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know the synopsis of the session, since you weren't invited."
"To what?" I asked again.
"To the Council of Ministers. We showed your film there yesterday."
I knew about that but didn't say anything. The rectangular glasses
turned in my direction. I thought she would be prettier without spectacles.
She removed her glasses.
"Now's when I'm beginning to believe in telepathy," I said.
She rose. She was really tall, like a basketball player.
"So you've come to check up on the apparatus, Anokhin, the tension of
the screen and the volume control for sound? That's all been done."
"Listen, what's topology any way?" I asked.
The eyes behind the glasses did not have time to reduce me to ashes
because some of the conferees had come in. No one was going to be late to
the show. The quorum was there in a quarter of an hour. There was no
preamble. The chairman asked Zernov whether there would be an introductory
word? "What for?" was the question in reply. Then the lights went out and
the blue sky of the Antarctic came on the screen and a crimson bell began to
swell up.
This time I did not need to give the commentary because it had been
recorded. Unlike the showing at Mirny that was watched in a tense silence,
this meeting more resembled a group of friends watching TV. Time and again
remarks came right on the heels of the announcer, some humorous, others only
comprehensible to the initiated of the particular science; at other times,
they were like the piercing thrusts of a fencer. Then again, light banter
came in. I remembered a bit. When the crimson flower swallowed my duplicate
together with the tracked vehicle, somebody's gay bass voice exclaimed:
"Who claims man as the crown of creation, raise your hand!"
There was laughter. The same voice continued:
"Bear in mind one undebatable thing: no model-building system can
construct a model of a structure that is more complicated than itself."
When the edge of the flower turned up and frothed, I heard:
"Foam, isn't it? What are the components? Gas? Liquid? What's the
foam-forming substance?"
"Are you sure that that is foam?"
"I'm not sure of anything."
"Maybe it's plasma at low temperature?"
"Plasma's a gas, so what would contain it?"
"A magnetic trap. A magnetic field can generate the needed walls."
"Nonsense, colleague. Why doesn't a dispersed aphemeral gas
disintegrate or drift away under the action of a field? The point is that
it's not a forceless field in the sense that it does not strive to change
its form."
"How do you think clouds of interstellar gas form magnetic fields?"
Another voice in the dark said:
"The field pressure is variable. Hence the variability of form."
"The form, yes, but the colour?"
I was sorry I had not brought along a tape recorder. But then the hall
was silent for a few moments: the screen displayed another giant flower
eating up an aircraft, and a violet snake-like tentacle was tackling the
senseless model of Martin. It was still pulsating above the snow when, from
the dark, a voice called out:
"I have a question to ask the authors of the plasm hypothesis. So you
think both the airplane and the man burnt up in the gas jet, in the magnetic
trap?"
Laughter from in front. Again I regretted forgetting the tape-recorder.
"Fire" was being exchanged again.
"Mystical, if you ask me. Improbable."
"No mysticism is needed to recognize a possibility as improbable. All
you need is mathematics."
"Paradox. And yours?"
"Mathematics is what we need here more than physics. A mathematician
would do more."
"Just what do you picture him doing?"
"He doesn't need any samples, just more pictures. And what will he see?
Geometric figures distorted in all manner of ways, no tearing and no
folding. Strictly problems in topology."
"Excuse me, but who's going to solve the problem of the composition of
the rose-coloured bio-mass?"
"So you consider it a mass?"
"I cannot, on the basis of these coloured pictures, consider it to be a
thinking organism."
"Processing of information is obvious."
"Processing of information does not yet make it a synonym of thinking."
This tit-for-tat continued. The hall got really excited when the ice
symphony came on-clouds sawing, huge bars of ice rising in the blue sky.
"Look at them stretch, will you! A kilometre-long pancake out of a
three-metre cloudlet."
"That's not a pancake, it's a knife."
"I don't get it."
"Why? Only one gram of substance in a colloidal dispersed state
possesses a vast surface area."
"So it's a substance?"
"It's hard to make a definite statement. What kind of data have we?
What do they say about the biosystem? How does it react to the environment?
Only via a field? And what controls it?"
"And to that the question of where it gets its power. Where does it
store the energy? What kind of transformers ensure conversion?"
"Then there's the ..."
That was the end of the film, no more commentary, the lights went up
and there was total silence, the light seeming to call for the customary
cautiousness in judgements. The chairman, Academician Osovets, caught the
mood immediately:
"This is not a symposium, comrades, and not a meeting of academicians,"
he reminded them in calm tones. "We who are gathered here represent a
special committee set up by the Government with the following aims: to
determine the nature of the rose 'clouds', their purpose in coming to the
earth, the aggressiveness or friendliness of their intentions, and to
contact them in some way if they turn out to be intelligent, thinking
creatures. However, what we have seen does not yet permit us to come to any
definite conclusions or decisions."
"Why?" came a voice from the hall, a familiar bass voice. "How about
the film? The first conclusion is that it is an excellent piece of
scientific filming. Invaluable material to start the work. And also a first
decision: show the film here and in the West."
All this, I must admit, was very pleasant to hear. And just as pleasant
was the Chairman's reply:
"The film was appraised in like manner by the Government as well. And a
similar resolution has already been passed. Colleague Anokhin has been
included in the working group of our committee. Still and all, the film
fails to answer many of our questions: whence, from what corner of the
universe did these creatures come, what forms of life are they (they can
hardly be protein-based), what is their physico-chemical structure, and are
they living beings, intelligent creatures or bio-robots with specific
programmes of action? Many more questions might be asked, some of them will
not get answers. Now, at least. But we can conjecture and construct certain
working hypotheses, and publish them, and not only in the scientific
journals-in all countries of the world people want to know about the rose
'clouds' not from fortune-tellers but in the form of solid scientific
information, at least within the limits of what we already know and can
safely conjecture. We could, say, speak of the possibilities of contact,
about changes in the terrestrial climate associated with the loss of ice,
and, what is most important, we might find counter-arguments to the idea of
the aggressive nature of this as yet unknown civilization in the form of
facts and proof of its loyalty to human civilization."
"Incidentally," began a scientist sitting next to Zernov, "one thing
might be added to what has been said in the press. There is very little
deuterium in ordinary water, but ice and melted snow contain a still smaller
percentage, which means they are biologically more active. It is also a fact
that water acted upon by a magnetic field changes its fundamental
physico-chemical properties. Now terrestrial glaciers represent water that
has already been subjected to the earth's magnetic field. It might possibly
be-who knows -that this will shed some light on the aims of the new-comers."
"Actually, I'm interested more in their other aim, though I'm a
glaciologist," Zernov remarked. "Why they construct models of everything
they see is understandable; such specimens would be useful in the study of
terrestrial life. But why do they destroy them?"
"I'll risk an explanation," Osovets let his eyes stray over the hall.
Like a lecturer who is asked a question, he did not answer Zernov alone.
"Suppose that they carry with them not a model but only the notation of its
structure. And to obtain such, let us say it is required to break the model
down, to decompose it into its molecular constituents, perhaps even down to
the atomic level. They do not wish to harm human beings and destroy them or
the creatures they construct. Hence the synthesis and subsequent elimination
(after a trial) of the model."
"That makes them friends and not aggressors, doesn't it?" someone
asked.
"Yes, that's what I think," the Academician answered with caution.
"We'll just have to live and see."
There were a lot of questions, some I understood, others I forgot. But
one of Irene's questions posed to Zernov I did remember.
"Professor, you said that they construct models of all things. That
they see. Where are their eyes? How do they see?"
The answer came not from Zernov but from a physicist next to him.
"Eyes are not obligatory," he explained. "They can reproduce any object
via photography. Say, create a light-sensitive surface just as they create
any field, and then focus light on it reflected from the object. That's all.
Of course, that is only one of a number of possible suppositions. We might
presume an acoustic 'tuning' of a similar kind and an analogous 'tuning' to
odours."
"I am convinced that they see everything, hear and sense all things
much better than we do," said Zernov with a strange kind of
ceremonious-ness.
This time nobody even smiled. Zernov's remark appeared to sum up all
that had been seen and heard, and revealed to all present the tremendous
significance of what had to be thought over and comprehended.
After Tolya had left I remained standing at the window, my eyes glued
to the snowed-over asphalt driveway that connected my entrance door to the
gates at the street. I was hoping that Irene might come. Theoretically she
could have, not out of any tenderness of heart, naturally, but simply
because otherwise she could not give me any news or instructions since I had
no telephone. We were now connected by a range of business. She was
secretary of this special committee and I was an expert with a variety of
duties from press attache to projectionist. Then we had a joint assignment
to go to Paris to an international meeting of scientists devoted to those
same rose "clouds"-that impenetrable phenomenon the whole world was talking
about. Academician Osovets was head of the delegation and Zernov and I were
going as witnesses of the fact, while Irene was in the more modest, though
probably even more important role of secretary-translator with a knowledge
of six languages. Also in the delegation was Rogovin, world-famous
physicist-the bass voice that had so intrigued me during our first showing
of the film. The assignment was getting under way, all the documents were
ready and only a few days were left before our departure. There were oodles
of things to do, all the more so since Zernov had left for Leningrad to see
his family and would be back any day now.
But, honestly, that was not the reason I wanted to see Irene. I had
simply grown lonely for her during my week of confinement. I wanted to hear
her sharp ironical thrusts, even see her dark rectangular glasses that took
away some portion of her charm and femininity. I was openly drawn to her-was
it friendship or infatuation, or perhaps a vague, almost imperceptible
something that attracts one person to another and is so acutely felt when
that person is absent. "Do you like her?" I asked myself. "Very much." "What
is it, love?" "Don't know." Sometimes I have difficulty with her and at
times she makes me mad. At some point the attraction turns into repulsion,
and one wants to say something to hurt. That may be because we are so
different.
Then the difference sharpens to a razor-edge: as she has put it, my
education is a salad made up of Kafka, Hemingway and Bradbury; my reply to
that is that hers is a minced pie out of last year's "Technology for the
Youth" magazine. Then again I'd just as soon compare her to a dried fish or
the Laputan experts. Her response to that is that she condescends to place
me with the lower primates. Still and all, we have some things in common.
Then we seem to be gay and excited when together.
This is a strange, amusing friendship that was struck up just after
that memorable film showing at the Academy of Sciences. I continued sitting
in the corner until all the big and little scientists had left and the
lights were out. I picked up all the parts and pieces of my equipment, put
them into a bag and sat down again.
Irene looked at me, without speaking, through her dark glasses.
"You're not a duplicate by any chance?" she asked.
"I certainly am," I agreed. "How did you guess?"
"By the actions of normal human beings. A normal person, not loaded
down with a higher education, would long ago have left, without waiting for
the meeting to come to an end. Now here you are, sitting, listening,-why
don't you get a move on?"
"I'm studying terrestrial life," I said importantly. "We duplicates are
self-programmed systems that vary the programme as we go along depending on
the subject, on whether it is worth studying."
"You mean me, I'm the subject?"
"Astounding guess work on your part."
"The session is over. Consider that you've completed the study."
"That's right, now I'll order a model of you with certain corrections."
"Without glasses?"
"That's not all. Without stuck-up superiority and priest-like
magnificence. Just an ordinary girl with your wit and face that I'd like to
invite to the movies or for a walk."
I hoisted my bag and went to the exit.
"I like movies and walks," she added after me.
I turned round.
Then the next day I returned all spruced up like a diplomatic attache.
She was typing something. I said hello and sat down at her desk.
"What do you want?" she asked.
"Looking for work."
"Haven't they assigned you to us yet?"
"They're doing it."
"You have to go through personnel ..."
"Personnel for me is nothing," I dismissed the matter curtly. "I'm
interested in the day-before-yesterday's minutes."
"What for? You wouldn't understand anything in them any way?"
"For one thing, the resolutions passed by the meeting," I continued in
a highfalutin manner, paying no attention to her thrusts, "insomuch as we
have information that four expeditions are being outfitted for the Arctic,
the Caucasus, Greenland and the Himalayas."
"Five," she corrected me. "The fifth is the Fedchenko glacier."
"I'd choose Greenland," I remarked rather by the way.
Then she laughed, as if dealing with a member of the school chess team
who is asking for a match with the world champion. I felt lost, of a sudden.
"And where to?"
"Nowhere."
I missed the point.
"Why? Every expedition needs a cameraman."
"I don't like to disappoint you, Yuri, but we don't need one." There'll
be scientists and technicians of a number of specialized institutes. The
NIKFI for instance. And don't look at me with those kind ram's eyes. Note
that I didn't say 'stupid' eyes. I simply ask you: can you operate an
introscope? No. Can you photo from behind a wall of opaqueness, say in
infrared rays? No. Can you convert the invisible into the visible with the
aid of an electronic-acoustic transducer? No, again. I can read it on your
carefully shaven face. So you didn't have to shave, after all."
"All right, but how about ordinary camera work?" I still couldn't make
it out. "Just common filmus vulgaris?"
"For filmus vulgaris all one needs is a kid's camera. That's not done
any more. More important is to get an image in opaque media, from outside a
cloud cover. For example, what happens to a model inside the crimson tube?"
I was silent. For an ordinary cameraman, that was differential
calculus.
"So you see, Yuri," she laughed. "You can't do anything. You don't know
the Kirlian method, do you?"
I had never even heard of it.
"Incidentally, it permits distinguishing the living from the
nonliving."
"I can do that without a camera."
But she had already taken up the pose of lecturer.
"On film, living tissue is seen surrounded by a transparent
halo-discharges of high-frequency currents. The more intensive the vital
activities, the brighter the halo."
"It's living tissue if it's naked," I said angrily and got up. "Forget
about personnel. I don't have anything to do in that department. Here
either."
She laughed, but this time differently: gaily and kindly.
"Sit down, Yuri, and don't be down-hearted, we'll go together."
"Where to?" I was still boiling. "Moscow suburbs?"
"No, to Paris."
I didn't believe that sly little devil of a girl till I saw the actual
paper for our assignment to the Paris conference. And now, here, I was
waiting for the same devil, waiting for the angel, and chewing match sticks
with impatience. And I would just miss her when I went over to the desk for
cigarettes. She phoned when I was already making plans to throw the whole
thing over.
"Jesus," I exclaimed, "finally!"
She tossed me her raincoat and danced into the room.
"Have you become a believer?"
"From this minute I believe in the angel who brings forgiveness from
heaven. When's it going to be? Don't keep me waiting."
"The day after tomorrow. Zernov returns tomorrow. The next morning we
take off. The tickets have been ordered. By the way, how did we get to a
first-name basis so quickly?"
Just instinctively. That's not what's worrying you."
She thought for a moment.
"That's true. They're already in the Arctic, you see what I mean. The
captain of the 'Dobrynya' icebreaker, Captain Shchetinnikov, just back from
Archangel came over to the committee. He says that the vast area of the Kara
Sea and the ocean north of Franz-Joseph Land is all free from ice. From
Pulkovo Observatory the report is that ice satellites orbit over the North
Pole several times a day."
"And the committee rejects filming," I added disappointed. "Now's just
the time to photograph."
"Amateurs have been doing that. We'll soon be getting cartloads of
film. That's not the important thing."
"What is important?"
"Contact."
I whistled.
"Don't whistle. Attempts at contact have already been made, though
without success it seems. But English and Dutch scientists have proposed a
programme of contacts. All the materials are in the hands of Osovets. Then
there's this Thompson group that'll have to be dealt with at the congress.
The American delegation is actually divided, the majority do not support
Thompson, but there are some that are in with him. Not very solidly, true,
but they'll be hard nuts to crack in Paris. That's what's important, see?
Wait a minute." Laughing, she grabbed her raincoat and pulled from the
pocket a bulky package covered over with foreign stamps. "I forgot about the
most important thing of all; here's a letter for you from the United States.
You're getting to be famous."
"From Martin," I said, looking at the address.
A strange address, to say the least:
"Yuri Anokhin. First observer of the phenomenon of the rose clouds.
Committee for Fighting Visitors from Space, Moscow, USSR."
"Committee for fighting ..." Irene laughed. "Some programme for
contacts. He's a Thompsonite, all right."
"Here, I'll read it."
Martin wrote that he had returned from the Antarctic expedition to his
airbase near Sand City, in the southwest of the United States. On Thompson's
suggestion, he was immediately assigned to a voluntary society set up by the
Admiral for combating the cosmic visitors. Martin was not surprised at his
assignment. Thompson had told him about it in the plane on the way home.
Neither was he surprised at the position he was offered. When the Admiral
learned that in college Martin had published items in student journals, he
named his press agent. "I have a feeling that the old man doesn't believe
me, he thinks I'm a double, something like a fifth columnist and so he wants
to keep me close by him to see and check for himself. That's why I didn't
tell him what happened to me on the way to our airbase in Sand City. But
I've got to tell somebody, and there's nobody but you. You're the only one
who can disentangle this crazy house I've gotten into. You and I know what
happened at the South Pole; here things seem to be dressed up differently."
The letter was typed, over ten single-spaced pages. "My first article
is not for the press, only for you," he wrote. "You'll see for yourself
whether I'm fit to be a newspaper man." I went through a couple of pages and
nearly jumped.
"Read it," I said to Irene, handing her the pages as I finished them.
"It looks like we're in a hot spot."
Here's what Martin wrote:
The sun had just risen over the horizon when I went out the gates of
the airbase. I was in a hurry, with only 24 hours of time off, and it was at
least an hour's drive to Sand City. I waved gaily to the sleepy watchman, my
ancient two-seater jerked forward and I went sailing along the asphalt.
Something rattled in the back of the car, then a knock, the cylinders were
banging- this was a real piece of junk all right. "About time to get a new
one," I thought to myself, "eight years is much too much. But you get into
the habit, and Mary likes it too".
That's where I was going, to see Mary in Sand City and spend the last
free day I had with her before leaving for New York to report to the
Admiral. The boys at the airbase introduced me to Mary the first day after
my return from Mac-Murdo. She was new at this bar, nothing spectacular, a
girl like any other girl, in a starched white uniform and Elizabeth Taylor
hairdo- they all copy film stars at the bar. There was something about her
that attracted me from the very start, and so every evening off I'd go over
to see her. I even wrote Mom that I had a nice girl, and all that sort of
thing. You know.
This trip I had made up my mind finally and was thinking over how to
tell her. No use holding things up, that's the way I felt. But things were
held up, after all. Some guy was out there on the highway, I honked the
horn, but instead of moving away he jumped about and almost landed under the
car. So I slammed down the brakes and got out:
"Hey, what's wrong, can't you see a car when it's right in front of
you?"
He looked at me, then at the sky and slowly got to his feet, beating
the dust out of his old jeans.
"There's something a lot worse than cars that's frightening people." He
came over to me and asked. "Going into town?"
I nodded and he got in, just as wild-looking as before. Terribly scared
is what I figured, with droplets of sweat all over his forehead, with dark
damp circles around the armpits of his shirt.
"How come you're out training so early?" I asked.
"Much worse," he repeated putting his hand into his pocket. Along with
his handkerchief, a 1952 Barky Jones fell out onto the seat.
I whistled in surprise: "What's this a pursuit?"
I was now sorry that I had got mixed up with him. I don't like highway
encounters of that nature.
"Crazy," he said without anger. "It's not mine, the boss's: I'm just
watching the herd at Viniccio's ranch."
"Cowboy?"
"No," he replied screwing up his face and wiping the sweat off his
forehead. "I can't even ride a horse. But I need money for college."
I smiled to myself: 'escaping gangster turns into vacation-working
student'.
"My name's Mitchell Casey," he said.
I told him my name, hoping not without vanity that because it had been
in the papers since meeting the dragons at MacMurdo he might recognize it,
but I was mistaken. He hadn't been reading the papers or listening to the
radio, had never heard of me, nor of the rose clouds: "Maybe this is a war
or men from Mars have landed, it's about the same, I don't know."
"There's no war yet," I said. "It might be Martians all right, though."
I told him briefly about the rose clouds. But I never expected my story
to produce the reaction that it did. He grabbed for the door as if he wanted
to jump out on the spot, but then he opened his mouth and with trembling
lips asked:
"From the sky?"
I nodded.
"Long rose-coloured cucumbers. Like diving airplanes?"
That surprised me. He seemed to know all about them, though he said he
didn't read the papers.
"I just saw some," he said, and again wiped his forehead, this time
from cold sweat most likely. The meeting with our acquaintances from the
Antarctic seemed to have knocked him out completely.
"So what?" I asked. "They fly and they dive, do a good job. And they're
like cucumbers. But no harm done. Just a fog, that's all. You're a bit of a
coward, aren't you?"
"Anyone would have got scared in my place," he said still all keyed up.
"I nearly went crazy when they doubled my herd."
And, then looking around, as if afraid someone might be listening, he
added softly, "And me too."
I realized then, Yuri, that Mitchell had gone through the same thing
that you and I had. These damn clouds got interested in the herd, dived
down, doubled it and this plucky cowboy tried to drive them off. Then
something totally unexplainable occurred. One of the rose cucumbers
approached him, hovered over his head and ordered him to retreat. Not in
words, naturally, but like a hypnotizer-to go back and get on the horse.
Mitchell told me that he could not do anything other than as he was told.
Without offering any resistance, he went back to the horse and got into the
saddle. What I think is that they wanted someone on horseback because they
already had quite a collection of people on foot. The rest was routine: the
red fog, the complete immobility-you can't move a hand or a foot and it is
as if you were being examined straight through. A very familiar pattern.
When the fog dispersed and the boy came to he couldn't believe his eyes-the
herd had doubled, and to the side, on a horse, was another Mitchell. The
horse was the same, and he was the same, as if in a mirror.
That's when he lost his nerve; and I remember well the first time that
happened to me too. Well, it was the same thing, he ran, he just ran to get
away from it. Then he stopped. The cattle weren't his, he would be
responsible. He thought a bit, and then returned. What he found was what had
been there before the coming of the rose clouds. No extra cattle, no
duplicate horse. So he figured he must have been seeing things, or he was
out of his mind. He drove the cattle into the paddock, and left for town to
see the boss.
All of this is by way of introduction, you understand. I had hardly
quieted down the boy when I myself got the jitters: there they were flying
at house-top level, single file as if it were along a road. Just like Disney
characters, like our radioman at MacMurdo had suggested, not like cucumbers.
Then Mitchell saw them. Dead silence. He was breathing heavily.
That's it again, I thought, recalling how those dirigibles had plunged
into combat in our first aerial fight. But this time they did not even
descend, they simply hurtled by at sonic speed like rose-coloured flashes of
lightning in a lilac sky.
"They're headed for town," Mitchell whispered from behind.
I didn't say anything.
"I wonder why they didn't pay any attention to us."
"Not interested. Two in a car, any number about like us. And I'm tagged
as it is."
He didn't get me.
"We've already met," I explained. "And they remember."
"I don't like this at all," he said and fell silent.
And so we drove on in silence until the town came into sight. We were
about a mile away but for some reason I didn't recognize it. It seemed so
strange in the lilac haze, like a mirage over distant shifting yellow sands.
"What the hell!" I exclaimed in surprise. "Maybe my speedometer's on
the blink. It should
be a good dozen miles yet to town, but there it ,1
is."
"Look up over there!" Mitchell shouted.
Right over the mirage of the town hung a string of rose clouds, sort of
like jellyfish or perhaps umbrellas, or a cross between them. Maybe that's a
mirage too.
"The town's not in the right place," I said. "I don't get it."
"We should have passed old man Johnson's motel by this time," Mitchell
put in. "It's only a mile from town."
I recalled the shrivelled up face of the motel owner and his stentorian
commanding voice: "The world's gone nuts, Don. I'm already beginning to
believe in God." I seemed ready to believe in God too. I was seeing
marvellous unfathomable miracles. Johnson, who ordinarily sat on his porch
and greeted all cars passing by, had vanished. That in itself was a miracle.
Never, in all my travelling to town, had I ever missed old man Johnson
waving us into town. A bigger enigma yet was the disappearance of his motel,
for we couldn't have passed it. There weren't even any signs of a structure
along the road.
On the other hand, the town was coming into full sight. Sand City in a
lilac haze ceased to be a mirage.
"A town like any other," said Mitchell, "but there's something
different here. Maybe we're on another route."
But we were coming in by the usual route. The same red-brick houses,
the same sign boards with big letters reading: 'Juiciest Beef Steak in Sand
City', the same gas station. Even Fritch in a white jacket was standing as
usual near the lightning-split oak tree with his broad smile "What can I do
for you, sir? Oil? Gas?"
I stopped the car with a screech of brakes so familiar to gas station
attendants round this place.
"Howdy, Fritch. What's doing in town?"
It looked to me like Fritch didn't recognize me. He approached us but
kind of unwillingly, no eagerness, like a person coming into a brightly lit
room from the dark. Still more striking were his eyes: fixed, as if dead,
they looked through us, not at us. He stopped before reaching the car.
"Good morning, sir," he said indifferently in a dull hollow voice.
He didn't use my name.
"What's happening to the city!?" I yelled. "What's it got, wings?"
"Don't know, sir," the voice was Fritch's but in a totally indifferent
monotone. "What would you like, sir?"
No, this wasn't Fritch at all. "Where's old man Johnson's motel gone
to?" I asked impatiently.
He replied without a smile:
"Old man Johnson's motel? Don't know, sir." He took a step closer and,
now with a smile-but such an artificial smile it was that I was horrified.
.. Then, "What can I do for you, some oil, or gas?"
"Okay," I said. "We'll figure this out yet. Let's go, Mitchell." As I
left the gas station, I turned around. Fritch was still standing there on
the roadside, watching us go, his eyes the cold, fixed eyes of a corpse.
"What's wrong with him?" asked Mitchell. "Taken a bit too much this
morning?"
But I knew that Fritch did not drink, anyway nothing more than Pepsi
Cola. This wasn't liquor, it was something inhuman.
"A puppet," I muttered, "a wound-up puppet. 'Don't know, sir. What can
I do for you, sir?' "
You know I'm no coward, Yuri, but honestly I cringed from a premonition
of imminent danger. Too many unaccountable accidents, and worse than down
there in Antarctica. I even wanted to turn around and go back, but there's
no other route to town. And there was no point in going back to the base.
"You know where to find the boss?" I asked Mitchell.
"In the club most likely."
"Okay, we'll begin with the club," I sighed.
"Since the town's right here, there's no use stopping now."
I turned down Eldorado Street racing the car past neat rows of
cottages, all yellow like new-born chicks. There were no pedestrians, nobody
walked-this was an upper-crust neighbourhood, quiet; the big shots had
already left for their offices, and their wives were still stretching in bed
or having late breakfasts in their electrified kitchenettes. Mitchell's boss
was taking a snack in the club, which was at the cross-roads of Main Street
and State. By this time I was fairly ashamed of my unrealised fears-the blue
sky, no rose clouds over head, the heated-up asphalt, the hot wind sweeping
bits of newspaper which might even be carrying the rose-cloud sensation and
stating that it was the concoction of New York nuts. Sand City was fully
protected from any cosmic intruder. Everything returned us to the reality of
quiet town, the way it should be on a sultry summer morning like today.
At least that is the way it seemed to me, because it was all an
illusion, Yuri. There was no morning in the town and it wasn't slumbering or
sleeping. We could see that at once when we turned down State Street.
"Isn't it too early for the club?" I asked Mitchell still thinking by
inertia about the sleeping city.
He laughed-there was a crowd at the intersection that had stopped all
traffic. This was no morning crowd and this was no waking-up city. The sun
shone but the electric street lights were just as bright, as if it were
still last night. Neon lights were still flashing on and off in the
show-windows and on signs. In movie houses, cowboys were shooting, James
Bond was fearlessly on the job seeking out victims to eliminate. Billiard
balls were racing noiselessly over green tables, and the jazz band over at
the "Selena" Restaurant was banging away as loud as a passing train. And on
the sidewalks, pedestrians were walking lazily along, not hurrying to work,
because work had long since ceased, the city was alive with evening life,
not morning duties. As if the people together with the electric lighting
were out to fool time and nature.
"Why the lights? Isn't the sun enough?" Mitchell said in bewilderment.
I pulled up at the curb near the tobacco store. Tossing some change on
the counter I carefully asked the pretty sales girl:
"What's it a holiday today?"
"What holiday?" she asked by way of reply, handing me the cigarettes.
"An ordinary evening of a usual day?"
The immobile blue eyes looked through me-like the dead eyes of Fritch.
"Evening?" I repeated. "Take a look at the sky. What's the sun doing
there if it's evening?"
"Don't know." Her voice was calm and indifferent. "It's evening now and
I don't know anything."
I slowly left the shop. Mitchell was waiting in the car. He had heard
the whole conversation and was probably thinking the same thoughts as I was:
who's crazy, we or everyone in town? Maybe it really was evening and
Mitchell and I were seeing things. I took another close look at the street.
It was part of Route 66 that passed through to New Mexico. The cars were
passing two lanes abreast in both directions. Ordinary United States cars on
an ordinary American highway. All of them had their headlights on.
On an impulse, I grabbed the first passer-by.
"Hey, take your hands off me," he exploded.
He was a little, thick-set but nimble man in a crazy-like bicycle cap.
His eyes were not empty and indifferent, but alive and angry. They looked at
me with revulsion. I turned around and looked at Mitchell who mimicked that
the fat guy must be touched in the head. And the anger of the roly-poly
stranger switched to a different direction.
"You say I'm crazy, do you!" he screamed and lunged for Mitchell.
"You're the ones that are mad, the whole town's gone nuts. Electricity in
the morning, and the only answer I get to all questions is 'I don't know'.
All right, what is it: morning or night?"
"Morning, of course," said Mitchell, "but something's wrong here in
town this morning, I just don't understand."
The metamorphosis of the fat man was amazing. He no longer screamed or
yelled, only quietly smiled stroking Mitchell's sweaty hand. Even his eyes
moistened.
"Thank heavens, one normal man in this nut house of a town," he said
finally still holding on to Mitchell's hand.
"Two," I said extending my own hand. "You're the third. Let's exchange
impressions. We might be able to figure out this number."
We stopped on the edge of the curb separated from the highway by a
colourful string of parked cars, nobody inside.
"Gentlemen, explain this to me," he began, "these tricks with cars.
They ride along, disappear, vanish, into nowhere."
To put it honestly, I didn't get what he was driving at. What was this
"into nowhere". He explained. Only he needed a smoke to calm down. "I don't
usually smoke, but you know it does have a calming effect."
"My name's Lesley Baker, travelling salesman. Women's apparel,
cosmetics. Always on the go, here one day, gone the next. I arrived on the
route from New Mexico, turned onto Route 66. I was crawling along awfully
slow, like a snail. There was this big green van right in front, couldn't
pass it for the life of me. You know how it is, going slow. A toothache's
worse. Then this sign 'You are now entering the quietest city in the United
States'. Quietest, my eye, the craziest, that's more like it. At the city
limits, where the highway widens out-there are no sidewalks-I tried again to
get out ahead of this big van. I just stepped on the gas, and it vanished,
went up into nothing. I was flabbergasted. So I put on the brakes, pulled
over to the side and looked here and there, no van. Evaporated like sugar in
a cup of coffee. I even ran into a barbed-wire fence, lucky I was going
slow."
"Why a barbed-wire fence along the road?" I asked surprised.
"On the highway? There wasn't any highway. It had gone along with the
van. All there was a red open space, a green island-like something at a
distance, and the fence and barbed wire all about. Somebody's farm, I guess.
You don't believe me? Well, I didn't myself. The hell with the van, I
figured, but where did the road go to? I must have been off my rocker. I
turned around and nearly died then and there-a huge black Lincoln was
heading for me right through the wire! It was doing at least a hundred miles
an hour. I didn't even have time to jump, I just closed my eyes. This was
the end for sure. A minute passed, no end. I opened my eyes, no end, no car,
no nothing."
"Maybe it passed by."
"Where? How? On what road?"
"So the road disappeared too?"
He nodded.
"So," I said, "the cars disappeared before reaching the barbed wire?"
"That's just it. One after the other. I stood there some ten minutes
and they kept on disappearing at the edge of the highway. It broke off in
red clay at the very edge of the wire. There I stood like Rip Van Winkle,
blinking my eyes. To all questions, only one answer: 'Don't know.' Why are
the cars driving with headlights on? Don't know. Where are they disappearing
to? Don't know. Maybe going to hell? Don't know. Where's the highway? The
eyes are glassy like those of the dead."
It was already clear to me what kind of city this was. All I wanted was
one more test: to take a look with my own eyes. I looked around and raised
my hand: one of the cars stopped. The driver had glassy eyes too. But I
risked it.
"I'm going to the city limits. Two blocks or so, that's all."
"Hop in," he said indifferently.
I got in beside him. The fat guy and Mitchell got in behind, not quite
understanding what it was all about. The driver turned his head away,
completely apathetic, stepped on the gas, and covered the two blocks in half
a minute.
"Look," Baker from behind whispered in agitation.
In front of us, right across the highway cut off by the red clay were
four rows of rusty barbed wire. One could only see a small portion of the
wire fencework, the rest was hidden behind the houses on the roadside, and
so it seemed as if the whole city were fenced in and isolated from the world
of living human beings. I already had some idea of this thing from Baker's
story, but the reality was still crazier.
"Watch out for the wire," Baker yelled grabbing at the arm of the
driver.
"Where?" was the surprised reply and he pushed away Baker's hand.
"You're nuts."
He obviously didn't see the wire.
"Put on the brakes," I said, "we're getting out here."
The driver slowed down, but I could already see the radiator beginning
to melt in the air. It was as if something invisible were eating the car
away inch by inch. The windshield had gone, then the instrument panel, the
driving wheel, the hands of the driver. This was ghastly-so terrifying that
I instinctively closed my eyes. Then a sharp blow knocked me to the ground.
I pitched into the dust and rolled along on the asphalt roadway, which means
I was flung out at the very edge of the highway. But how did I fly out? The
door of the car was shut, the car hadn't overturned or anything. I raised my
head and in front I saw the body of an unfamiliar grey car. Alongside in the
dust lay unconscious our friend the salesman.
"Are you alive?" asked Mitchell bending down to him. He had a black
eye. "I was knocked right against Baker's bus." He nodded towards the grey
car stuck in the wire roadblock.
"Where's ours?"
He shrugged his shoulders. For a minute or two we stood silent at the
edge of the cut-off highway watching one and the same miracle that had just
left us without a car. The fat travelling salesman had also got to his feet
and had joined our spectacle. It was repeated every three seconds when-at
full speed-a car crossed the edge of the highway. Fords and Pontiacs and
Buicks-all kinds drove in and vanished without a trace, like soap bubbles.
Some of the cars were heading right into us as we stood there, but we did
not move because they simply evaporated two feet in front of us. The entire
process of mysterious and inexplicable vanishings was clearly visible right
here in the hot sunshine. True enough, they did not vanish suddenly but
gradually, by diving, as it were, into some kind of a hole in space and
disappearing there, beginning with the front bumper and winding up with the
back license plate. The whole city seemed to be fenced round with
transparent glass, beyond which there was no highway, no cars, no city at
all.
Probably one and the same thought rankled all three of us: What was
there to do? Return to town? But what kind of marvels might not be awaiting
us there, some kind of weird circus perhaps? What kind of people would there
be, who would be able to speak a normal human word? So far we hadn't met up
with a single normal person except the travelling salesman. I suspected the
doings of the rose clouds, but people hereabouts were not like the
duplicates created at the South Pole. Those were, or seemed to be, human
beings, while these resembled resurrected dead who knew nothing but the
desire to go somewhere, to drive cars, knock billiard balls about and drink
whiskey. I recalled Thompson's version and now for the first time got real
scared. Had they indeed been able to replace the entire population of the
city? Could it be.... No, there was still one more test to make. Only one.
"Let's get back to town, boys," I said to my companions. "We've got to
rinse out heads in a big way or else the nut house is the only place for us.
Judging by the cigarettes, the whiskey here is real."
But I was thinking about Mary.
At about noon we arrived at the bar where Mary worked. The show window
and the neon signs were ablaze with light. The owners were not trying to
save on electricity even at high noon. My white duck jumper was wet through
and through with sweat, but it was cool and empty in the bar. The high
stools were vacant; there were only a few couples near the window whispering
and a half-drunk old man in the corner nursing his bottle of brandy and
orange juice.
Mary did not hear us enter. She was standing with her back to us at the
"To what?" I asked again.
"To the Council of Ministers. We showed your film there yesterday."
I knew about that but didn't say anything. The rectangular glasses
turned in my direction. I thought she would be prettier without spectacles.
She removed her glasses.
"Now's when I'm beginning to believe in telepathy," I said.
She rose. She was really tall, like a basketball player.
"So you've come to check up on the apparatus, Anokhin, the tension of
the screen and the volume control for sound? That's all been done."
"Listen, what's topology any way?" I asked.
The eyes behind the glasses did not have time to reduce me to ashes
because some of the conferees had come in. No one was going to be late to
the show. The quorum was there in a quarter of an hour. There was no
preamble. The chairman asked Zernov whether there would be an introductory
word? "What for?" was the question in reply. Then the lights went out and
the blue sky of the Antarctic came on the screen and a crimson bell began to
swell up.
This time I did not need to give the commentary because it had been
recorded. Unlike the showing at Mirny that was watched in a tense silence,
this meeting more resembled a group of friends watching TV. Time and again
remarks came right on the heels of the announcer, some humorous, others only
comprehensible to the initiated of the particular science; at other times,
they were like the piercing thrusts of a fencer. Then again, light banter
came in. I remembered a bit. When the crimson flower swallowed my duplicate
together with the tracked vehicle, somebody's gay bass voice exclaimed:
"Who claims man as the crown of creation, raise your hand!"
There was laughter. The same voice continued:
"Bear in mind one undebatable thing: no model-building system can
construct a model of a structure that is more complicated than itself."
When the edge of the flower turned up and frothed, I heard:
"Foam, isn't it? What are the components? Gas? Liquid? What's the
foam-forming substance?"
"Are you sure that that is foam?"
"I'm not sure of anything."
"Maybe it's plasma at low temperature?"
"Plasma's a gas, so what would contain it?"
"A magnetic trap. A magnetic field can generate the needed walls."
"Nonsense, colleague. Why doesn't a dispersed aphemeral gas
disintegrate or drift away under the action of a field? The point is that
it's not a forceless field in the sense that it does not strive to change
its form."
"How do you think clouds of interstellar gas form magnetic fields?"
Another voice in the dark said:
"The field pressure is variable. Hence the variability of form."
"The form, yes, but the colour?"
I was sorry I had not brought along a tape recorder. But then the hall
was silent for a few moments: the screen displayed another giant flower
eating up an aircraft, and a violet snake-like tentacle was tackling the
senseless model of Martin. It was still pulsating above the snow when, from
the dark, a voice called out:
"I have a question to ask the authors of the plasm hypothesis. So you
think both the airplane and the man burnt up in the gas jet, in the magnetic
trap?"
Laughter from in front. Again I regretted forgetting the tape-recorder.
"Fire" was being exchanged again.
"Mystical, if you ask me. Improbable."
"No mysticism is needed to recognize a possibility as improbable. All
you need is mathematics."
"Paradox. And yours?"
"Mathematics is what we need here more than physics. A mathematician
would do more."
"Just what do you picture him doing?"
"He doesn't need any samples, just more pictures. And what will he see?
Geometric figures distorted in all manner of ways, no tearing and no
folding. Strictly problems in topology."
"Excuse me, but who's going to solve the problem of the composition of
the rose-coloured bio-mass?"
"So you consider it a mass?"
"I cannot, on the basis of these coloured pictures, consider it to be a
thinking organism."
"Processing of information is obvious."
"Processing of information does not yet make it a synonym of thinking."
This tit-for-tat continued. The hall got really excited when the ice
symphony came on-clouds sawing, huge bars of ice rising in the blue sky.
"Look at them stretch, will you! A kilometre-long pancake out of a
three-metre cloudlet."
"That's not a pancake, it's a knife."
"I don't get it."
"Why? Only one gram of substance in a colloidal dispersed state
possesses a vast surface area."
"So it's a substance?"
"It's hard to make a definite statement. What kind of data have we?
What do they say about the biosystem? How does it react to the environment?
Only via a field? And what controls it?"
"And to that the question of where it gets its power. Where does it
store the energy? What kind of transformers ensure conversion?"
"Then there's the ..."
That was the end of the film, no more commentary, the lights went up
and there was total silence, the light seeming to call for the customary
cautiousness in judgements. The chairman, Academician Osovets, caught the
mood immediately:
"This is not a symposium, comrades, and not a meeting of academicians,"
he reminded them in calm tones. "We who are gathered here represent a
special committee set up by the Government with the following aims: to
determine the nature of the rose 'clouds', their purpose in coming to the
earth, the aggressiveness or friendliness of their intentions, and to
contact them in some way if they turn out to be intelligent, thinking
creatures. However, what we have seen does not yet permit us to come to any
definite conclusions or decisions."
"Why?" came a voice from the hall, a familiar bass voice. "How about
the film? The first conclusion is that it is an excellent piece of
scientific filming. Invaluable material to start the work. And also a first
decision: show the film here and in the West."
All this, I must admit, was very pleasant to hear. And just as pleasant
was the Chairman's reply:
"The film was appraised in like manner by the Government as well. And a
similar resolution has already been passed. Colleague Anokhin has been
included in the working group of our committee. Still and all, the film
fails to answer many of our questions: whence, from what corner of the
universe did these creatures come, what forms of life are they (they can
hardly be protein-based), what is their physico-chemical structure, and are
they living beings, intelligent creatures or bio-robots with specific
programmes of action? Many more questions might be asked, some of them will
not get answers. Now, at least. But we can conjecture and construct certain
working hypotheses, and publish them, and not only in the scientific
journals-in all countries of the world people want to know about the rose
'clouds' not from fortune-tellers but in the form of solid scientific
information, at least within the limits of what we already know and can
safely conjecture. We could, say, speak of the possibilities of contact,
about changes in the terrestrial climate associated with the loss of ice,
and, what is most important, we might find counter-arguments to the idea of
the aggressive nature of this as yet unknown civilization in the form of
facts and proof of its loyalty to human civilization."
"Incidentally," began a scientist sitting next to Zernov, "one thing
might be added to what has been said in the press. There is very little
deuterium in ordinary water, but ice and melted snow contain a still smaller
percentage, which means they are biologically more active. It is also a fact
that water acted upon by a magnetic field changes its fundamental
physico-chemical properties. Now terrestrial glaciers represent water that
has already been subjected to the earth's magnetic field. It might possibly
be-who knows -that this will shed some light on the aims of the new-comers."
"Actually, I'm interested more in their other aim, though I'm a
glaciologist," Zernov remarked. "Why they construct models of everything
they see is understandable; such specimens would be useful in the study of
terrestrial life. But why do they destroy them?"
"I'll risk an explanation," Osovets let his eyes stray over the hall.
Like a lecturer who is asked a question, he did not answer Zernov alone.
"Suppose that they carry with them not a model but only the notation of its
structure. And to obtain such, let us say it is required to break the model
down, to decompose it into its molecular constituents, perhaps even down to
the atomic level. They do not wish to harm human beings and destroy them or
the creatures they construct. Hence the synthesis and subsequent elimination
(after a trial) of the model."
"That makes them friends and not aggressors, doesn't it?" someone
asked.
"Yes, that's what I think," the Academician answered with caution.
"We'll just have to live and see."
There were a lot of questions, some I understood, others I forgot. But
one of Irene's questions posed to Zernov I did remember.
"Professor, you said that they construct models of all things. That
they see. Where are their eyes? How do they see?"
The answer came not from Zernov but from a physicist next to him.
"Eyes are not obligatory," he explained. "They can reproduce any object
via photography. Say, create a light-sensitive surface just as they create
any field, and then focus light on it reflected from the object. That's all.
Of course, that is only one of a number of possible suppositions. We might
presume an acoustic 'tuning' of a similar kind and an analogous 'tuning' to
odours."
"I am convinced that they see everything, hear and sense all things
much better than we do," said Zernov with a strange kind of
ceremonious-ness.
This time nobody even smiled. Zernov's remark appeared to sum up all
that had been seen and heard, and revealed to all present the tremendous
significance of what had to be thought over and comprehended.
After Tolya had left I remained standing at the window, my eyes glued
to the snowed-over asphalt driveway that connected my entrance door to the
gates at the street. I was hoping that Irene might come. Theoretically she
could have, not out of any tenderness of heart, naturally, but simply
because otherwise she could not give me any news or instructions since I had
no telephone. We were now connected by a range of business. She was
secretary of this special committee and I was an expert with a variety of
duties from press attache to projectionist. Then we had a joint assignment
to go to Paris to an international meeting of scientists devoted to those
same rose "clouds"-that impenetrable phenomenon the whole world was talking
about. Academician Osovets was head of the delegation and Zernov and I were
going as witnesses of the fact, while Irene was in the more modest, though
probably even more important role of secretary-translator with a knowledge
of six languages. Also in the delegation was Rogovin, world-famous
physicist-the bass voice that had so intrigued me during our first showing
of the film. The assignment was getting under way, all the documents were
ready and only a few days were left before our departure. There were oodles
of things to do, all the more so since Zernov had left for Leningrad to see
his family and would be back any day now.
But, honestly, that was not the reason I wanted to see Irene. I had
simply grown lonely for her during my week of confinement. I wanted to hear
her sharp ironical thrusts, even see her dark rectangular glasses that took
away some portion of her charm and femininity. I was openly drawn to her-was
it friendship or infatuation, or perhaps a vague, almost imperceptible
something that attracts one person to another and is so acutely felt when
that person is absent. "Do you like her?" I asked myself. "Very much." "What
is it, love?" "Don't know." Sometimes I have difficulty with her and at
times she makes me mad. At some point the attraction turns into repulsion,
and one wants to say something to hurt. That may be because we are so
different.
Then the difference sharpens to a razor-edge: as she has put it, my
education is a salad made up of Kafka, Hemingway and Bradbury; my reply to
that is that hers is a minced pie out of last year's "Technology for the
Youth" magazine. Then again I'd just as soon compare her to a dried fish or
the Laputan experts. Her response to that is that she condescends to place
me with the lower primates. Still and all, we have some things in common.
Then we seem to be gay and excited when together.
This is a strange, amusing friendship that was struck up just after
that memorable film showing at the Academy of Sciences. I continued sitting
in the corner until all the big and little scientists had left and the
lights were out. I picked up all the parts and pieces of my equipment, put
them into a bag and sat down again.
Irene looked at me, without speaking, through her dark glasses.
"You're not a duplicate by any chance?" she asked.
"I certainly am," I agreed. "How did you guess?"
"By the actions of normal human beings. A normal person, not loaded
down with a higher education, would long ago have left, without waiting for
the meeting to come to an end. Now here you are, sitting, listening,-why
don't you get a move on?"
"I'm studying terrestrial life," I said importantly. "We duplicates are
self-programmed systems that vary the programme as we go along depending on
the subject, on whether it is worth studying."
"You mean me, I'm the subject?"
"Astounding guess work on your part."
"The session is over. Consider that you've completed the study."
"That's right, now I'll order a model of you with certain corrections."
"Without glasses?"
"That's not all. Without stuck-up superiority and priest-like
magnificence. Just an ordinary girl with your wit and face that I'd like to
invite to the movies or for a walk."
I hoisted my bag and went to the exit.
"I like movies and walks," she added after me.
I turned round.
Then the next day I returned all spruced up like a diplomatic attache.
She was typing something. I said hello and sat down at her desk.
"What do you want?" she asked.
"Looking for work."
"Haven't they assigned you to us yet?"
"They're doing it."
"You have to go through personnel ..."
"Personnel for me is nothing," I dismissed the matter curtly. "I'm
interested in the day-before-yesterday's minutes."
"What for? You wouldn't understand anything in them any way?"
"For one thing, the resolutions passed by the meeting," I continued in
a highfalutin manner, paying no attention to her thrusts, "insomuch as we
have information that four expeditions are being outfitted for the Arctic,
the Caucasus, Greenland and the Himalayas."
"Five," she corrected me. "The fifth is the Fedchenko glacier."
"I'd choose Greenland," I remarked rather by the way.
Then she laughed, as if dealing with a member of the school chess team
who is asking for a match with the world champion. I felt lost, of a sudden.
"And where to?"
"Nowhere."
I missed the point.
"Why? Every expedition needs a cameraman."
"I don't like to disappoint you, Yuri, but we don't need one." There'll
be scientists and technicians of a number of specialized institutes. The
NIKFI for instance. And don't look at me with those kind ram's eyes. Note
that I didn't say 'stupid' eyes. I simply ask you: can you operate an
introscope? No. Can you photo from behind a wall of opaqueness, say in
infrared rays? No. Can you convert the invisible into the visible with the
aid of an electronic-acoustic transducer? No, again. I can read it on your
carefully shaven face. So you didn't have to shave, after all."
"All right, but how about ordinary camera work?" I still couldn't make
it out. "Just common filmus vulgaris?"
"For filmus vulgaris all one needs is a kid's camera. That's not done
any more. More important is to get an image in opaque media, from outside a
cloud cover. For example, what happens to a model inside the crimson tube?"
I was silent. For an ordinary cameraman, that was differential
calculus.
"So you see, Yuri," she laughed. "You can't do anything. You don't know
the Kirlian method, do you?"
I had never even heard of it.
"Incidentally, it permits distinguishing the living from the
nonliving."
"I can do that without a camera."
But she had already taken up the pose of lecturer.
"On film, living tissue is seen surrounded by a transparent
halo-discharges of high-frequency currents. The more intensive the vital
activities, the brighter the halo."
"It's living tissue if it's naked," I said angrily and got up. "Forget
about personnel. I don't have anything to do in that department. Here
either."
She laughed, but this time differently: gaily and kindly.
"Sit down, Yuri, and don't be down-hearted, we'll go together."
"Where to?" I was still boiling. "Moscow suburbs?"
"No, to Paris."
I didn't believe that sly little devil of a girl till I saw the actual
paper for our assignment to the Paris conference. And now, here, I was
waiting for the same devil, waiting for the angel, and chewing match sticks
with impatience. And I would just miss her when I went over to the desk for
cigarettes. She phoned when I was already making plans to throw the whole
thing over.
"Jesus," I exclaimed, "finally!"
She tossed me her raincoat and danced into the room.
"Have you become a believer?"
"From this minute I believe in the angel who brings forgiveness from
heaven. When's it going to be? Don't keep me waiting."
"The day after tomorrow. Zernov returns tomorrow. The next morning we
take off. The tickets have been ordered. By the way, how did we get to a
first-name basis so quickly?"
Just instinctively. That's not what's worrying you."
She thought for a moment.
"That's true. They're already in the Arctic, you see what I mean. The
captain of the 'Dobrynya' icebreaker, Captain Shchetinnikov, just back from
Archangel came over to the committee. He says that the vast area of the Kara
Sea and the ocean north of Franz-Joseph Land is all free from ice. From
Pulkovo Observatory the report is that ice satellites orbit over the North
Pole several times a day."
"And the committee rejects filming," I added disappointed. "Now's just
the time to photograph."
"Amateurs have been doing that. We'll soon be getting cartloads of
film. That's not the important thing."
"What is important?"
"Contact."
I whistled.
"Don't whistle. Attempts at contact have already been made, though
without success it seems. But English and Dutch scientists have proposed a
programme of contacts. All the materials are in the hands of Osovets. Then
there's this Thompson group that'll have to be dealt with at the congress.
The American delegation is actually divided, the majority do not support
Thompson, but there are some that are in with him. Not very solidly, true,
but they'll be hard nuts to crack in Paris. That's what's important, see?
Wait a minute." Laughing, she grabbed her raincoat and pulled from the
pocket a bulky package covered over with foreign stamps. "I forgot about the
most important thing of all; here's a letter for you from the United States.
You're getting to be famous."
"From Martin," I said, looking at the address.
A strange address, to say the least:
"Yuri Anokhin. First observer of the phenomenon of the rose clouds.
Committee for Fighting Visitors from Space, Moscow, USSR."
"Committee for fighting ..." Irene laughed. "Some programme for
contacts. He's a Thompsonite, all right."
"Here, I'll read it."
Martin wrote that he had returned from the Antarctic expedition to his
airbase near Sand City, in the southwest of the United States. On Thompson's
suggestion, he was immediately assigned to a voluntary society set up by the
Admiral for combating the cosmic visitors. Martin was not surprised at his
assignment. Thompson had told him about it in the plane on the way home.
Neither was he surprised at the position he was offered. When the Admiral
learned that in college Martin had published items in student journals, he
named his press agent. "I have a feeling that the old man doesn't believe
me, he thinks I'm a double, something like a fifth columnist and so he wants
to keep me close by him to see and check for himself. That's why I didn't
tell him what happened to me on the way to our airbase in Sand City. But
I've got to tell somebody, and there's nobody but you. You're the only one
who can disentangle this crazy house I've gotten into. You and I know what
happened at the South Pole; here things seem to be dressed up differently."
The letter was typed, over ten single-spaced pages. "My first article
is not for the press, only for you," he wrote. "You'll see for yourself
whether I'm fit to be a newspaper man." I went through a couple of pages and
nearly jumped.
"Read it," I said to Irene, handing her the pages as I finished them.
"It looks like we're in a hot spot."
Here's what Martin wrote:
The sun had just risen over the horizon when I went out the gates of
the airbase. I was in a hurry, with only 24 hours of time off, and it was at
least an hour's drive to Sand City. I waved gaily to the sleepy watchman, my
ancient two-seater jerked forward and I went sailing along the asphalt.
Something rattled in the back of the car, then a knock, the cylinders were
banging- this was a real piece of junk all right. "About time to get a new
one," I thought to myself, "eight years is much too much. But you get into
the habit, and Mary likes it too".
That's where I was going, to see Mary in Sand City and spend the last
free day I had with her before leaving for New York to report to the
Admiral. The boys at the airbase introduced me to Mary the first day after
my return from Mac-Murdo. She was new at this bar, nothing spectacular, a
girl like any other girl, in a starched white uniform and Elizabeth Taylor
hairdo- they all copy film stars at the bar. There was something about her
that attracted me from the very start, and so every evening off I'd go over
to see her. I even wrote Mom that I had a nice girl, and all that sort of
thing. You know.
This trip I had made up my mind finally and was thinking over how to
tell her. No use holding things up, that's the way I felt. But things were
held up, after all. Some guy was out there on the highway, I honked the
horn, but instead of moving away he jumped about and almost landed under the
car. So I slammed down the brakes and got out:
"Hey, what's wrong, can't you see a car when it's right in front of
you?"
He looked at me, then at the sky and slowly got to his feet, beating
the dust out of his old jeans.
"There's something a lot worse than cars that's frightening people." He
came over to me and asked. "Going into town?"
I nodded and he got in, just as wild-looking as before. Terribly scared
is what I figured, with droplets of sweat all over his forehead, with dark
damp circles around the armpits of his shirt.
"How come you're out training so early?" I asked.
"Much worse," he repeated putting his hand into his pocket. Along with
his handkerchief, a 1952 Barky Jones fell out onto the seat.
I whistled in surprise: "What's this a pursuit?"
I was now sorry that I had got mixed up with him. I don't like highway
encounters of that nature.
"Crazy," he said without anger. "It's not mine, the boss's: I'm just
watching the herd at Viniccio's ranch."
"Cowboy?"
"No," he replied screwing up his face and wiping the sweat off his
forehead. "I can't even ride a horse. But I need money for college."
I smiled to myself: 'escaping gangster turns into vacation-working
student'.
"My name's Mitchell Casey," he said.
I told him my name, hoping not without vanity that because it had been
in the papers since meeting the dragons at MacMurdo he might recognize it,
but I was mistaken. He hadn't been reading the papers or listening to the
radio, had never heard of me, nor of the rose clouds: "Maybe this is a war
or men from Mars have landed, it's about the same, I don't know."
"There's no war yet," I said. "It might be Martians all right, though."
I told him briefly about the rose clouds. But I never expected my story
to produce the reaction that it did. He grabbed for the door as if he wanted
to jump out on the spot, but then he opened his mouth and with trembling
lips asked:
"From the sky?"
I nodded.
"Long rose-coloured cucumbers. Like diving airplanes?"
That surprised me. He seemed to know all about them, though he said he
didn't read the papers.
"I just saw some," he said, and again wiped his forehead, this time
from cold sweat most likely. The meeting with our acquaintances from the
Antarctic seemed to have knocked him out completely.
"So what?" I asked. "They fly and they dive, do a good job. And they're
like cucumbers. But no harm done. Just a fog, that's all. You're a bit of a
coward, aren't you?"
"Anyone would have got scared in my place," he said still all keyed up.
"I nearly went crazy when they doubled my herd."
And, then looking around, as if afraid someone might be listening, he
added softly, "And me too."
I realized then, Yuri, that Mitchell had gone through the same thing
that you and I had. These damn clouds got interested in the herd, dived
down, doubled it and this plucky cowboy tried to drive them off. Then
something totally unexplainable occurred. One of the rose cucumbers
approached him, hovered over his head and ordered him to retreat. Not in
words, naturally, but like a hypnotizer-to go back and get on the horse.
Mitchell told me that he could not do anything other than as he was told.
Without offering any resistance, he went back to the horse and got into the
saddle. What I think is that they wanted someone on horseback because they
already had quite a collection of people on foot. The rest was routine: the
red fog, the complete immobility-you can't move a hand or a foot and it is
as if you were being examined straight through. A very familiar pattern.
When the fog dispersed and the boy came to he couldn't believe his eyes-the
herd had doubled, and to the side, on a horse, was another Mitchell. The
horse was the same, and he was the same, as if in a mirror.
That's when he lost his nerve; and I remember well the first time that
happened to me too. Well, it was the same thing, he ran, he just ran to get
away from it. Then he stopped. The cattle weren't his, he would be
responsible. He thought a bit, and then returned. What he found was what had
been there before the coming of the rose clouds. No extra cattle, no
duplicate horse. So he figured he must have been seeing things, or he was
out of his mind. He drove the cattle into the paddock, and left for town to
see the boss.
All of this is by way of introduction, you understand. I had hardly
quieted down the boy when I myself got the jitters: there they were flying
at house-top level, single file as if it were along a road. Just like Disney
characters, like our radioman at MacMurdo had suggested, not like cucumbers.
Then Mitchell saw them. Dead silence. He was breathing heavily.
That's it again, I thought, recalling how those dirigibles had plunged
into combat in our first aerial fight. But this time they did not even
descend, they simply hurtled by at sonic speed like rose-coloured flashes of
lightning in a lilac sky.
"They're headed for town," Mitchell whispered from behind.
I didn't say anything.
"I wonder why they didn't pay any attention to us."
"Not interested. Two in a car, any number about like us. And I'm tagged
as it is."
He didn't get me.
"We've already met," I explained. "And they remember."
"I don't like this at all," he said and fell silent.
And so we drove on in silence until the town came into sight. We were
about a mile away but for some reason I didn't recognize it. It seemed so
strange in the lilac haze, like a mirage over distant shifting yellow sands.
"What the hell!" I exclaimed in surprise. "Maybe my speedometer's on
the blink. It should
be a good dozen miles yet to town, but there it ,1
is."
"Look up over there!" Mitchell shouted.
Right over the mirage of the town hung a string of rose clouds, sort of
like jellyfish or perhaps umbrellas, or a cross between them. Maybe that's a
mirage too.
"The town's not in the right place," I said. "I don't get it."
"We should have passed old man Johnson's motel by this time," Mitchell
put in. "It's only a mile from town."
I recalled the shrivelled up face of the motel owner and his stentorian
commanding voice: "The world's gone nuts, Don. I'm already beginning to
believe in God." I seemed ready to believe in God too. I was seeing
marvellous unfathomable miracles. Johnson, who ordinarily sat on his porch
and greeted all cars passing by, had vanished. That in itself was a miracle.
Never, in all my travelling to town, had I ever missed old man Johnson
waving us into town. A bigger enigma yet was the disappearance of his motel,
for we couldn't have passed it. There weren't even any signs of a structure
along the road.
On the other hand, the town was coming into full sight. Sand City in a
lilac haze ceased to be a mirage.
"A town like any other," said Mitchell, "but there's something
different here. Maybe we're on another route."
But we were coming in by the usual route. The same red-brick houses,
the same sign boards with big letters reading: 'Juiciest Beef Steak in Sand
City', the same gas station. Even Fritch in a white jacket was standing as
usual near the lightning-split oak tree with his broad smile "What can I do
for you, sir? Oil? Gas?"
I stopped the car with a screech of brakes so familiar to gas station
attendants round this place.
"Howdy, Fritch. What's doing in town?"
It looked to me like Fritch didn't recognize me. He approached us but
kind of unwillingly, no eagerness, like a person coming into a brightly lit
room from the dark. Still more striking were his eyes: fixed, as if dead,
they looked through us, not at us. He stopped before reaching the car.
"Good morning, sir," he said indifferently in a dull hollow voice.
He didn't use my name.
"What's happening to the city!?" I yelled. "What's it got, wings?"
"Don't know, sir," the voice was Fritch's but in a totally indifferent
monotone. "What would you like, sir?"
No, this wasn't Fritch at all. "Where's old man Johnson's motel gone
to?" I asked impatiently.
He replied without a smile:
"Old man Johnson's motel? Don't know, sir." He took a step closer and,
now with a smile-but such an artificial smile it was that I was horrified.
.. Then, "What can I do for you, some oil, or gas?"
"Okay," I said. "We'll figure this out yet. Let's go, Mitchell." As I
left the gas station, I turned around. Fritch was still standing there on
the roadside, watching us go, his eyes the cold, fixed eyes of a corpse.
"What's wrong with him?" asked Mitchell. "Taken a bit too much this
morning?"
But I knew that Fritch did not drink, anyway nothing more than Pepsi
Cola. This wasn't liquor, it was something inhuman.
"A puppet," I muttered, "a wound-up puppet. 'Don't know, sir. What can
I do for you, sir?' "
You know I'm no coward, Yuri, but honestly I cringed from a premonition
of imminent danger. Too many unaccountable accidents, and worse than down
there in Antarctica. I even wanted to turn around and go back, but there's
no other route to town. And there was no point in going back to the base.
"You know where to find the boss?" I asked Mitchell.
"In the club most likely."
"Okay, we'll begin with the club," I sighed.
"Since the town's right here, there's no use stopping now."
I turned down Eldorado Street racing the car past neat rows of
cottages, all yellow like new-born chicks. There were no pedestrians, nobody
walked-this was an upper-crust neighbourhood, quiet; the big shots had
already left for their offices, and their wives were still stretching in bed
or having late breakfasts in their electrified kitchenettes. Mitchell's boss
was taking a snack in the club, which was at the cross-roads of Main Street
and State. By this time I was fairly ashamed of my unrealised fears-the blue
sky, no rose clouds over head, the heated-up asphalt, the hot wind sweeping
bits of newspaper which might even be carrying the rose-cloud sensation and
stating that it was the concoction of New York nuts. Sand City was fully
protected from any cosmic intruder. Everything returned us to the reality of
quiet town, the way it should be on a sultry summer morning like today.
At least that is the way it seemed to me, because it was all an
illusion, Yuri. There was no morning in the town and it wasn't slumbering or
sleeping. We could see that at once when we turned down State Street.
"Isn't it too early for the club?" I asked Mitchell still thinking by
inertia about the sleeping city.
He laughed-there was a crowd at the intersection that had stopped all
traffic. This was no morning crowd and this was no waking-up city. The sun
shone but the electric street lights were just as bright, as if it were
still last night. Neon lights were still flashing on and off in the
show-windows and on signs. In movie houses, cowboys were shooting, James
Bond was fearlessly on the job seeking out victims to eliminate. Billiard
balls were racing noiselessly over green tables, and the jazz band over at
the "Selena" Restaurant was banging away as loud as a passing train. And on
the sidewalks, pedestrians were walking lazily along, not hurrying to work,
because work had long since ceased, the city was alive with evening life,
not morning duties. As if the people together with the electric lighting
were out to fool time and nature.
"Why the lights? Isn't the sun enough?" Mitchell said in bewilderment.
I pulled up at the curb near the tobacco store. Tossing some change on
the counter I carefully asked the pretty sales girl:
"What's it a holiday today?"
"What holiday?" she asked by way of reply, handing me the cigarettes.
"An ordinary evening of a usual day?"
The immobile blue eyes looked through me-like the dead eyes of Fritch.
"Evening?" I repeated. "Take a look at the sky. What's the sun doing
there if it's evening?"
"Don't know." Her voice was calm and indifferent. "It's evening now and
I don't know anything."
I slowly left the shop. Mitchell was waiting in the car. He had heard
the whole conversation and was probably thinking the same thoughts as I was:
who's crazy, we or everyone in town? Maybe it really was evening and
Mitchell and I were seeing things. I took another close look at the street.
It was part of Route 66 that passed through to New Mexico. The cars were
passing two lanes abreast in both directions. Ordinary United States cars on
an ordinary American highway. All of them had their headlights on.
On an impulse, I grabbed the first passer-by.
"Hey, take your hands off me," he exploded.
He was a little, thick-set but nimble man in a crazy-like bicycle cap.
His eyes were not empty and indifferent, but alive and angry. They looked at
me with revulsion. I turned around and looked at Mitchell who mimicked that
the fat guy must be touched in the head. And the anger of the roly-poly
stranger switched to a different direction.
"You say I'm crazy, do you!" he screamed and lunged for Mitchell.
"You're the ones that are mad, the whole town's gone nuts. Electricity in
the morning, and the only answer I get to all questions is 'I don't know'.
All right, what is it: morning or night?"
"Morning, of course," said Mitchell, "but something's wrong here in
town this morning, I just don't understand."
The metamorphosis of the fat man was amazing. He no longer screamed or
yelled, only quietly smiled stroking Mitchell's sweaty hand. Even his eyes
moistened.
"Thank heavens, one normal man in this nut house of a town," he said
finally still holding on to Mitchell's hand.
"Two," I said extending my own hand. "You're the third. Let's exchange
impressions. We might be able to figure out this number."
We stopped on the edge of the curb separated from the highway by a
colourful string of parked cars, nobody inside.
"Gentlemen, explain this to me," he began, "these tricks with cars.
They ride along, disappear, vanish, into nowhere."
To put it honestly, I didn't get what he was driving at. What was this
"into nowhere". He explained. Only he needed a smoke to calm down. "I don't
usually smoke, but you know it does have a calming effect."
"My name's Lesley Baker, travelling salesman. Women's apparel,
cosmetics. Always on the go, here one day, gone the next. I arrived on the
route from New Mexico, turned onto Route 66. I was crawling along awfully
slow, like a snail. There was this big green van right in front, couldn't
pass it for the life of me. You know how it is, going slow. A toothache's
worse. Then this sign 'You are now entering the quietest city in the United
States'. Quietest, my eye, the craziest, that's more like it. At the city
limits, where the highway widens out-there are no sidewalks-I tried again to
get out ahead of this big van. I just stepped on the gas, and it vanished,
went up into nothing. I was flabbergasted. So I put on the brakes, pulled
over to the side and looked here and there, no van. Evaporated like sugar in
a cup of coffee. I even ran into a barbed-wire fence, lucky I was going
slow."
"Why a barbed-wire fence along the road?" I asked surprised.
"On the highway? There wasn't any highway. It had gone along with the
van. All there was a red open space, a green island-like something at a
distance, and the fence and barbed wire all about. Somebody's farm, I guess.
You don't believe me? Well, I didn't myself. The hell with the van, I
figured, but where did the road go to? I must have been off my rocker. I
turned around and nearly died then and there-a huge black Lincoln was
heading for me right through the wire! It was doing at least a hundred miles
an hour. I didn't even have time to jump, I just closed my eyes. This was
the end for sure. A minute passed, no end. I opened my eyes, no end, no car,
no nothing."
"Maybe it passed by."
"Where? How? On what road?"
"So the road disappeared too?"
He nodded.
"So," I said, "the cars disappeared before reaching the barbed wire?"
"That's just it. One after the other. I stood there some ten minutes
and they kept on disappearing at the edge of the highway. It broke off in
red clay at the very edge of the wire. There I stood like Rip Van Winkle,
blinking my eyes. To all questions, only one answer: 'Don't know.' Why are
the cars driving with headlights on? Don't know. Where are they disappearing
to? Don't know. Maybe going to hell? Don't know. Where's the highway? The
eyes are glassy like those of the dead."
It was already clear to me what kind of city this was. All I wanted was
one more test: to take a look with my own eyes. I looked around and raised
my hand: one of the cars stopped. The driver had glassy eyes too. But I
risked it.
"I'm going to the city limits. Two blocks or so, that's all."
"Hop in," he said indifferently.
I got in beside him. The fat guy and Mitchell got in behind, not quite
understanding what it was all about. The driver turned his head away,
completely apathetic, stepped on the gas, and covered the two blocks in half
a minute.
"Look," Baker from behind whispered in agitation.
In front of us, right across the highway cut off by the red clay were
four rows of rusty barbed wire. One could only see a small portion of the
wire fencework, the rest was hidden behind the houses on the roadside, and
so it seemed as if the whole city were fenced in and isolated from the world
of living human beings. I already had some idea of this thing from Baker's
story, but the reality was still crazier.
"Watch out for the wire," Baker yelled grabbing at the arm of the
driver.
"Where?" was the surprised reply and he pushed away Baker's hand.
"You're nuts."
He obviously didn't see the wire.
"Put on the brakes," I said, "we're getting out here."
The driver slowed down, but I could already see the radiator beginning
to melt in the air. It was as if something invisible were eating the car
away inch by inch. The windshield had gone, then the instrument panel, the
driving wheel, the hands of the driver. This was ghastly-so terrifying that
I instinctively closed my eyes. Then a sharp blow knocked me to the ground.
I pitched into the dust and rolled along on the asphalt roadway, which means
I was flung out at the very edge of the highway. But how did I fly out? The
door of the car was shut, the car hadn't overturned or anything. I raised my
head and in front I saw the body of an unfamiliar grey car. Alongside in the
dust lay unconscious our friend the salesman.
"Are you alive?" asked Mitchell bending down to him. He had a black
eye. "I was knocked right against Baker's bus." He nodded towards the grey
car stuck in the wire roadblock.
"Where's ours?"
He shrugged his shoulders. For a minute or two we stood silent at the
edge of the cut-off highway watching one and the same miracle that had just
left us without a car. The fat travelling salesman had also got to his feet
and had joined our spectacle. It was repeated every three seconds when-at
full speed-a car crossed the edge of the highway. Fords and Pontiacs and
Buicks-all kinds drove in and vanished without a trace, like soap bubbles.
Some of the cars were heading right into us as we stood there, but we did
not move because they simply evaporated two feet in front of us. The entire
process of mysterious and inexplicable vanishings was clearly visible right
here in the hot sunshine. True enough, they did not vanish suddenly but
gradually, by diving, as it were, into some kind of a hole in space and
disappearing there, beginning with the front bumper and winding up with the
back license plate. The whole city seemed to be fenced round with
transparent glass, beyond which there was no highway, no cars, no city at
all.
Probably one and the same thought rankled all three of us: What was
there to do? Return to town? But what kind of marvels might not be awaiting
us there, some kind of weird circus perhaps? What kind of people would there
be, who would be able to speak a normal human word? So far we hadn't met up
with a single normal person except the travelling salesman. I suspected the
doings of the rose clouds, but people hereabouts were not like the
duplicates created at the South Pole. Those were, or seemed to be, human
beings, while these resembled resurrected dead who knew nothing but the
desire to go somewhere, to drive cars, knock billiard balls about and drink
whiskey. I recalled Thompson's version and now for the first time got real
scared. Had they indeed been able to replace the entire population of the
city? Could it be.... No, there was still one more test to make. Only one.
"Let's get back to town, boys," I said to my companions. "We've got to
rinse out heads in a big way or else the nut house is the only place for us.
Judging by the cigarettes, the whiskey here is real."
But I was thinking about Mary.
At about noon we arrived at the bar where Mary worked. The show window
and the neon signs were ablaze with light. The owners were not trying to
save on electricity even at high noon. My white duck jumper was wet through
and through with sweat, but it was cool and empty in the bar. The high
stools were vacant; there were only a few couples near the window whispering
and a half-drunk old man in the corner nursing his bottle of brandy and
orange juice.
Mary did not hear us enter. She was standing with her back to us at the