relationship. I thought a quiet and unattractive man would love me and
appreciate me. You have no idea, Val, how I needed the warmth and comfort of
a relationship! But I didn't get warm near you. You don't love me very much
either. You don't belong to me, I can see that. You have another love,
science!" She laughed angrily. "You've invented all sorts of toys for
yourselves: science, technology, politics, war. And women are just something
on the side. Well, I don't want to be something on the side. It's well
known: women are fools. We take everything seriously. We know no bounds in
love and can't do a thing with ourselves...." Her voice trembled and she
turned away. "I would have said all this to you anyway. I was wrong again!"
Actually, there's no need for details. I threw her out. I'm sitting
here over my diary.
So, it was all planned. Don't love a handsome man, love a crummy one.
And I wanted to create a big family....
I feel cold. Oh, so cold!
Lena's not mercenary. Then what is she? Actually, she was right: I knew
that myself. And how! But this light relationship suited me before. "Will it
do?"-as they ask in the store, offering you margarine instead of butter.
Nothing happens in life to no purpose. I'm the one who changed, who
realized things in time, and she's still the same. I fell for a storybook
illusion, what a jerk. I wanted to get warm.
And that's it. There will never be anything in my life. I'll never find
anyone like Lena. I'm not willing to go in for one-night stands.
Lena didn't want to become my widow.
It's cold....
We've lost spontaneity, the ability to follow our feelings, to believe
on faith because we believe, to love because we're in love. It's possible
that it happened because everyone got burned more than once, or because in
the theater and movies we see how those feelings are manufactured, or
because life is so complicated and everything must be thought out and
planned-I don't know. "Tenderness, in a Taylor series expansion...." I've
been expansive enough.
Now we have to understand with our reason just how important solid,
strong feelings are in human life. Who knows, maybe it's good that it has to
be proven. And it will be proven. Then people will develop a new naturalness
of feeling, strengthened by reason, and they'll understand that without
feelings there is no life.
And for now... it's cold.
Ah, Lena, Lena, my poor frightened girl! Now, I think, I really do love
you.
Investigator Onisimov reached the New Systems Laboratory at 8:30 in the
morning. The guard on duty, Golovorezov, was sitting in the sun on the
porch, leaning against the door with his cap over his eyes. Flies were
crawling around his open mouth and on his cheeks. The guard moved his facial
muscles, but didn't wake up.
"You'll get a bad burn on duty, comrade guard," Onisimov said sternly.
The guard woke immediately, fixed his cap, and stood up.
"Everything quiet here, comrade captain. There were no incidents in the
night."
'I see. So you have the keys?"
"Yes sir." He pulled the keys from his pocket. "You gave them to me,
and I have them."
"Don't let anyone in."
Onisimov unlocked the door and shut it behind him. He found his
bearings in the dark hallway easily, maneuvering among the boxes and crates,
and reached the door to the lab.
He looked around carefully in the laboratory. There were gelatinous
puddles on the floor, their dried edges curling up. The hoses of the
computer-womb hung limply from the bottles and flasks. The lights were out
on the control panel. The switches on the electric panel were sticking out
sideways. Onisimov inhaled the stale air carefully and turned his head:
"Aha!" Then he took off his blue jacket, hung it neatly on a chair back,
rolled up his sleeves, and got to work.
First of all he rinsed the teflon tank with water, stood it back up on
the floor, and removed all the hoses and conductors from it. Then he
followed the power cable and found the burnt-out part that had shorted,
eaten away by acids, near the wall board. He took rubber gloves from the
drawer, got the right tools from the cabinet, went back to the cable and
cleaned and patched it up with insulated tape.
A few minutes later it was all done. Onisimov, taking a breather,
stretched and turned on the electricity. The transformers in the TsVM-12
began humming. The air vents rustled, and the exhaust fan whined, picking up
speed. The green, red, blue, and yellow lights on the control panel blinked
aimlessly.
Onisimov, biting his lower lip in anxiety, got a full flask of
distilled water and added it to all the flasks; he got Krivoshein's lab
journal from the desk, and deciphering the notations, started adding
reagents to the bottles and flasks. When he finished all this, he stood in
the middle of the room expectantly.
The trembling light flitted from one end of the control panel to the
other, and up and down and down and up-tearing around like a maddened bulb
on an electronic billboard. But gradually the random movement began forming
a pattern of broken lines. The green vertical lines were shaded with blue
and yellow lights. The red lights blinked more slowly: soon they went out
completely. Onisimov kept waiting for the "Stop!" signal to go on at the top
of the panel. Five minutes, ten, fifteen... the signal didn't come on.
"I think it's working." Onisimov rubbed his face with his hand.
Now he had to wait. So as not to sit by idly, he filled a pail with
water and washed the floor. Then he taped up the torn wires of Monomakh's
Crown, read the notes in the journal, got together some more reagents and
poured them in. There was nothing else to do.
He heard footsteps in the hall. Onisimov turned toward the door
sharply. Golovorezov came in.
"Comrade captain, scientific secretary Hilobok is out there. He wants
to come in. He says he has something to tell you. Should I let him in?"
"No. Let him wait. I have to talk to him, too."
"Yes, sir."
"Well, I guess I'll have to talk to Harry," Onisimov chuckled. "The
perfect time to remind him of recent events."
May 17. But Harry Haritonovich bent the truth when he said he didn't
have time to write his dissertation! He lied. Yesterday, it turns out, he
had his preliminary defense of his doctoral at a closed session of our
scientific council. We do what so many organizations do: before letting one
of our people out into the world, we listen to him in our private circle.
His official defense will take place in a few days at Lena's construction
project bureau.
Oh, Harry isn't lying for nothing! There's something going on.
May 18. Today I knocked at the window next to which a local institute
poet, who wished to remain anonymous, had written in pencil:
Be worthy of the first form.
The enemy does not sleep!
Major Pronin.
I was worthy. That's why Joahann Johannovich let me into the closed
reading room and gave me a copy of the dissertation of technical sciences
candidate H. H. Hilobok to attain the degree of doctor of technical sciences
on the top of... well, I can't write about that.
Well, brother.... First of all, the topic deals totally with the
development of the blocks of memory that Valery and I had done long ago, and
it looks like Hilobok was at least the inventor and director of the project;
it doesn't come out and say so, but you can read it between the lines.
Secondly, he allowed himself free improvisation in part of the explanation
and interpretation of the results, and made major mistakes. Thirdly, he has
long-proven facts, determined by foreign systemologists and electronics
people, introduced by "It has been determined by experiments that...." How
could the scientific council let that get by? It's May, and half the people
are on business trips or vacation.
No, he won't get away with this.
May 19. "Do you know math?" Kravets asked when I told him about it and
my plans for it.
"Yes, why?"
"Then add it up: two days to prepare for participation in the defense,
plus a day for the defense, plus a month of hassles afterward. You're not a
baby. You know you won't get by with a joke like this. What's more
important: you'll be squandering a month of our work, the results of which
will influence the world more than all the technology extant today, or some
lousy dissertation, which won't affect anything? One more or less in the
world, no difference."
"Hmm ... and now I'll show you a different math. You and I are
identical people with identical ability, and in some ways you've surpassed
me. But if I were to go over to that Harry Hilobok and, without delving into
particulars, tell him that student Kravets is stupid, hasn't the slightest
understanding of computers (even is weak in math), breaks equipment, and
secretly drinks alcohol, what do you think would happen to Kravets? Kicked
out of the institute and out of the dorms. And he's gone. He won't be able
to prove anything to anyone, because he's only a student. And that's the
comparative power that Hilobok will have over us when he becomes a doctor of
sciences. Have I convinced you?"
I convinced him so well that he set off immediately for the library to
take notes from open sources.
I have another justification: we have to think not only about our
research but also about defending the correct application of our discovery
some day. And we don't yet know how to do that. We have to learn.
The hell with careful justification! I mean am I alive in this world or
is it only my imagination?
May 22. It all began normally enough. A small but impressive audience
gathered in the hall of the construction bureau. Harry Haritonovich put up
several sheets of oaktag with graphs and charts on the board, struck a
picturesque pose next to them and delivered the usual twenty-minute talk.
The audience listened with the usual discomfort. Some had no idea what he
was talking about; others understood some of it; and still others understood
it all: just what this Hilobok was, and what his dissertation was on, and
why he kept it secret. But all those present thought glumly that it was none
of their business, and really, that they could not cast the first stone-the
usual sleepy thoughts that permit thousands of inept and sneaky louts into
science.
Harry finished. The chairman read critical response to the work. The
response was good (but who would submit unfavorable ones to his dissertation
defense?). The only serious unexpected thing was that Arkady Arkadievich had
written a response to the work, too. Then the official opponent took the
stage. Everyone knows what an official opponent does: in order to earn his
name, he notes several inconsistencies, several incomplete thoughts, and
"yet in sum total the work corresponds... the author is deserving of...."
Well, I won't lie about this one: the opponent from Moscow was a highly
qualified man and he mocked all the propositions of the dissertation and
made it clear that he could expose the whole thing, but he did it so
carefully and subtly that probably even Harry didn't see it. "Yet in sum
total the work deserves...."
And finally: "Who would like to speak?" Usually by this time everyone
is disgusted by the proceedings; no one wants anything; the candidate thanks
everyone-and it's over.
Laboratory head V. Krivoshein breathed in and out deeply (by then I
realized how much trouble this would cause) and raised his hand. Harry
Haritonovich was unpleasantly surprised. I spoke twenty minutes, as he had,
and in unfolding my point of view I handed the council members journals,
magazines, monographs, brochures, and so on that contained the results
Hilobok was defending without any mention of him. Then I re-created his
circuit for ... never mind for what, particularly since its only redeeming
feature was its "originality," and proved that the circuit would not work in
the frequencies of the required range. There was a hubbub in the hall.
Then appeared candidate of sciences V. Ivanov, who had specially made
the trip from Leningrad (not without a phone call from me). He clarified the
borrowed data and took apart the "original" part of the dissertation;
Valery's speech was full of erudition and subtle humor. The audience grew
noisier-and then it began!
My old friend Zhalbek Balbekovich Pshembakov tried to find out from
Harry how was it that in circuit number two... it's not worth writing about
either. Hilobok didn't know how it was, but he tried to get away with some
bull and babble. Then the other colleagues of the construction bureau
entered the fray. The last speaker was the chief engineer, a professor and
Nobel Prize winner (I won't mention his name in this context). "I had the
feeling from the first that there was something wrong here," he began.
So the first form didn't help Hilobok; they squashed his dissertation
like God can squash a turtle! Harry was a pitiful sight. Everyone was going
off to his office and he was taking down his magnificent displays, and the
stiff oaktag rolled up and hit him in the mustache. I went over to help.
"No, thank you," Hilobok muttered. "Are you satisfied? You don't write
anything and you don't let anyone else do it, either. It's an easy life.
Valentin Vasilyevich, nature has endowed you with certain gifts...."
"Sure, it's easy! My salary is half of yours, and my vacation time,
too. And I'm swamped with work and responsibilities."
"You add to your worries unnecessarily. Why did you have to get
involved in this?" Harry, rolling up his displays, gave me a threatening and
angry look. "You have to think about the institute, not just about yourself
and me. Well, this isn't the place to talk about it."
So that's the ticket. Well, it doesn't matter. I feel wonderful now. As
though I had done something that was infinitely more valuable and meaningful
than even our discovery: I squashed a viper. That means it's possible. And
not as terrible as I had expected.
Now I'm not so worried about our work's future. Problems like this can
be surmounted, too.
"But it did have an effect on his work," muttered Onisimov-Krivoshein,
watching the computer-womb. "Everything has an effect on the work."
May 29. Today I was called onto Azarov's thick carpet. He has just
gotten back from a trip.
"So you realize what you've done?"
"But, Arkady Arkadievich, the dissertation-"
"We're not talking about Harry Haritonovich's dissertation, but about
your behavior! You've undermined the institute's prestige, and in no small
way!"
"I expressed my opinion."
"Yes, but where? How? Is it so difficult to comprehend that in another
organization you are not simply an engineer trying to even a scholarly score
with someone (well, Harry told his side!) but a representative of the
Institute of Systemology! Why didn't you express your opinion at the
preliminary defense?"
"I didn't know about it."
"Nevertheless you could have told it to my replacement after the
defense. It would have been taken into account!"
(He's talking about Voltampernov-a likely story!)
"It wouldn't have been taken into account."
"I see we won't reach an agreement. What are your plans for the
future?"
"I don't intend to resign."
"I'm not asking you to. But it seems to me that you're not ready to
head a laboratory. A scientist working in a collective must bear the good of
the collective in mind and at any rate, certainly not deal it any death
blows by his behavior. I imagine that you will have trouble, at the next
qualifying session, passing to lab head. That's all. I won't keep you."
So that's how it is. The whole institute is abuzz with turkey gobbles:
"An engineer against a candidate! Keeping him from his doctorate!" Thanks to
Harry everybody thinks that I was trying to settle a score with him. They're
dragging out my old sins: the chewing out, the accident in Ivanov's lab
(Matyushin, the head janitor, is planning to sue me for damages). They
realized that I haven't turned in an annual report on my project, even
though topic 154 isn't over until this year. They say that a commission to
check on the lab's work should be set up.
My enemies shout. My friends whisper carefully, looking over their
shoulders: "You really gave it to Hilobok. The jerk deserves it. Well,
they'll get you now." And they suggest where I should tranfer. "Why don't
you intercede?" "Well, you see...." Even good old Fenya Zagrebnyak just
spreads his hands apart. "What can I do? It's not in my field."
A narrow specialist has a lousy life. Well-fed, secure, but lousy. All
his interests are concentrated on elements of passive memory, say, and not
on any old elements but only on cryotron elements, and only on film
cryotrons and only on those made of lead-tin films. The worker, the farmer,
the technician, the broad-based engineer, the teacher, and even the office
worker can apply his knowledge and skills to many activities, enterprises,
and companies, but there are only two or three institutes in the whole
Soviet Union studying those damned cryotrons. What can poor Fedya do? He has
to sit there and not make waves. In effect, a narrow speciality is a means
of self-enslavement.
That's why it's rare among us specialists to find all for one (unless
the one is Azarov). All against one is the more usual picture; that's
easier. That's why passions flare up at the first sign of insubordination.
"Anyone could be failed like that!" yelped Voltampernov-and it went on and
on.
All right, I'll bear it. I can take it. The important thing is that
it's done. I knew what I was getting into. But it's repulsive. It's
unbelievably disgusting.
Onisimov put out his cigarette and stared at the computer. Something
had changed slowly and imperceptibly in the distribution of the hoses. They
seemed to be tensed. A shudder of contractions traveled through some of
them. And-Onisimov jumped-the first drop fell loudly from the left gray hose
into the tank.
Onisimov moved the stairs over to the tank and climbed up. He put his
hand under the hose. In a minute it was full of the golden liquid. The lines
in his skin were visible through it, as if under a magnifying glass. He
concentrated, and the skin disappeared, revealing the red muscles, the white
bones, the tendons.... "Ah, if they had only known how to do this," he
sighed. "The experiment wouldn't have gone like this. They didn't know. And
it had an effect."
He let the liquid splash into the tank, got back down to the floor, and
washed his hand in the sink. The patter of drops from all the hoses rang
merrily and springlike in the lab.
"Work! You're strong, computer," Onisimov-Krivoshein said respectfully.
"As strong as life."
He obviously didn't want to leave the laboratory. But he glanced at his
watch, put on his jacket, and hurried.
"Good morning, Matvei Apollonovich!" Hilobok greeted him rapturously.
"Working already? I've been waiting for you. I wanted to report something,"
he whispered, bringing his mustache close to Onisimov's ear, "Yesterday
that. . . woman of his, Elena Ivanovna Kolomiets, came to his apartment,
took something, and left. And there was someone else in there, too. The
light was on all night."
"I see. You did the right thing in telling me. As they say,
jurisprudence will not forget you."
"Oh, any time, it's my duty!"
"Duty aside," Onisimov said in a stern voice, "aren't you motivated by
other, stronger motives, comrade Hilobok?"
"What motives?"
"For instance the fact that Krivoshein ruined your doctoral
dissertation defense."
Harry Haritonovich's face sagged for a moment and then quickly took on
a look of injury at the hands of humanity.
"Some people! Someone already had time to report that to you. What kind
of people work here, I ask you, tsk, tsk? Don't be silly, Matvei
Apollonovich. How could you doubt the sincerity of my motives! Krivoshein
didn't have as tremendous an influence at the defense as you might have been
told. There were more serious experts there than him, and many approved of
it, but he, obviously, was jealous, and well, they suggested I make some
changes, nothing terrible. I'll be up for it again soon. But, of course, if
you suspect me, that's up to you. Then check things out for yourself. It was
my duty to tell you, but now... good day!"
"Good day."
Harry Haritonovich left furious: Krivoshein was getting him from the
other world, too!
"You really let him have it, comrade captain!" the guard said
approvingly.
Onisimov didn't hear. He was watching Hilobok leave.
It leads to one thing. But the question that comes up willy-nilly is
"Is it worth it?"
Be straight, Krivoshein: you can kick the bucket in this experiment.
It's that simple, based on your own statistics of success and failure in
your experiments. Science and methodology aside, things never work the way
they should the first time-that's the old law. And a mistake in this
experiment is more than a spoiled sample.
I mean basically I'm climbing into the tank as a narrow specialist in
this work. That's my speciality, like cryotron film is for Fenya Zagrebnyak.
But I don't have to get in there-nobody's forcing me. Funny, I have to get
into a medium that easily dissolves live organisms simply because my
specialty worked out badly!
For people? The hell with them! Do I need more than the rest? I'll just
live quietly for myself. And it'll be good.
And everything will be clear-with the lowest, coldest clarity of a
scoundrel. And I'll have to spend my life justifying my retreat by saying
that all people are like that, no better than me, and even worse, everyone
lives only for himself. And I'll have to drop all my hopes and dreams of
better things quickly so that they don't remind me. I sold out! I sold out
and I have no right to expect anything better from anyone else.
And then it will get really cold in the world....
Golovorezov was asking him something.
"What?"
"I said, will my replacement be here soon, comrade captain? I came on
at twenty-two hundred."
"Didn't you get enough sleep?" Onisimov squinted at him merrily.
"You'll have to stand it another hour and a half or so. Then you'll be
relieved, I promise. I'll take the keys with me. That's better. Don't let
anyone in here!"
Einstein had a boss, and Faraday had one, and Popov had one ... but
somehow no one ever remembers them. Now that's a violation of subordination!
-K. Prutkov-enzhener, Thought 40
The window of Azarov's office opened on the institute grounds. He could
see the crowns of the lindens and the gray-glassed parallelepiped of the new
building rising above them. Arkady Arkadievich never tired of the view. In
the mornings it helped him chase away his neurasthenia and gave him energy.
But today, looking out the window, he merely frowned and turned away.
Yesterday's feeling to loneliness and vague guilt hadn't passed. "Eh!"
Azarov tried to wave it away. "Whenever anyone dies, you always feel guilty
just because you're still alive. Especially if the person was younger than
you. And loneliness in science is natural and usual for anyone working in
the creative end. Each one of us only knows his own field. It's hard to
understand one another. That's why we often replace mutual understanding
with an unspoken agreement not to pry into other people's business. But what
had he known? What was he doing?"
"May I? Good morning, Arkady Arkadievich!" Hilobok moved across the
carpet, exuding cologne as he walked.
Onisimov's subtle hint had worried Harry Haritonovich. It occurred to
him that someone might think that he was evening the score with Krivoshein
over the dissertation by poisoning him to death. "It's only natural that
when someone is killed they look for a killer. And around here, they could
easily,..." the assistant professor thought, paranoid. He wasn't quite sure
who or what he had to be afraid of, but he knew he had better be afraid, to
keep them from getting a jump on him.
"So, Arkady Arkadievich, I've prepared a draft of an order regarding
the incident with Krivoshein, so that everything about him ... and this
incident would be formulated properly. There are only two points here: in
regards to a commission and in regards to the closing of the laboratory.
Please read it over, Arkady Arkadievich, and if you have no objections-"
Hilobok leaned over the polished desk and placed a typewritten page in
front of the academician.
"I've entered the following as members of the commission to investigate
the incident: comrade Bezmerny, safety engineer-it's just up his alley,
heh-heh-Ippolit Illarionovich Voltampernov, as a specialist in electronic
technology; Aglaya Mitrofanovna Garazh, as a member of the local committee
on labor defense; Lyudmila Ivanova from the office as the technical
secretary of the commission ... and well, I'll head it myself if you don't
mind, Arkady Arkadievich. I'll take this burden on, too, heh-heh!" He looked
up carefully.
Arkady Arkadievich was examining his faithful scientific secretary. The
man, as usual, was extremely well shaven and groomed, his narrow red tie
streaming down a starched shirt front like blood from a throat slit by a
collar, but for some reason the sight and the sound of Harry Haritonovich's
mellow voice elicited deep revulsion in the academician. "That light
trembling before me . . . that phony subordinate dumbness. You're
transparent, Harry Haritonovich, through and through! Maybe that's why I
keep you around, because you are transparent? Because I can't expect
anything unexpected or great from you? Because your goals are obvious? When
the goals of a functioning system are understood, it's a thousand times
easier to foresee its behavior than when the goals are masked-there is a law
like that in systemology. Or is it just that I enjoy a daily comparison with
you? Maybe that's why I feel this loneliness-because I surround myself with
people who are easy to tower over?"
"And the second point is on the ending, that is, the stopping of work
in the New Systems Laboratory during the work of the commission And then
after the commission we'll see more clearly what to do with the lab: to
disband it or turn it over to another department."
"The work there had stopped of its own accord, Harry Haritonovich,"
Azarov laughed sadly. "There's no one to work there now. And there's no one
to disband." He pictured Krivoshein's corpse again with its bulging eyes and
pained grin. The academician rubbed his temples and sighed. "In principle I
accept your idea for a commission, but its staff has to be changed
slightly." He pulled the sheet of paper over and took out his pen. "We can
leave Ippolit Illarionovich, and the engineer on safety procedures, and we
need a technical secretary, too. But not the rest. I'll head the commission
myself, taking on, as you put it, this burden myself, to spare you. I want
to find out what Krivoshein has been doing."
"And . . . what about me?" the scientific secretary asked in a
crestfallen voice.
"And you take care of your own duties, Harry Haritonovich." Hilobok
felt very ill: his fears were being justified. "He's estranging me!" He was
afraid now and hating the dead Krivoshein much more than he had ever hated
the live one.
"There! He's really making trouble again, isn't he?" Hilobok spoke,
cocking his head to one side. "Look at all the troubles now! Ah, Arkady
Arkadievich, don't you think I can see how you're taking this? Don't you
think I understand? You shouldn't pull yourself away from your work and get
all upset by this. The whole city will be talking, saying that Azarov had
another one at the Institute ... and that he's trying to cover it up-you
know what people are like now. That Krivoshein, that Valentin Vasilyevich!
Didn't I tell you, Arkady Arkadievich, didn't I foretell that he would be
only trouble and danger! You shouldn't have supported his project, Arkady
Arkadievich!"
Azarov listened, frowned, and felt his brain being overpowered by the
usual hopeless numbness-like his neurasthenia coming back. This numbness
always hit him after a prolonged conversation with Hilobok and forced him to
agree with him. Now his head was buzzing with the thought that it probably
takes more mental exertion to withstand babble like this than it does to do
mathematical research.
"Why don't I fire him?" The idea popped into his mind. "Throw him out
of the institute and that's that. This is humiliating. Yes, but with what
cause? He manages his responsibilities. He's got eighteen works published,
ten years' seniority. He passed the promotion test (of course, there was no
one else taking it at the time)-there's nothing to complain about! And I
gave him that favorable response on his dissertation like a fool. Should I
fire him for stupidity and ineptness? Well... that would certainly be a new
precedent in science."
"He put in orders, used up materials and equipment, took up a whole
building, worked for two years-and here you go, this calamity is all yours!"
Hilobok was whipping himself up. "And at my defense ... it wasn't just me
that he shamed. I'm not that important. But he shamed you, Arkady
Arkadievich, too! If I had my way, Arkady Arkadievich, I'd give that
Krivoshein plenty for what he did to manage, I mean managed to did, I mean,
to do, damn it!" He leaned over the desk, his brown eyes flashing with
intense hatred. "It's too bad that we award only honors posthumously, write
pleasant obituaries and the like. De mortis aut bene aut nihil, you know!
But that Krivoshein should be reprimanded posthumously, so that others would
learn a lesson! And a severe reprimand! And it should be entered-"
"-on the tombstone. That's an idea!" a voice added behind him. "What a
viper you are, Hilobok."
Harry Haritonovich straightened up so fast it looked as though someone
had given him a shot of rock salt in the rear. Azarov looked up: Krivoshein
stood in the doorway.
"Hello, Arkady Arkadievich, forgive me for showing up without an
appointment. May I come in?"
"H-he... hello, Valentin Vasilyevich!" Azarov stood up. His heart was
pounding wildly. "Hello... oof, I see you're not... I'm happy to see you in
good health! Come in, please!"
Krivoshein shook the barely proffered hand (the academician was
relieved to see the hand was warm) and turned to Hilobok. Harry's mouth
opened and closed noiselessly.
"Harry Haritonovich, would you please leave us alone? I would be very
grateful if you did."
"Yes, Harry Haritonovich, go," Azarov said.
Hilobok backed to the door, bumping his head soundly on the wall, felt
for the doorknob, and rushed out.
Gathering his wits about him, Arkady Arkadievich took a deep breath to
calm his heart, sat behind his desk, and suddenly felt irritated. "Was I the
butt of a practical joke?" he thought.
"Would you be so kind, Valentin Vasilyevich, to explain what all this
means? What is this business with your, forgive me, corpse, the skeleton,
and so on?"
"Nothing criminal, Arkady Arkadievich-may I?" Krivoshein sank into the
leather armchair by the desk. "The self-organizing computer, about which I
spoke at the scientific council last summer, actually did develop... and it
developed to the point that it tried to create a person. Me. And, as they
say, the first pancake is a lump."
"Why wasn't I kept informed?" Azarov asked angrily, remembering the
humiliating conversation the day before yesterday with the investigator and
the other experiences of the last two days. "Why?" Krivoshein flew into a
rage.
"Damn it!" He leaped forward, banging his fist on the soft arm of the
chair. "Why don't you ask how we did it? How we managed to do it? Why are
you more concerned with personal prestige, subordination, the relationship
of others to your directorial ego?"
Krivoshein's announcement had reached Azarov in its most general form:
he had gotten some result. Heads of departments and labs were always telling
Azarov about their results, sitting in that very leather chair. And it was
only as a delayed reaction that Arkady Arkadievich began to realize just
what kind of a result it was. The world shuddered and became unreal for a
moment. "Impossible! No, that's just the point, it is possible! Now
everything falls into place and I see." The academician spoke in a different
tone. "Of course, this is ... monumental. My congratulations, Valentin
Vasilyevich. And... my apologies. I jumped the gun; it didn't come out
right. A thousand pardons! This is a major . . . invention, even though the
idea of communicating and synthesizing the information in man has been
expressed by the late Norbert Weiner. [Krivoshein chuckled.] Of course this
doesn't diminish... I remember your idea, and the day before yesterday I saw
a few... results of your work. Since I am quite well versed in systemology
myself [Krivoshein chuckled again], I, naturally, am prepared to accept what
you've told me. Naturally, I congratulate you from the bottom of my heart!
But you must admit, Valentin Vasilyevich, that this happy event for science
could have been less worrisome and even less scandalous if you had kept me
informed of your progress over the past year."
"It's hard to get in to see you, Arkady Arkadievich."
"You'll understand if I don't find that a substantial excuse, Valentin
Vasilyevich!" Azarov frowned. "I'll admit that the procedure of getting in
to see me might be offensive to you (even though all the workers at the
institute have to submit to it at one time or another). But you could have
telephoned me, left me a note (not necessarily a form in triplicate,
either), or visited me at my apartment, you know!"
Arkady Arkadievich couldn't repress the hurt. "So... you work and
work..." kept spinning through his mind. For a long time, since the days
when his unsuccessful experiment with helium turned into the discovery of
superfluidity in the hands of a colleague, Arkady Arkadievich had secretly
hoped to see, find, and understand something new in nature and the world. He
dreamed about a discovery with anticipation and trepidation, like a boy
about to lose his virginity! But he had no luck. Others did, but not him! He
had high-level, needed, much-valued and honored work to his credit, but no
discovery-the height of comprehension.
And now in the institute that had been entrusted to him a discovery had
been made without his knowledge, a discovery so huge that it dwarfed all of
his work and the work of the entire institute! They managed without him.
More than that! It seemed that they avoided him. "How so? Did he think I was
dishonorable? What have I done to make him think that?" Academician Azarov
hadn't had to experience such strong feelings in a long time.
"Hmmm . . . while sharing your joy for this discovery, Valentin
Vasilyevich," he went on, "I still am worried and saddened by your attitude.
This may shock you, but I'm concerned not as a scientist or as your
director, but as a human being: why like this? Surely you could see that my
knowing about the project would do it no harm, but could only help: you
would have been guaranteed direction, consultations.
If I had felt that you needed more workers or equipment, you would have
had that, too. Then why, Valentin Vasilyevich? I'm not even deigning to
think that you were worried about your inventor's patents...."
"But that didn't keep you from expressing the thought," Krivoshein
laughed sadly. "Well, all right. In general, I'm glad that you're distressed
primarily as a human being; that gives me hope. For a while, we debated
whether we should tell you about the work or not; we tried to meet with you.
We couldn't make contact. And then we decided that at that stage of the
project it was just as well." He looked up at Azarov. "We didn't have much
faith in you, Arkady Arkadievich. Do you know why? If for no other reason
than that even now, instead of finding out more about the work, you tried to
put the discovery and its credit where you thought it belonged: Weiner
said.... What does Weiner's 'television' idea have to do with this? We've
done it completely differently. And you know there wouldn't have been any
consultations: I can't see you, an academician, displaying your ignorance in
front of subordinate engineers. Another thing also: while you know very well
that a researcher's value is in no way determined by his degrees or title,
you nevertheless have never missed a chance to promote degreed and titled
people into positions that others might have filled better. You think I
didn't know from the start what my part would be in creating the new
laboratory? Do you think that your warning to me after the scandal with
Hilobok didn't affect my last experiment? It did. That's why I was rushing,
taking risks. Do you think that my attitude toward you isn't affected by the
fact that in your institute orders for exhibitions and other public
relations nonsense always take precedence over things that are necessary for
our work?"
"Now you're getting awfully petty, Valentin Vasilyevich!" Azarov said
in irritation.
"Those were the petty things that I had to judge you by; there was
nothing else. Or such a petty thing as the fact that a... a... well, that
Hilobok sets the tone for the institute-whether through your disinterest or
active support, I don't know. Of course, it's easy to feel intellectually
superior next to Hilobok, even in a steam bath!"
Color rushed to Azarov's face: it's one thing when you realize
something for yourself, and another when a subordinate tells you about it.
Krivoshein realized he had gone too far and modified his tone.
"Please understand me correctly, Arkady Arkadievich. We had wanted you
to participate in our work-and that's why I'm telling you this, not to
insult you. There's much that we still don't understand in this discovery:
man is a complicated system, and the computer that creates him is even more
so. There's work here for thousands of experiments and studies. And that's
our dream, to attract wise, knowledgeable, talented men to the project. But,
you see, it's not enough to be a scientist for this work."
"I hope that you will familiarize me more thoroughly with this work."
Azarov was gradually getting himself under control, and his sense of humor
and superiority was returning. "Perhaps I will be of some service, as a
scientist and as a human being."
"Please God! We'll familiarize you with it... probably. I'm not alone
in this, and can't make decisions on my own. But we will. We need you."
"Valentin Vasilyevich," the academician said, raising his shoulders,
"excuse me, but are you planning to decide with your lab assistant whether
or not you will allow me near your work? As far as I know, there is no one
else in your lab?"
"Yes, and him too. Oh, my God!" Krivoshein sighed. "You are willing to
accept the possibility that a computer can create man, but you can't accept
the possibility that a lab assistant might know more about it than you! By
the way, Michael Faraday was a lab assistant, too. No one remembers that any
more. Arkady Arkadievich, you must prepare yourself for the fact that when
you join our project-and I hope that you will!-there won't be any of that
academic 'you are our fathers, we are your children' bull. We'll work, and
that's it. None of us is a genius, but none of us is Hilobok, either."
He looked at Azarov and grew pale, amazed: the academician was smiling!
It wasn't one of his photogenic, only for the press, smiles and not one of
the sly smiles that accompanied a witticism during a council or seminar. It
was simple and broad. It wasn't very attractive because of all the wrinkles
it created, but it was very nice.
"Listen," said Azarov, "you've really shaken me up here, but... well,
all right. I'm very glad that you're alive." (The reader is reminded that
this is science fiction.)
"Me, too," was the only reply Krivoshein could muster.
"What about the police now?"
"I think that I can soothe them, even if I won't overjoy them."
Krivoshein said good-bye and left. Arkady Arkadievich sat at his desk,
drumming his fingers on it.
"Hmmmmmm," he said.
And that was all he said.
"What else do I have to take care of?" Krivoshein thought as he stood
at the bus stop. "Oh, that's what!"
May 3 0. It's interesting to think about: I was doing thirty-five, my
usual town speed and that idiot in the green Moskvich was blocking the
highway-his speed in relation to the highway was zero. And his speed across
the road wasn't much faster, either. He drove as if he were driving a
tractor. Who lets jackasses like that drive? If you're crossing the highway
against all the rules, then do it fast! But he would drive a yard, then
stop. By the time I realized the Moskvich was blocking my way, I didn't even
have time to brake.
Victor Kravets, who went out there to pick up the remains of the
motorcycle, still shakes his head over it:
"You were lucky. I can't believe it! If you had been doing forty-five,
I would be making a memorial stone out of the remains and writing on the
license plate, Here lies Krivoshein, engineer and motorcyclist!' "
Yes, but if I had been doing forty-five, I wouldn't have crashed into
him!
It's interesting what circumstances come into play in a fatal accident.
If I hadn't stopped in the woods for a smoke and listened to the cuckoo
("Cuckoo, cuckoo, how many years will I live?"-it cuckooed at least fifty
years), if I had taken two or three turns a little faster or slower-our
paths wouldn't have crossed. But this way-on a straight flat road in
excellent visibility-I plowed into the only car in my path!
The only thing I had time to think was "Cuckoo, cuckoo, how long will I
live?" as I flew over the bike.
I got up myself. The Moskvich's side was bashed in. The frightened
driver was wiping blood from his unshaven face. I had broken the windshield
with my elbow. Served him right, the jerk! My poor bike was on the road. It
was much shorter now. The headlight, front wheel, axle, and frame and tank
were smashed, squashed, destroyed.
So I went from seventeen yards per second to zero in one yard. And my
body experienced fifteen g's. Ouch!
The human body is an excellent machine! In less than a tenth of a
second my body had time to adjust to the best position for taking the crash:
elbow and shoulder first. And Valery tried to prove that man had nothing on
technology! No one's proved that yet! If you translate the damage done to
the motorcycle into human terms, it lost its head, broke its front
extremities, chest, and spine. It was such a good bike; it loved speed.
Of course, my right shoulder and chest took more of a beating. It's
hard to lift my right arm. I guess I broke some ribs.
Well, it's for the best. Now I'll have something to repair in the
liquid circuit of the computer-womb. And not external, but inside my body.
In that sense, the Moskvich was very handy. All for science.
"Write out a pass for taking out a body." "Where's the body?" "Coming
up." (Shoots himself.) "Fine! But who's going to carry it?"
-A legend from Singapore
Policeman Gayevoy was sitting in the duty room, suffering from love and
writing a letter on a complaint form. "Hello, Valya! This is Aleksandr
Gayevoy writing to you. I don't know if you remember me or not, but I can't
forget how you looked at me near the dance floor with the help of your black
and beautiful eyes. The moon was big and concentric. Dear Valya! Come to T.
Shevchenko Park tomorrow night. I'll be on duty there until twenty-four
hundred-"
Onisimov came in, his eyebrows furrowed into a strict look. Gayevoy
jumped up, dropping his chair, and blushed.
"Has Kravets been taken care of?"
"Yes sir, comrade captain! He was brought in at nine-thirty in
accordance with your orders. He's in a cell."
"Take me there."
Victor Kravets was sitting in a small, high-ceilinged room on a bench,
smoking a cigarette, blowing the smoke into a sunbeam that came through the
barred window. There was a three-day stubble on his cheeks. He squinted at
appreciate me. You have no idea, Val, how I needed the warmth and comfort of
a relationship! But I didn't get warm near you. You don't love me very much
either. You don't belong to me, I can see that. You have another love,
science!" She laughed angrily. "You've invented all sorts of toys for
yourselves: science, technology, politics, war. And women are just something
on the side. Well, I don't want to be something on the side. It's well
known: women are fools. We take everything seriously. We know no bounds in
love and can't do a thing with ourselves...." Her voice trembled and she
turned away. "I would have said all this to you anyway. I was wrong again!"
Actually, there's no need for details. I threw her out. I'm sitting
here over my diary.
So, it was all planned. Don't love a handsome man, love a crummy one.
And I wanted to create a big family....
I feel cold. Oh, so cold!
Lena's not mercenary. Then what is she? Actually, she was right: I knew
that myself. And how! But this light relationship suited me before. "Will it
do?"-as they ask in the store, offering you margarine instead of butter.
Nothing happens in life to no purpose. I'm the one who changed, who
realized things in time, and she's still the same. I fell for a storybook
illusion, what a jerk. I wanted to get warm.
And that's it. There will never be anything in my life. I'll never find
anyone like Lena. I'm not willing to go in for one-night stands.
Lena didn't want to become my widow.
It's cold....
We've lost spontaneity, the ability to follow our feelings, to believe
on faith because we believe, to love because we're in love. It's possible
that it happened because everyone got burned more than once, or because in
the theater and movies we see how those feelings are manufactured, or
because life is so complicated and everything must be thought out and
planned-I don't know. "Tenderness, in a Taylor series expansion...." I've
been expansive enough.
Now we have to understand with our reason just how important solid,
strong feelings are in human life. Who knows, maybe it's good that it has to
be proven. And it will be proven. Then people will develop a new naturalness
of feeling, strengthened by reason, and they'll understand that without
feelings there is no life.
And for now... it's cold.
Ah, Lena, Lena, my poor frightened girl! Now, I think, I really do love
you.
Investigator Onisimov reached the New Systems Laboratory at 8:30 in the
morning. The guard on duty, Golovorezov, was sitting in the sun on the
porch, leaning against the door with his cap over his eyes. Flies were
crawling around his open mouth and on his cheeks. The guard moved his facial
muscles, but didn't wake up.
"You'll get a bad burn on duty, comrade guard," Onisimov said sternly.
The guard woke immediately, fixed his cap, and stood up.
"Everything quiet here, comrade captain. There were no incidents in the
night."
'I see. So you have the keys?"
"Yes sir." He pulled the keys from his pocket. "You gave them to me,
and I have them."
"Don't let anyone in."
Onisimov unlocked the door and shut it behind him. He found his
bearings in the dark hallway easily, maneuvering among the boxes and crates,
and reached the door to the lab.
He looked around carefully in the laboratory. There were gelatinous
puddles on the floor, their dried edges curling up. The hoses of the
computer-womb hung limply from the bottles and flasks. The lights were out
on the control panel. The switches on the electric panel were sticking out
sideways. Onisimov inhaled the stale air carefully and turned his head:
"Aha!" Then he took off his blue jacket, hung it neatly on a chair back,
rolled up his sleeves, and got to work.
First of all he rinsed the teflon tank with water, stood it back up on
the floor, and removed all the hoses and conductors from it. Then he
followed the power cable and found the burnt-out part that had shorted,
eaten away by acids, near the wall board. He took rubber gloves from the
drawer, got the right tools from the cabinet, went back to the cable and
cleaned and patched it up with insulated tape.
A few minutes later it was all done. Onisimov, taking a breather,
stretched and turned on the electricity. The transformers in the TsVM-12
began humming. The air vents rustled, and the exhaust fan whined, picking up
speed. The green, red, blue, and yellow lights on the control panel blinked
aimlessly.
Onisimov, biting his lower lip in anxiety, got a full flask of
distilled water and added it to all the flasks; he got Krivoshein's lab
journal from the desk, and deciphering the notations, started adding
reagents to the bottles and flasks. When he finished all this, he stood in
the middle of the room expectantly.
The trembling light flitted from one end of the control panel to the
other, and up and down and down and up-tearing around like a maddened bulb
on an electronic billboard. But gradually the random movement began forming
a pattern of broken lines. The green vertical lines were shaded with blue
and yellow lights. The red lights blinked more slowly: soon they went out
completely. Onisimov kept waiting for the "Stop!" signal to go on at the top
of the panel. Five minutes, ten, fifteen... the signal didn't come on.
"I think it's working." Onisimov rubbed his face with his hand.
Now he had to wait. So as not to sit by idly, he filled a pail with
water and washed the floor. Then he taped up the torn wires of Monomakh's
Crown, read the notes in the journal, got together some more reagents and
poured them in. There was nothing else to do.
He heard footsteps in the hall. Onisimov turned toward the door
sharply. Golovorezov came in.
"Comrade captain, scientific secretary Hilobok is out there. He wants
to come in. He says he has something to tell you. Should I let him in?"
"No. Let him wait. I have to talk to him, too."
"Yes, sir."
"Well, I guess I'll have to talk to Harry," Onisimov chuckled. "The
perfect time to remind him of recent events."
May 17. But Harry Haritonovich bent the truth when he said he didn't
have time to write his dissertation! He lied. Yesterday, it turns out, he
had his preliminary defense of his doctoral at a closed session of our
scientific council. We do what so many organizations do: before letting one
of our people out into the world, we listen to him in our private circle.
His official defense will take place in a few days at Lena's construction
project bureau.
Oh, Harry isn't lying for nothing! There's something going on.
May 18. Today I knocked at the window next to which a local institute
poet, who wished to remain anonymous, had written in pencil:
Be worthy of the first form.
The enemy does not sleep!
Major Pronin.
I was worthy. That's why Joahann Johannovich let me into the closed
reading room and gave me a copy of the dissertation of technical sciences
candidate H. H. Hilobok to attain the degree of doctor of technical sciences
on the top of... well, I can't write about that.
Well, brother.... First of all, the topic deals totally with the
development of the blocks of memory that Valery and I had done long ago, and
it looks like Hilobok was at least the inventor and director of the project;
it doesn't come out and say so, but you can read it between the lines.
Secondly, he allowed himself free improvisation in part of the explanation
and interpretation of the results, and made major mistakes. Thirdly, he has
long-proven facts, determined by foreign systemologists and electronics
people, introduced by "It has been determined by experiments that...." How
could the scientific council let that get by? It's May, and half the people
are on business trips or vacation.
No, he won't get away with this.
May 19. "Do you know math?" Kravets asked when I told him about it and
my plans for it.
"Yes, why?"
"Then add it up: two days to prepare for participation in the defense,
plus a day for the defense, plus a month of hassles afterward. You're not a
baby. You know you won't get by with a joke like this. What's more
important: you'll be squandering a month of our work, the results of which
will influence the world more than all the technology extant today, or some
lousy dissertation, which won't affect anything? One more or less in the
world, no difference."
"Hmm ... and now I'll show you a different math. You and I are
identical people with identical ability, and in some ways you've surpassed
me. But if I were to go over to that Harry Hilobok and, without delving into
particulars, tell him that student Kravets is stupid, hasn't the slightest
understanding of computers (even is weak in math), breaks equipment, and
secretly drinks alcohol, what do you think would happen to Kravets? Kicked
out of the institute and out of the dorms. And he's gone. He won't be able
to prove anything to anyone, because he's only a student. And that's the
comparative power that Hilobok will have over us when he becomes a doctor of
sciences. Have I convinced you?"
I convinced him so well that he set off immediately for the library to
take notes from open sources.
I have another justification: we have to think not only about our
research but also about defending the correct application of our discovery
some day. And we don't yet know how to do that. We have to learn.
The hell with careful justification! I mean am I alive in this world or
is it only my imagination?
May 22. It all began normally enough. A small but impressive audience
gathered in the hall of the construction bureau. Harry Haritonovich put up
several sheets of oaktag with graphs and charts on the board, struck a
picturesque pose next to them and delivered the usual twenty-minute talk.
The audience listened with the usual discomfort. Some had no idea what he
was talking about; others understood some of it; and still others understood
it all: just what this Hilobok was, and what his dissertation was on, and
why he kept it secret. But all those present thought glumly that it was none
of their business, and really, that they could not cast the first stone-the
usual sleepy thoughts that permit thousands of inept and sneaky louts into
science.
Harry finished. The chairman read critical response to the work. The
response was good (but who would submit unfavorable ones to his dissertation
defense?). The only serious unexpected thing was that Arkady Arkadievich had
written a response to the work, too. Then the official opponent took the
stage. Everyone knows what an official opponent does: in order to earn his
name, he notes several inconsistencies, several incomplete thoughts, and
"yet in sum total the work corresponds... the author is deserving of...."
Well, I won't lie about this one: the opponent from Moscow was a highly
qualified man and he mocked all the propositions of the dissertation and
made it clear that he could expose the whole thing, but he did it so
carefully and subtly that probably even Harry didn't see it. "Yet in sum
total the work deserves...."
And finally: "Who would like to speak?" Usually by this time everyone
is disgusted by the proceedings; no one wants anything; the candidate thanks
everyone-and it's over.
Laboratory head V. Krivoshein breathed in and out deeply (by then I
realized how much trouble this would cause) and raised his hand. Harry
Haritonovich was unpleasantly surprised. I spoke twenty minutes, as he had,
and in unfolding my point of view I handed the council members journals,
magazines, monographs, brochures, and so on that contained the results
Hilobok was defending without any mention of him. Then I re-created his
circuit for ... never mind for what, particularly since its only redeeming
feature was its "originality," and proved that the circuit would not work in
the frequencies of the required range. There was a hubbub in the hall.
Then appeared candidate of sciences V. Ivanov, who had specially made
the trip from Leningrad (not without a phone call from me). He clarified the
borrowed data and took apart the "original" part of the dissertation;
Valery's speech was full of erudition and subtle humor. The audience grew
noisier-and then it began!
My old friend Zhalbek Balbekovich Pshembakov tried to find out from
Harry how was it that in circuit number two... it's not worth writing about
either. Hilobok didn't know how it was, but he tried to get away with some
bull and babble. Then the other colleagues of the construction bureau
entered the fray. The last speaker was the chief engineer, a professor and
Nobel Prize winner (I won't mention his name in this context). "I had the
feeling from the first that there was something wrong here," he began.
So the first form didn't help Hilobok; they squashed his dissertation
like God can squash a turtle! Harry was a pitiful sight. Everyone was going
off to his office and he was taking down his magnificent displays, and the
stiff oaktag rolled up and hit him in the mustache. I went over to help.
"No, thank you," Hilobok muttered. "Are you satisfied? You don't write
anything and you don't let anyone else do it, either. It's an easy life.
Valentin Vasilyevich, nature has endowed you with certain gifts...."
"Sure, it's easy! My salary is half of yours, and my vacation time,
too. And I'm swamped with work and responsibilities."
"You add to your worries unnecessarily. Why did you have to get
involved in this?" Harry, rolling up his displays, gave me a threatening and
angry look. "You have to think about the institute, not just about yourself
and me. Well, this isn't the place to talk about it."
So that's the ticket. Well, it doesn't matter. I feel wonderful now. As
though I had done something that was infinitely more valuable and meaningful
than even our discovery: I squashed a viper. That means it's possible. And
not as terrible as I had expected.
Now I'm not so worried about our work's future. Problems like this can
be surmounted, too.
"But it did have an effect on his work," muttered Onisimov-Krivoshein,
watching the computer-womb. "Everything has an effect on the work."
May 29. Today I was called onto Azarov's thick carpet. He has just
gotten back from a trip.
"So you realize what you've done?"
"But, Arkady Arkadievich, the dissertation-"
"We're not talking about Harry Haritonovich's dissertation, but about
your behavior! You've undermined the institute's prestige, and in no small
way!"
"I expressed my opinion."
"Yes, but where? How? Is it so difficult to comprehend that in another
organization you are not simply an engineer trying to even a scholarly score
with someone (well, Harry told his side!) but a representative of the
Institute of Systemology! Why didn't you express your opinion at the
preliminary defense?"
"I didn't know about it."
"Nevertheless you could have told it to my replacement after the
defense. It would have been taken into account!"
(He's talking about Voltampernov-a likely story!)
"It wouldn't have been taken into account."
"I see we won't reach an agreement. What are your plans for the
future?"
"I don't intend to resign."
"I'm not asking you to. But it seems to me that you're not ready to
head a laboratory. A scientist working in a collective must bear the good of
the collective in mind and at any rate, certainly not deal it any death
blows by his behavior. I imagine that you will have trouble, at the next
qualifying session, passing to lab head. That's all. I won't keep you."
So that's how it is. The whole institute is abuzz with turkey gobbles:
"An engineer against a candidate! Keeping him from his doctorate!" Thanks to
Harry everybody thinks that I was trying to settle a score with him. They're
dragging out my old sins: the chewing out, the accident in Ivanov's lab
(Matyushin, the head janitor, is planning to sue me for damages). They
realized that I haven't turned in an annual report on my project, even
though topic 154 isn't over until this year. They say that a commission to
check on the lab's work should be set up.
My enemies shout. My friends whisper carefully, looking over their
shoulders: "You really gave it to Hilobok. The jerk deserves it. Well,
they'll get you now." And they suggest where I should tranfer. "Why don't
you intercede?" "Well, you see...." Even good old Fenya Zagrebnyak just
spreads his hands apart. "What can I do? It's not in my field."
A narrow specialist has a lousy life. Well-fed, secure, but lousy. All
his interests are concentrated on elements of passive memory, say, and not
on any old elements but only on cryotron elements, and only on film
cryotrons and only on those made of lead-tin films. The worker, the farmer,
the technician, the broad-based engineer, the teacher, and even the office
worker can apply his knowledge and skills to many activities, enterprises,
and companies, but there are only two or three institutes in the whole
Soviet Union studying those damned cryotrons. What can poor Fedya do? He has
to sit there and not make waves. In effect, a narrow speciality is a means
of self-enslavement.
That's why it's rare among us specialists to find all for one (unless
the one is Azarov). All against one is the more usual picture; that's
easier. That's why passions flare up at the first sign of insubordination.
"Anyone could be failed like that!" yelped Voltampernov-and it went on and
on.
All right, I'll bear it. I can take it. The important thing is that
it's done. I knew what I was getting into. But it's repulsive. It's
unbelievably disgusting.
Onisimov put out his cigarette and stared at the computer. Something
had changed slowly and imperceptibly in the distribution of the hoses. They
seemed to be tensed. A shudder of contractions traveled through some of
them. And-Onisimov jumped-the first drop fell loudly from the left gray hose
into the tank.
Onisimov moved the stairs over to the tank and climbed up. He put his
hand under the hose. In a minute it was full of the golden liquid. The lines
in his skin were visible through it, as if under a magnifying glass. He
concentrated, and the skin disappeared, revealing the red muscles, the white
bones, the tendons.... "Ah, if they had only known how to do this," he
sighed. "The experiment wouldn't have gone like this. They didn't know. And
it had an effect."
He let the liquid splash into the tank, got back down to the floor, and
washed his hand in the sink. The patter of drops from all the hoses rang
merrily and springlike in the lab.
"Work! You're strong, computer," Onisimov-Krivoshein said respectfully.
"As strong as life."
He obviously didn't want to leave the laboratory. But he glanced at his
watch, put on his jacket, and hurried.
"Good morning, Matvei Apollonovich!" Hilobok greeted him rapturously.
"Working already? I've been waiting for you. I wanted to report something,"
he whispered, bringing his mustache close to Onisimov's ear, "Yesterday
that. . . woman of his, Elena Ivanovna Kolomiets, came to his apartment,
took something, and left. And there was someone else in there, too. The
light was on all night."
"I see. You did the right thing in telling me. As they say,
jurisprudence will not forget you."
"Oh, any time, it's my duty!"
"Duty aside," Onisimov said in a stern voice, "aren't you motivated by
other, stronger motives, comrade Hilobok?"
"What motives?"
"For instance the fact that Krivoshein ruined your doctoral
dissertation defense."
Harry Haritonovich's face sagged for a moment and then quickly took on
a look of injury at the hands of humanity.
"Some people! Someone already had time to report that to you. What kind
of people work here, I ask you, tsk, tsk? Don't be silly, Matvei
Apollonovich. How could you doubt the sincerity of my motives! Krivoshein
didn't have as tremendous an influence at the defense as you might have been
told. There were more serious experts there than him, and many approved of
it, but he, obviously, was jealous, and well, they suggested I make some
changes, nothing terrible. I'll be up for it again soon. But, of course, if
you suspect me, that's up to you. Then check things out for yourself. It was
my duty to tell you, but now... good day!"
"Good day."
Harry Haritonovich left furious: Krivoshein was getting him from the
other world, too!
"You really let him have it, comrade captain!" the guard said
approvingly.
Onisimov didn't hear. He was watching Hilobok leave.
It leads to one thing. But the question that comes up willy-nilly is
"Is it worth it?"
Be straight, Krivoshein: you can kick the bucket in this experiment.
It's that simple, based on your own statistics of success and failure in
your experiments. Science and methodology aside, things never work the way
they should the first time-that's the old law. And a mistake in this
experiment is more than a spoiled sample.
I mean basically I'm climbing into the tank as a narrow specialist in
this work. That's my speciality, like cryotron film is for Fenya Zagrebnyak.
But I don't have to get in there-nobody's forcing me. Funny, I have to get
into a medium that easily dissolves live organisms simply because my
specialty worked out badly!
For people? The hell with them! Do I need more than the rest? I'll just
live quietly for myself. And it'll be good.
And everything will be clear-with the lowest, coldest clarity of a
scoundrel. And I'll have to spend my life justifying my retreat by saying
that all people are like that, no better than me, and even worse, everyone
lives only for himself. And I'll have to drop all my hopes and dreams of
better things quickly so that they don't remind me. I sold out! I sold out
and I have no right to expect anything better from anyone else.
And then it will get really cold in the world....
Golovorezov was asking him something.
"What?"
"I said, will my replacement be here soon, comrade captain? I came on
at twenty-two hundred."
"Didn't you get enough sleep?" Onisimov squinted at him merrily.
"You'll have to stand it another hour and a half or so. Then you'll be
relieved, I promise. I'll take the keys with me. That's better. Don't let
anyone in here!"
Einstein had a boss, and Faraday had one, and Popov had one ... but
somehow no one ever remembers them. Now that's a violation of subordination!
-K. Prutkov-enzhener, Thought 40
The window of Azarov's office opened on the institute grounds. He could
see the crowns of the lindens and the gray-glassed parallelepiped of the new
building rising above them. Arkady Arkadievich never tired of the view. In
the mornings it helped him chase away his neurasthenia and gave him energy.
But today, looking out the window, he merely frowned and turned away.
Yesterday's feeling to loneliness and vague guilt hadn't passed. "Eh!"
Azarov tried to wave it away. "Whenever anyone dies, you always feel guilty
just because you're still alive. Especially if the person was younger than
you. And loneliness in science is natural and usual for anyone working in
the creative end. Each one of us only knows his own field. It's hard to
understand one another. That's why we often replace mutual understanding
with an unspoken agreement not to pry into other people's business. But what
had he known? What was he doing?"
"May I? Good morning, Arkady Arkadievich!" Hilobok moved across the
carpet, exuding cologne as he walked.
Onisimov's subtle hint had worried Harry Haritonovich. It occurred to
him that someone might think that he was evening the score with Krivoshein
over the dissertation by poisoning him to death. "It's only natural that
when someone is killed they look for a killer. And around here, they could
easily,..." the assistant professor thought, paranoid. He wasn't quite sure
who or what he had to be afraid of, but he knew he had better be afraid, to
keep them from getting a jump on him.
"So, Arkady Arkadievich, I've prepared a draft of an order regarding
the incident with Krivoshein, so that everything about him ... and this
incident would be formulated properly. There are only two points here: in
regards to a commission and in regards to the closing of the laboratory.
Please read it over, Arkady Arkadievich, and if you have no objections-"
Hilobok leaned over the polished desk and placed a typewritten page in
front of the academician.
"I've entered the following as members of the commission to investigate
the incident: comrade Bezmerny, safety engineer-it's just up his alley,
heh-heh-Ippolit Illarionovich Voltampernov, as a specialist in electronic
technology; Aglaya Mitrofanovna Garazh, as a member of the local committee
on labor defense; Lyudmila Ivanova from the office as the technical
secretary of the commission ... and well, I'll head it myself if you don't
mind, Arkady Arkadievich. I'll take this burden on, too, heh-heh!" He looked
up carefully.
Arkady Arkadievich was examining his faithful scientific secretary. The
man, as usual, was extremely well shaven and groomed, his narrow red tie
streaming down a starched shirt front like blood from a throat slit by a
collar, but for some reason the sight and the sound of Harry Haritonovich's
mellow voice elicited deep revulsion in the academician. "That light
trembling before me . . . that phony subordinate dumbness. You're
transparent, Harry Haritonovich, through and through! Maybe that's why I
keep you around, because you are transparent? Because I can't expect
anything unexpected or great from you? Because your goals are obvious? When
the goals of a functioning system are understood, it's a thousand times
easier to foresee its behavior than when the goals are masked-there is a law
like that in systemology. Or is it just that I enjoy a daily comparison with
you? Maybe that's why I feel this loneliness-because I surround myself with
people who are easy to tower over?"
"And the second point is on the ending, that is, the stopping of work
in the New Systems Laboratory during the work of the commission And then
after the commission we'll see more clearly what to do with the lab: to
disband it or turn it over to another department."
"The work there had stopped of its own accord, Harry Haritonovich,"
Azarov laughed sadly. "There's no one to work there now. And there's no one
to disband." He pictured Krivoshein's corpse again with its bulging eyes and
pained grin. The academician rubbed his temples and sighed. "In principle I
accept your idea for a commission, but its staff has to be changed
slightly." He pulled the sheet of paper over and took out his pen. "We can
leave Ippolit Illarionovich, and the engineer on safety procedures, and we
need a technical secretary, too. But not the rest. I'll head the commission
myself, taking on, as you put it, this burden myself, to spare you. I want
to find out what Krivoshein has been doing."
"And . . . what about me?" the scientific secretary asked in a
crestfallen voice.
"And you take care of your own duties, Harry Haritonovich." Hilobok
felt very ill: his fears were being justified. "He's estranging me!" He was
afraid now and hating the dead Krivoshein much more than he had ever hated
the live one.
"There! He's really making trouble again, isn't he?" Hilobok spoke,
cocking his head to one side. "Look at all the troubles now! Ah, Arkady
Arkadievich, don't you think I can see how you're taking this? Don't you
think I understand? You shouldn't pull yourself away from your work and get
all upset by this. The whole city will be talking, saying that Azarov had
another one at the Institute ... and that he's trying to cover it up-you
know what people are like now. That Krivoshein, that Valentin Vasilyevich!
Didn't I tell you, Arkady Arkadievich, didn't I foretell that he would be
only trouble and danger! You shouldn't have supported his project, Arkady
Arkadievich!"
Azarov listened, frowned, and felt his brain being overpowered by the
usual hopeless numbness-like his neurasthenia coming back. This numbness
always hit him after a prolonged conversation with Hilobok and forced him to
agree with him. Now his head was buzzing with the thought that it probably
takes more mental exertion to withstand babble like this than it does to do
mathematical research.
"Why don't I fire him?" The idea popped into his mind. "Throw him out
of the institute and that's that. This is humiliating. Yes, but with what
cause? He manages his responsibilities. He's got eighteen works published,
ten years' seniority. He passed the promotion test (of course, there was no
one else taking it at the time)-there's nothing to complain about! And I
gave him that favorable response on his dissertation like a fool. Should I
fire him for stupidity and ineptness? Well... that would certainly be a new
precedent in science."
"He put in orders, used up materials and equipment, took up a whole
building, worked for two years-and here you go, this calamity is all yours!"
Hilobok was whipping himself up. "And at my defense ... it wasn't just me
that he shamed. I'm not that important. But he shamed you, Arkady
Arkadievich, too! If I had my way, Arkady Arkadievich, I'd give that
Krivoshein plenty for what he did to manage, I mean managed to did, I mean,
to do, damn it!" He leaned over the desk, his brown eyes flashing with
intense hatred. "It's too bad that we award only honors posthumously, write
pleasant obituaries and the like. De mortis aut bene aut nihil, you know!
But that Krivoshein should be reprimanded posthumously, so that others would
learn a lesson! And a severe reprimand! And it should be entered-"
"-on the tombstone. That's an idea!" a voice added behind him. "What a
viper you are, Hilobok."
Harry Haritonovich straightened up so fast it looked as though someone
had given him a shot of rock salt in the rear. Azarov looked up: Krivoshein
stood in the doorway.
"Hello, Arkady Arkadievich, forgive me for showing up without an
appointment. May I come in?"
"H-he... hello, Valentin Vasilyevich!" Azarov stood up. His heart was
pounding wildly. "Hello... oof, I see you're not... I'm happy to see you in
good health! Come in, please!"
Krivoshein shook the barely proffered hand (the academician was
relieved to see the hand was warm) and turned to Hilobok. Harry's mouth
opened and closed noiselessly.
"Harry Haritonovich, would you please leave us alone? I would be very
grateful if you did."
"Yes, Harry Haritonovich, go," Azarov said.
Hilobok backed to the door, bumping his head soundly on the wall, felt
for the doorknob, and rushed out.
Gathering his wits about him, Arkady Arkadievich took a deep breath to
calm his heart, sat behind his desk, and suddenly felt irritated. "Was I the
butt of a practical joke?" he thought.
"Would you be so kind, Valentin Vasilyevich, to explain what all this
means? What is this business with your, forgive me, corpse, the skeleton,
and so on?"
"Nothing criminal, Arkady Arkadievich-may I?" Krivoshein sank into the
leather armchair by the desk. "The self-organizing computer, about which I
spoke at the scientific council last summer, actually did develop... and it
developed to the point that it tried to create a person. Me. And, as they
say, the first pancake is a lump."
"Why wasn't I kept informed?" Azarov asked angrily, remembering the
humiliating conversation the day before yesterday with the investigator and
the other experiences of the last two days. "Why?" Krivoshein flew into a
rage.
"Damn it!" He leaped forward, banging his fist on the soft arm of the
chair. "Why don't you ask how we did it? How we managed to do it? Why are
you more concerned with personal prestige, subordination, the relationship
of others to your directorial ego?"
Krivoshein's announcement had reached Azarov in its most general form:
he had gotten some result. Heads of departments and labs were always telling
Azarov about their results, sitting in that very leather chair. And it was
only as a delayed reaction that Arkady Arkadievich began to realize just
what kind of a result it was. The world shuddered and became unreal for a
moment. "Impossible! No, that's just the point, it is possible! Now
everything falls into place and I see." The academician spoke in a different
tone. "Of course, this is ... monumental. My congratulations, Valentin
Vasilyevich. And... my apologies. I jumped the gun; it didn't come out
right. A thousand pardons! This is a major . . . invention, even though the
idea of communicating and synthesizing the information in man has been
expressed by the late Norbert Weiner. [Krivoshein chuckled.] Of course this
doesn't diminish... I remember your idea, and the day before yesterday I saw
a few... results of your work. Since I am quite well versed in systemology
myself [Krivoshein chuckled again], I, naturally, am prepared to accept what
you've told me. Naturally, I congratulate you from the bottom of my heart!
But you must admit, Valentin Vasilyevich, that this happy event for science
could have been less worrisome and even less scandalous if you had kept me
informed of your progress over the past year."
"It's hard to get in to see you, Arkady Arkadievich."
"You'll understand if I don't find that a substantial excuse, Valentin
Vasilyevich!" Azarov frowned. "I'll admit that the procedure of getting in
to see me might be offensive to you (even though all the workers at the
institute have to submit to it at one time or another). But you could have
telephoned me, left me a note (not necessarily a form in triplicate,
either), or visited me at my apartment, you know!"
Arkady Arkadievich couldn't repress the hurt. "So... you work and
work..." kept spinning through his mind. For a long time, since the days
when his unsuccessful experiment with helium turned into the discovery of
superfluidity in the hands of a colleague, Arkady Arkadievich had secretly
hoped to see, find, and understand something new in nature and the world. He
dreamed about a discovery with anticipation and trepidation, like a boy
about to lose his virginity! But he had no luck. Others did, but not him! He
had high-level, needed, much-valued and honored work to his credit, but no
discovery-the height of comprehension.
And now in the institute that had been entrusted to him a discovery had
been made without his knowledge, a discovery so huge that it dwarfed all of
his work and the work of the entire institute! They managed without him.
More than that! It seemed that they avoided him. "How so? Did he think I was
dishonorable? What have I done to make him think that?" Academician Azarov
hadn't had to experience such strong feelings in a long time.
"Hmmm . . . while sharing your joy for this discovery, Valentin
Vasilyevich," he went on, "I still am worried and saddened by your attitude.
This may shock you, but I'm concerned not as a scientist or as your
director, but as a human being: why like this? Surely you could see that my
knowing about the project would do it no harm, but could only help: you
would have been guaranteed direction, consultations.
If I had felt that you needed more workers or equipment, you would have
had that, too. Then why, Valentin Vasilyevich? I'm not even deigning to
think that you were worried about your inventor's patents...."
"But that didn't keep you from expressing the thought," Krivoshein
laughed sadly. "Well, all right. In general, I'm glad that you're distressed
primarily as a human being; that gives me hope. For a while, we debated
whether we should tell you about the work or not; we tried to meet with you.
We couldn't make contact. And then we decided that at that stage of the
project it was just as well." He looked up at Azarov. "We didn't have much
faith in you, Arkady Arkadievich. Do you know why? If for no other reason
than that even now, instead of finding out more about the work, you tried to
put the discovery and its credit where you thought it belonged: Weiner
said.... What does Weiner's 'television' idea have to do with this? We've
done it completely differently. And you know there wouldn't have been any
consultations: I can't see you, an academician, displaying your ignorance in
front of subordinate engineers. Another thing also: while you know very well
that a researcher's value is in no way determined by his degrees or title,
you nevertheless have never missed a chance to promote degreed and titled
people into positions that others might have filled better. You think I
didn't know from the start what my part would be in creating the new
laboratory? Do you think that your warning to me after the scandal with
Hilobok didn't affect my last experiment? It did. That's why I was rushing,
taking risks. Do you think that my attitude toward you isn't affected by the
fact that in your institute orders for exhibitions and other public
relations nonsense always take precedence over things that are necessary for
our work?"
"Now you're getting awfully petty, Valentin Vasilyevich!" Azarov said
in irritation.
"Those were the petty things that I had to judge you by; there was
nothing else. Or such a petty thing as the fact that a... a... well, that
Hilobok sets the tone for the institute-whether through your disinterest or
active support, I don't know. Of course, it's easy to feel intellectually
superior next to Hilobok, even in a steam bath!"
Color rushed to Azarov's face: it's one thing when you realize
something for yourself, and another when a subordinate tells you about it.
Krivoshein realized he had gone too far and modified his tone.
"Please understand me correctly, Arkady Arkadievich. We had wanted you
to participate in our work-and that's why I'm telling you this, not to
insult you. There's much that we still don't understand in this discovery:
man is a complicated system, and the computer that creates him is even more
so. There's work here for thousands of experiments and studies. And that's
our dream, to attract wise, knowledgeable, talented men to the project. But,
you see, it's not enough to be a scientist for this work."
"I hope that you will familiarize me more thoroughly with this work."
Azarov was gradually getting himself under control, and his sense of humor
and superiority was returning. "Perhaps I will be of some service, as a
scientist and as a human being."
"Please God! We'll familiarize you with it... probably. I'm not alone
in this, and can't make decisions on my own. But we will. We need you."
"Valentin Vasilyevich," the academician said, raising his shoulders,
"excuse me, but are you planning to decide with your lab assistant whether
or not you will allow me near your work? As far as I know, there is no one
else in your lab?"
"Yes, and him too. Oh, my God!" Krivoshein sighed. "You are willing to
accept the possibility that a computer can create man, but you can't accept
the possibility that a lab assistant might know more about it than you! By
the way, Michael Faraday was a lab assistant, too. No one remembers that any
more. Arkady Arkadievich, you must prepare yourself for the fact that when
you join our project-and I hope that you will!-there won't be any of that
academic 'you are our fathers, we are your children' bull. We'll work, and
that's it. None of us is a genius, but none of us is Hilobok, either."
He looked at Azarov and grew pale, amazed: the academician was smiling!
It wasn't one of his photogenic, only for the press, smiles and not one of
the sly smiles that accompanied a witticism during a council or seminar. It
was simple and broad. It wasn't very attractive because of all the wrinkles
it created, but it was very nice.
"Listen," said Azarov, "you've really shaken me up here, but... well,
all right. I'm very glad that you're alive." (The reader is reminded that
this is science fiction.)
"Me, too," was the only reply Krivoshein could muster.
"What about the police now?"
"I think that I can soothe them, even if I won't overjoy them."
Krivoshein said good-bye and left. Arkady Arkadievich sat at his desk,
drumming his fingers on it.
"Hmmmmmm," he said.
And that was all he said.
"What else do I have to take care of?" Krivoshein thought as he stood
at the bus stop. "Oh, that's what!"
May 3 0. It's interesting to think about: I was doing thirty-five, my
usual town speed and that idiot in the green Moskvich was blocking the
highway-his speed in relation to the highway was zero. And his speed across
the road wasn't much faster, either. He drove as if he were driving a
tractor. Who lets jackasses like that drive? If you're crossing the highway
against all the rules, then do it fast! But he would drive a yard, then
stop. By the time I realized the Moskvich was blocking my way, I didn't even
have time to brake.
Victor Kravets, who went out there to pick up the remains of the
motorcycle, still shakes his head over it:
"You were lucky. I can't believe it! If you had been doing forty-five,
I would be making a memorial stone out of the remains and writing on the
license plate, Here lies Krivoshein, engineer and motorcyclist!' "
Yes, but if I had been doing forty-five, I wouldn't have crashed into
him!
It's interesting what circumstances come into play in a fatal accident.
If I hadn't stopped in the woods for a smoke and listened to the cuckoo
("Cuckoo, cuckoo, how many years will I live?"-it cuckooed at least fifty
years), if I had taken two or three turns a little faster or slower-our
paths wouldn't have crossed. But this way-on a straight flat road in
excellent visibility-I plowed into the only car in my path!
The only thing I had time to think was "Cuckoo, cuckoo, how long will I
live?" as I flew over the bike.
I got up myself. The Moskvich's side was bashed in. The frightened
driver was wiping blood from his unshaven face. I had broken the windshield
with my elbow. Served him right, the jerk! My poor bike was on the road. It
was much shorter now. The headlight, front wheel, axle, and frame and tank
were smashed, squashed, destroyed.
So I went from seventeen yards per second to zero in one yard. And my
body experienced fifteen g's. Ouch!
The human body is an excellent machine! In less than a tenth of a
second my body had time to adjust to the best position for taking the crash:
elbow and shoulder first. And Valery tried to prove that man had nothing on
technology! No one's proved that yet! If you translate the damage done to
the motorcycle into human terms, it lost its head, broke its front
extremities, chest, and spine. It was such a good bike; it loved speed.
Of course, my right shoulder and chest took more of a beating. It's
hard to lift my right arm. I guess I broke some ribs.
Well, it's for the best. Now I'll have something to repair in the
liquid circuit of the computer-womb. And not external, but inside my body.
In that sense, the Moskvich was very handy. All for science.
"Write out a pass for taking out a body." "Where's the body?" "Coming
up." (Shoots himself.) "Fine! But who's going to carry it?"
-A legend from Singapore
Policeman Gayevoy was sitting in the duty room, suffering from love and
writing a letter on a complaint form. "Hello, Valya! This is Aleksandr
Gayevoy writing to you. I don't know if you remember me or not, but I can't
forget how you looked at me near the dance floor with the help of your black
and beautiful eyes. The moon was big and concentric. Dear Valya! Come to T.
Shevchenko Park tomorrow night. I'll be on duty there until twenty-four
hundred-"
Onisimov came in, his eyebrows furrowed into a strict look. Gayevoy
jumped up, dropping his chair, and blushed.
"Has Kravets been taken care of?"
"Yes sir, comrade captain! He was brought in at nine-thirty in
accordance with your orders. He's in a cell."
"Take me there."
Victor Kravets was sitting in a small, high-ceilinged room on a bench,
smoking a cigarette, blowing the smoke into a sunbeam that came through the
barred window. There was a three-day stubble on his cheeks. He squinted at