curiosity? To tell
the truth, that's not a very admirable stimulus."
"And scientific interest?"
"You have none."
"What drives journalists to go, let us say, to the Antarctic or into
the jungles?" I parried. "They don't have scientific interests either."
"So, it's inquisitiveness. I agree. And a love for sensation, which all
reporters have in common to some degree, even in the best sense of the word.
Stanley was chasing sensation when he went to Africa to search for the lost
Livingston, and as a result won equal fame. Perhaps that's what is turning
your head, I don't know. I can imagine how Ruben talked with you," laughed
Nikodimov, continuing in Zargaryan's voice: '"Yes, d'you see, it's a daring
feat - one never yet seen in the annals of science! The glory of a
globetrotter in time, equal to that of the first man to fly into space!' I'm
sure he called it just that, didn't he? Globetrotter in time?"
I glanced sidewise at Zargaryan who was listening, not at all put out
and even smiling. Nikodimov caught my glance.
"Of course he said it! That's what I thought. A barrel of honey. And I
will now add to it my spoonful of tar. I cannot, my dear fellow, promise you
either the fame of a time-globetrotter or a ceremonial meeting on the Red
Square. I don't even promise there'll be a special article in your honour.
In the best case, you will return home with a fund of sharp sensations, and
with the knowledge that your part in the experiment has been of some use to
science."
"And is that so little?" I asked.
"It depends. You see, only we three will know of your valuable
contribution. Your oral testimonial is still not proof where science is
concerned. You will always find sceptics who might declare it a hoax, arid
they probably will. The same goes for apparatus which could describe and
reproduce the visual images arising in your conscious mind - to our sorrow,
we have nothing like that as yet."
"It's possible to obtain another form of evidence," put in Zargaryan.
Nikodimov pondered. I impatiently awaited his answer. What evidence did
Zargaryan have in mind? All the material evidence of my being in adjacent
worlds remained there: the probe I had dropped during the operation, my note
on the hospital writing pad, and Mikhail's split lip. I had brought nothing
back but memories.
"Now I'll explain to you what Ruben means," pronounced Nikodimov
slowly, as if to stress each word he said. "He has in mind the possibility
of your penetrating a world far ahead of us in time and development. If such
a possibility happens and you can make use of it, then your conscious mind
might take images of not merely visual objects but abstract ones -
mathematical ones, let us say. For example, the formula of a physical law or
an equation expressing in conventional mathematical symbols something as yet
unknown to us in cognition of the surrounding world. But all this is pure
supposition, only theory. No better than telling fortunes from
tea-leaves.... We shall try to transmit your conscious mind somewhere
farther than the immediate worlds bordering our three-dimensional one, but
we cannot even tell you what this 'farther' means. Distance in these
measurements is not counted in microns, or kilometres or even par-sees. Some
other system of measuring distance acts here, and so far we have no
knowledge of it. But most important, we don't know what you risk by
undergoing this experiment. Before, we did not lose sight of your energy
field, but is there any guarantee we won't lose it this time? In a word, I
won't at all be offended if you say 'let's put off the test'."
I smiled. Now Nikodimov awaited an answer. Not one wrinkle on his face
deepened, not one hair of his long, poetical locks stirred, not one crease
in his gown moved. How different he was from Zargaryan! Here was true prose
and poetry, ice and flame. And the flame behind me was already flaring up -
the chair fell over as Zargaryan stood up.
"Well then, let's put off..." I spoke slowly, deliberately, slyly
glancing at Nikodimov. "Let's put off ... all this talk about risk till the
experiment's over."
All that happened afterwards was condensed into a few minutes, perhaps
seconds.... I don't remember. The chair, the helmet, the pick-ups, the
darkness, the scraps of conversation about scales, visuality, the certain
ciphers accompanied by familiar Greek letters - perhaps pi or psi - and
finally Boundlessness, blackness, and the coloured mist swirling upward.
The swirling stopped, the mist acquired a transparency and dullish grey
shade resembling a spring rather than a winter morning. I could see a
cluttered yard all in puddles that were sheeted with bluish ice, also the
dirty-red crust on the melting snow by a fence and a dark green van right
beside me. The back doors were wide open.
A heavy blow on the back knocked me to the ground. I fell into a
puddle, the ice crackled, and the left sleeve of my quilted jacket was wet
through.
"Aufstehen!" came a cry from behind.
I got up with difficulty, hardly keeping my legs, and before I could
look behind me another blow on the spine threw me against the van.
Somebody's hand reached out from its dark maw, caught me and pulled me
inside. The doors were immediately clapped to, and the heavy bolts clanged.
Then I heard the purr of a motor, the metallic creaking of the van, and
the crunch of ice under its wheels. As it turned sharply, I fell over and
hit my head on a bench. I groaned.
And again the familiar hands reached for me, raised me and sat me on
the bench. In the semi-darkness around us, I couldn't make out the face of
the man sitting opposite.
"Hold on to the bench," he warned. "The road here is God knows what."
"Where are we?" I asked, in what seemed to me to be a strange voice,
hollow and hoarse.
"Perfectly clear where. In the death car." My neighbour sniffed the
air. "No-o-o.... It seems there's no smell. So they're taking us to
confession."
"Where are we?" I asked again. "What town?"
"Kolpinsk. Regional centre before. Look out the small window - and
you'll see."
I stretched up toward the little square opening, unpaned, with three
iron bars across it. Past the small opening flashed by a water-pump, an
entrance path to the gap in a fence, one-storey squat cottages, a sign on a
second-hand store printed in black on a yellow matting, then naked poplars
by the curb of a muddy pavement.
The deserted little street stretched out, long and unsightly. The rare
passers-by, it seemed, were in no hurry.
"You'll have to excuse me," I told my companion, "apparently
something's happened to my memory."
"Not only the memory suffers here - they kill the soul," he replied
briskly.
"I can't remember a thing. What year it is, or the month, the day....
Don't be afraid, I'm not crazy."
"I'm not afraid of anything now. Besides, it's easier dealing with a
lunatic than a Judas. This is a hard year - forty-three. It's either the
very end of January or the beginning of February. There's no use remembering
what day it is, it's all one for we won't live till morning. What's your
cell number?"
"I don't know," I answered.
"Six, probably. Yesterday they brought in a pilot that was shot down.
Right from the town hospital. Patched him up and brought him in. Was that
you?"
I was silent. Now I remembered how it was, or rather how it might have
been. In January of forty-three, I was flying home from the Skripkin pine
forest in the partisan area north-west of the Dnieper. Somewhere near
Kolpinsk we had run into heavy flak from a German anti-aircraft battery. The
plane broke out of it almost by a miracle and made home base safely. But in
this phase of space-time, we probably hadn't got through. And it was
probably the wounded passenger who was taken to the town hospital and not
the pilot. From the hospital to cell six, and from there to 'confession' as
my companion called it. What he meant needed no exact definition.
We didn't talk any more, and only when the van stopped and the bolts
clattered on the doors did he whisper something in my ear, but what it was I
couldn't make out and never managed to ask. He had already jumped onto the
road and, pushing aside the convoy, helped me down. A blow on the back from
a gun stock threw him toward the entrance. I followed him, and the German
soldiers hurried along beside us screaming shrilly: "Schnell! Schnell!"
We were separated on the ground floor. My companion - I never even got
a look at his face - was led off somewhere down the corridor. And I was
dragged upstairs to the first floor, literally dragged, because every kick
was for me a knockdown. So it went on till I got to a room with blue
wallpaper where a fat blond officer sat behind a desk, his boyish blue eyes
matching the paper. His black SS-jacket fitted him like a schoolboy's
uniform, and he himself was like the plump schoolboy pictured in German
confectionery shop advertisements.
"You have the right to sit down. Right here. Here," he repeated in
German and pointed at a plush chair by the table. The chair must have been
requisitioned from the local town theatre. My legs were shaking, my head
spinning, and I sat down without concealing my relief which was at once
noticed.
"You are completely recovered. Very good.
And now tell the truth. Wahrheit!" said the boyish SS-man, and fell
into an expectant silence.
I was silent too. I had no fear. I was saved from that by the feeling
that all this was illusory; I felt remote from all that was going on. This
wasn't, you see, happening in my life and not to me; this puny, emaciated
body in a dirty quilted jacket and broken army boots did not belong to me
but to another Sergei Gromov living in another time and space. Thus I
comforted myself with the help of physics and logic, but physiology
painfully refuted them with every breath I drew, with every movement I made.
For now this body was mine and it had to take what was destined for it. I
asked myself in alarm whether I had, in the long run, enough strength and
will, enough endurance, courage and inner pride.
In the war days it had been easier. We were all prepared for such a
contingency by all the conditions of the war years, by the way of life, by
the spirit of the times - severe and hard as they were. I was ready then,
and probably so was the Sergei Gromov whose place I now occupied in this
room. But was I ready now? I felt chilled for an instant and, I'm afraid to
confess it, terribly frightened.
"You understand me?" asked the SS-man.
"Perfectly," I nodded.
"Then talk. Wieviel Soldaten hat er? Stolbikov? What detachment?
Soldier, partisan? Number of men?"
"I don't know," I said.
I was not lying. I honestly didn't know the strength of all partisan
formations under Stolbikov's command. It continually changed. Now a number
of groups would go scouting deep in the rear and not return for weeks, now a
detachment would be reinforced by formations operating in neighbouring
sections. Besides, my Stolbikov had one complement of men, but the Stolbikov
living in this space-time might have another, either more or less. If I told
all I knew, it would be interesting to know whether it would coincide with
the reality the SS-man was interested in. Judging by his insignia, he was an
Obersturmfuhrer.
"Tell the truth," he repeated severely. "It's better that way. Wahrheit
ist besser."
"But I honestly don't know."
His blue eyes became noticeably blood-shot.
"Where are your documents? Here," he cried, and threw my wallet on the
desk. I wasn't sure it was mine, but I presumed it was. "We know everything.
Alles."
"If you already know, then why ask?" I said quietly.
Before he could answer, the field-telephone buzzed on the desk. With an
agility that surprised me, he grabbed the receiver and stood at attention.
His face was transformed into a mixture of servility and delight. He kept
repeating 'Ja, Ja', in German and clicked his heels. Then he put my wallet
into a drawer and pushed a buzzer.
"They will take you away now," he told me in bad Russian. "Keine Zeit.
Three hours in a cell."
He indicated where with his thumb.
"Think, remember, and we'll talk some more. Otherwise, it will be the
worse for you. Zehr schlecht."
I was taken into the cellar and pushed into a barn-like room with no
window. I felt the walls and the floor. The first were of stone, sticky with
mould, and the Door was covered with wet mud. My legs would no longer
support me, but I did not risk lying down. I sat against the wall on my
hands, just the same it was drier.
The reprieve I got aroused the hope of a safe way out. The experiment
might end, and the lucky Hyde abandon the Jekyll buried here in the mud. But
I was immediately ashamed of my thoughts.... Both Galya and Klenov would
have called me a coward without blinking an eye. Zargaryan and Nikodimov
wouldn't have said it, but would have thought it. Maybe, somewhere in the
depths of her soul, Olga would as well. Thank goodness I had thought of this
in time. I began to think of a lot of things. About the fact that now I had
to answer for two - for him and me. How he would have behaved, I could
guess: I might even say I knew. You see, he was myself, the same particle of
material in one of the forms of its existence beyond our three-dimensional
world. Chance might change his lot, but not his character, not his line of
conduct. So it was all clear: I had no choice, not even the right to desert
with the help of Nikodimov's wizardry. If I were returned now, I would beg
Nikodimov to send me back to this hole.
I must have fallen asleep there, despite the damp and cold, because
dreams overtook me. His dreams. A bearded Stolbikov in a sheepskin hat, a
middle-aged woman in a padded jacket with a tommy-gun slung from her
shoulder who was slicing or shredding a round loaf of rye bread. Naked
children were on the bank of pond covered with green duckweed. I immediately
recognized the pond with the crooked pines on the shore, could see the road
between steep clay cliffs leading down to it. It was my dream, long
remembered and always incomprehensible. Now I knew where it came from.
The dreams shortened my reprieve. Again the boyish SS-man demanded my
presence. This time he was not smiling.
"Well?" he shot out. "Are we going to talk?"
"No," I said.
"Schade," he drawled. "A pity. Put your hand on the table. Your fingers
so." He snowed me how with his puffy palm and wide-spread sausage-like
fingers.
I obeyed. Not without fear, I admit; but going to the dentist is also
terrifying at times.
Fatty pulled from beneath the table a piece of wood with a handle,
something like an ordinary joiner's wooden hammer, and cried:
"Ruig!"
The wooden hammer smashed deliberately down on my little finger. The
bone crunched and a savage pain shot up my arm to the shoulder. I could
barely restrain a scream.
"Ve-ry good?" he asked, stressing the syllables with satisfaction.
"Will you talk or not?"
"No," I repeated.
Again the hammer was raised, but I involuntarily pulled back my hand.
Fatty laughed.
"You can save your hand, but not your face," he said, and instantly
slashed me across the face.
I lost consciousness, but came to almost at once. Somewhere close by I
heard Nikodimov and Zargaryan talking.
"There's no field."
"None at all?"
"No."
"Try another screen."
"The same thing."
"And if we try more power?"
Silence. Then Zargaryan answered: "Got it. But very weak visuality.
Maybe he's sleeping?"
"No. We registered the activity of the hypno-genetic system a half hour
ago. Then he woke up."
"And now?"
"I can't see it."
"I'll give more power."
I couldn't interfere. I could not feel my body. Where was it? In the
lab chair or the torture chamber?
"Got the field," said Zargaryan.
I opened my eyes, or rather I partly opened them. Even the slightest
movement of my eyelids aroused a sharp, piercing agony. Something warm and
salty trickled from my lips. My hand seemed to be burning over a fire.
The whole room, from floor to ceiling, seemed full of turbid, quivering
water through which I could dimly make out two figures in black uniforms.
One was my fat man, the other looked slender and more symmetrically built.
They were talking abruptly and fast, in German. My German is poor, so I
didn't listen. But I thought the conversation was about me. First I heard
Stolbikov's name mentioned and then mine.
"Sergei Gromov?" repeated the thin one in surprise, and said something
to the other.
Then he ran over to me and carefully wiped my face with a handkerchief
that smelled of perfume and sweat. I did not stir.
"Gromov ... Sergei..." repeated the second SS-man in pure Russian, and
bent over me. "Don't you know me?"
I looked at him and recognized the man's face; though older, it still
retained the long-remembered features of my former classmate, Genya Muller.
"M tiller," I whispered, and lost consciousness again.
I woke up in a different room in someone's dwelling. Not a cosy room,
but one furnished with the pretentiousness of vulgar chic. A potbellied
cabinet filled with crystal glasses, a redwood buffet, plush sofa with round
bolsters, branching deer-horns over the door, and a copy of Murrillo's
Madonna in a large gilded frame. All this had either been accumulated by
some local official or brought here from various flats by requisition of the
Hauptsturmfiihrer to make a quiet little nest for top brass.
The Hauptsturmfiihrer himself, in an opened jacket, was sprawled lazily
on the sofa looking at an illustrated magazine, and I stole a look at him
from the morocco leather chair in which I sat beside a table laid for
supper. My bandaged hand was no longer painful. But I was devilishly hungry.
However, I kept silent and did not stir, hoping to avoid showing it in the
presence of my former classmate.
I had known Genya Muller from the age of seven. Together we entered the
same school situated in a quiet Arbat side-street, and had shared all our
joys and troubles right through to the ninth form. Muller senior, a
specialist in weaving looms, had come to Moscow from Germany soon after the
Treaty of Rapallo. He had first worked in the Altman Concession and later on
somewhere in the Mostrikotazh, the Moscow Weaving Mills. Genya was born in
Moscow and in school nobody counted him a foreigner. He spoke Russian as
well as we did, studied the same things, read the same books, sang the same
songs. He was not liked in school, and I hadn't liked his arrogance and
boastfulness either. But we lived in the same block of flats, sat at the
same desk, and were considered friends. With the years our friendship had
dwindled away through a rising difference in viewpoint and interests. And
when the Hitlerites had occupied Poland, the Muller family moved to Germany,
and Genya even forgot to say goodbye to me when he left.
True, my Genya Muller wasn't this Muller who now lay on the sofa with
his boots off. and I also wasn't this Gromov, all in bandages, who sat
opposite him in the red morocco chair. But as the experiments had shown,
phases of adjacent existences do not change a man's temperament or
character. So even my Genya Miiller had all the grounds to grow up into
Heinz Muller, Hauptsturmfuhrer in the Nazi stormtroopers and chief of the
Kolpinsk Gestapo. And, as a result, I could conduct myself with him
accordingly.
He lowered the magazine and our eyes met.
"So you've woken up at last," he said.
"Regained consciousness, rather."
"Don't put on. After our sorcerer and magician Dr. Getsch amputated
your finger and did a good job of cosmetic stitching, you slept for two
hours. Like a log."
"But what for?"
"What d'you mean - what for?"
"Why the cosmetic stitching?"
"To fix your face. Kreiman overdid it with his hammer. Well, so now
you're a good-looking fellow again."
"Maybe Herr Muller has a fiancee he wants to marry off. If so, he's too
late."
"Gut out the Herr business. Here it's Genya Muller and Sergei Gromov.
Somehow they ought to be able to get together."
"But why, I'd like to know?" I asked.
Muller got up and stretched.
"Isn't that enough of your 'why's and wherefore's'? I pulled you out of
the grave today. And you still can ask 'why'?"
"Then I won't ask. You want to make me an informer, or some other kind
of rat. I'm no good for that."
"You're good for the grave."
"So are you," I parried. "We'll still make it. And now I could eat a
horse."
He laughed. "You sure hit the nail - we'll still make the grave all
right."
He sat at the table and poured cognac for us both.
"Our vodka's junk, but the cognac's excellent. Right from Paris.
Martel. What'll we drink to?"
"Victory," I said.
He laughed even louder. "You amuse me, Sergei. A clever toast. I drink
to it." He drank, and added with a crooked smile, "And next I'll drink to
getting out of this dirty hole fast. I've got an uncle in Berlin, who has
connections. Promised me a transfer this summer. To Paris, or Athens. A
little farther from the firing line."
"So they're bothering you?"
"Of course they are. Any minute some skunk may throw a grenade from
round a corner! They got my predecessor. And sentenced me."
"So you won't live long," I observed indifferently.
Without taking a bite, he again filled the glasses. His hands shook.
"That's why I'm hurrying up my transfer. If only they don't drag it out,
I'll be sitting there in Paris and, before I can look round, the war will be
over."
"We'll still keep fighting," I said. "You'll have to wait for two and a
half years."
His hand holding the glass froze in mid-air above the table.
"To be precise," I explained, "two and a half years from now on May 8,
1945, an agreement of unconditional surrender will be signed. And wouldn't
you like to know who will surrender? The Germans, friend, the Germans. And
where do you think this will happen? Right in Berlin, almost on the ruins of
your imperial chancellery."
Without tasting his cognac, Muller slowly put his glass back on the
table. At first he was amazed, then frightened. I intercepted his glance
directed at the small table by the sofa where his Walther pistol lay.
Probably he thought I'd gone crazy and immediately remembered his gun.
Before he could reply, the buzzer of the intercom-phone went. He
grabbed the receiver, gave his name, listened and said something fast in
German. I caught one word: Stalingrad. Then I remembered what my companion
had said in the Gestapo's dark-green 'Black Maria' - 'now it's either the
very end of January or the beginning of February'. And it was.
Muller returned to the table with a gloomy face.
"Stalingrad?" I inquired.
"Do you understand German?"
"No, I merely guessed. Your Paulus is done for. Kaput."
He tapped his knife cautiously on the plate.
"Don't talk nonsense. Paulus has just been made a General Fieldmarshal.
And Mannstein has already reached Kotelnikov."
"Your Mannstein has been defeated. Smashed and thrown back. As for
Paulus - it's the end. What's the date today?"
"February 2."
I laughed. How wonderful to know the future!
"Well then, this is the day that Paulus capitulated at Stalingrad, and
your Sixth Army, or what's left of it, have become prisoners with 'Heil,
Hitler' on their lips."
"Shut up!" he screamed, and took his pistol from the table. "I won't
forgive anybody who makes such jokes as that!"
"But I'm not joking," I said, putting a piece of tinned ham in my
mouth. "Can you check it somewhere? Go ahead, call up."
Muller thoughtfully played with his gun.
"All right. I'll check. I'll call von Hennert-he should know. Only get
this: if it's a hoax, I'll shoot you personally, and right now."
He went to the telephone, took a long time getting connected, and asked
something, standing as straight as if on review as he listened. Then he hung
up and tossed the pistol onto the sofa without deigning to glance at me.
"Well, was I right?"
"How did you know?" he asked, approaching me. His face was a picture of
astonishment and perplexity. He looked at me as if asking whether I was I or
a representative of the High Command in my person.
"Von Hennert was quite surprised that I knew. I had to do some quick
thinking on that score. It hasn't been proclaimed officially yet, but
Hennert knows."
"And did he say that Hitler had already ordered general mourning for
the Sixth Army?"
"You know that too?"
He continued to stand, not taking his eyes off me, puzzled and unable
to figure it out. "Come now, where did you get it from? You couldn't have
known yesterday, that's for sure. But today.... Who could have told you? You
were brought here with somebody else, I believe?"
"That was this morning," I said. "At that time, your Paulus was still
kicking back."
He blinked his eyes.
"Somebody might have picked up a Moscow broadcast?"
"Where?" I laughed. "In the Gestapo?"
"I don't get it." He spread his hands in a gesture of despair. "Nobody
knows about it yet in town. I'm convinced of that."
Suddenly I had an idea. It struck me that I might still save my unlucky
Jekyll. Nothing threatened him till morning, but he would meet the morning
fully conscious and free of my aggression. Then his life wouldn't be worth a
cent. Muller wouldn't stand on ceremony with him, the more so if he
explained that he remembered nothing of today's business. I had to think.
The play would be tough.
"Don't try guessing, Genya," I said. "You won't figure it out. It's
simply that I'm not the ordinary fellow you think I am."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Did you ever hear that in one of our scientific research institutes,"
I began, improvising as if inspired, "a research group was liquidated in
1940? There was a lot of fuss about it abroad. Putting it broadly, it was a
group of telepathists."
"No," he replied vaguely. "Never heard of it."
"But you know what telepathy is?"
"Something like transmitting thoughts at a distance?"
"Approximately, yes. It's not a new thing, even Sinclair wrote about
it. Only idealistically, with all kinds of other-world nonsense. But we made
experiments on specifically scientific grounds. The brain, you see, is
looked upon as a microwave radio-set, picking up idea-signals at any
distance like ultra-long wavelengths. A bit less than a micron. Everybody
has this inherent possibility, but in rudimentary form. However, it can be
developed if you find a precipient brain, that is, one specially tuned in to
inner induction. Many were tested, I among them. Well, so I turned out to be
an exceptional precipient."
Muller sat down and rubbed his eyes.
"Am I dreaming, or what? I don't get it."
I could already see by his face that I'd won the game: he almost
believed. Now I had to erase the 'almost'.
"Have you ever read about Gagliostro or St. Germain?" I asked. Noting
his naive and empty eyes I realized he hadn't.
"History cannot explain them, especially St. Germain," I continued.
"The count lived in the eighteenth century, and he could relate events of
the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centimes as if he had witnessed them.
He was considered a wizard, an astrologer, an Agaspherus, European monarchs
vied with each other in inviting him to their courts. He foretold the future
too, incidentally, and rather successfully. But nobody's been able to
explain what kind of man he was, not so far. Historians ignore him, or call
him a charlatan. But they should have used the term telepathist. That's it
in a nutshell. He received ideas from the past and the future. Just as I
do."
Muller was silent. I could not imagine what he was thinking of. Maybe
he guessed that I was a fake? But for all that, I had one irrefutable and
invincible trump - Stalingrad.
"The future?" he repeated thoughtfully. "So you can foretell the
future?"
"I mustn't go too far," I mused silently. "Muller's no fool and he's
used to down-to-earth thinking." And that was what I played on.
"It's not hard to foretell yours," I said aloud, no less craftily than
his sly question. "You know yourself that after Stalingrad the underground
and partisans will be more active everywhere. You won't live till summer,
Muller. You haven't a chance."
His mouth curved in an ironical smile, as if saying 'all the same I'm