The student shut the diary and raised his eyes. The table lamp was lit without illuminating anything. It was light. Beyond the window the matching yellow faces of the buildings of Academic Town stared into the sun; it looked like the herd of houses would take off after the light any second. The clock said 7:30 in the morning.
Krivoshein lit up and went out on the balcony. People were gathering at the bus stop. A broad — shouldered man in a blue raincost paced under the trees. “Well, well!” Krivoshein was amazed by his tenacity. “All right, I have to save what can be saved.”
He went back inside, undressed, and took a cold shower. Then he opened the closet, critically eyed the meager selection of clothes. He chose a Ukrainian shirt with embroidery. He gave the worn suit a dubious stare, sighed, and put it on.
Then the student trained in front of the mirror for fifteen minutes and left the apartment.
Chapter 21
“Hey! Stop! Don’t be a jackass!”
“Easier said than done….” muttered the jackass, and rambled on.
A contemporary fable
The man in the raincoat noticed Krivoshein, turned to him, and stared.
“God, what a bumbling amateur detective!” Krivoshein thought to himself. “None of this watching my reflection in store windows or hiding behind a newspaper — he’s pushing his way toward me like a preneanderthal on a county bus! Don’t they train these guys? They should at least read comic books to improve their technique. A guy like this is really going to solve a crime, hah!”
He was angry. He walked right up to the man.
“Listen, don’t you ever get relieved? Doesn’t the seven — hour workday law apply to detectives?”
The man raised his eyebrows quizzically.
“Val….” he said in a soft baritone. “Val, don’t you recognize me?”
“Hm….” Krivoshein blinked, stared, and whistled. “I see… you must be the double Adam — Hercules? So that’s it! And I thought….”
“And then, you’re not Krivoshein? I mean, you are Krivoshein, but the Moscow one?”
“Right. Well, hello… hello Val — Adam, you lost soul!”
“Hello.”
They shook hands. Krivoshein examined Adam’s wind — burned, tanned face: the features were coarse, but handsome. “Val did a good job, just look at him!” But the light eyes behind the bleached lashes hid a certain temerity.
“There’s going to be an awful lot of Valentin Vasilyevich Krivosheins around here.”
“You can call me Adam. I think I’ll adopt the name.”
“Where have you been, Adam?”
“In Vladivostok. God….”He chuckled, as though not sure whether he had the right to joke or not. “In Vladivostok and its environs.”
“Really? Teriffic!” Krivoshein looked at him enviously. “Did you work on the ships?”
“Not quite. I blew up underwater cliffs. And now I’m back to work here.”
“And you’re not scared?”
Adam looked into Krivoshein’s eyes.
“I’m scared, but… you see, I have an idea. Instead of synthesizing artificial people I want to try to transform regular ones in the computer — womb. Well… you know, put them in the liquid and act on them with external information. I guess that’s possible, no?”
Adam was too diffident, he knew he was, and was sorry that he put the idea so clumsily.
“It’s a good idea,” the student said. He looked at Adam with new interest. “I guess we’re not that different,” he thought. “Or is it just the internal logic of the discovery?” He went on. “But it’s been done, Val. They put various parts of their bodies into our native element. I think they’ve even gotten in completely.”
“Is it working?”
“It’s working… only I’m not sure about the last experiment.”
“That’s marvelous! You see… then… then we can introduce art information into man with retrieval on a feedback basis.” And Adam, still shy and confused, told Krivoshein his plan for ennobling man through art.
The student understood.
He quoted from Krivoshein’s diary: “We have to base our work on the fact that man strives for the best, that no one, or almost no one, consciously wants to perform vile or stupid deeds, that such deeds are a result of misunderstanding. Things are complicated in life; you can’t figure out right away whether you’re behaving the right way or not. I know that from my own experience. And if you give a person clear information that his psychology can respond to — about what’s good, what’s bad, what’s stupid — and a clear understanding that any of his vile or stupid acts will eventually turn against him, then you don’t have to worry about him or his behavior. This information could be introduced into the computer — womb as well — “
“He’s done that, too?” Adam was surprised.
“No. There was only a vague idea that it was necessary. That the rest would be meaningless without it. So your idea is right on the mark. It fills in the blank, as we say in academic circles. Listen!” Krivoshein suddenly realized. “And with an idea like that you walked around, following me like a detective instead of just hailing me or coming up to the apartment?”
“You see,” Adam tried to explain, “I thought that you… were him. You walked right past me, didn’t recognize me, didn’t acknowledge me. I thought you — or rather he — didn’t want to see me. We parted unpleasantly….” He lowered his head.
“Yes…. Have you been to the lab?”
“The lab? But I don’t have a pass. And my papers are Krivoshein’s, they know them there.”
“How about over the fence?”
“Over the fence?” Adam shrugged in embarrassment. The idea hadn’t occurred to him.
“The man develops the most audacious, daring ideas but in real life… my God!” Krivoshein shook his head in disapproval and tried to explain: “You have to get rid of that lousy temerity before life, before people or we’ll be lost. And the work will be lost. Well, all right.” He handed him the keys. “Go make yourself at home and get some rest. You’ve been hanging around all night; you need it!
“Where is… he?”
“That’s what I’d like to know: where he is, and what happened to him.” The student looked worried. “I’ll try to clear all that up. I’ll see you later. So long.” He smiled. “It’s really terriffic that you came.”
“No, a person can’t be thrown off the track that easily!” Krivoshein thought as he headed for the institute. “A great project, a major idea can subjugate anything, can make you forget insults and personal goals, and imperfections. Man strives for the best: he’s absolutely right!”
Overcrowded morning buses rushed past him. The student noticed Lena in one of the them: she was sitting by the window and staring abstractly into space. “Ah, Lena, Lena, how could you?” Reading the diary had a tremendous effect on him: he felt that he had spent that year in Dneprovsk. Now he was simply Krivoshein and his heart contracted with the memory of the pain that that woman had caused him (yes, him!).
I know what our research is leading up to, there’s no point in kidding ourselves: I have to get into the tank. Kravets and I are performing minor educational experiments with our extremities. I even used the liquid circuit to fix up my knee tendons, torn so long ago, and now I don’t limp. All this represents marvels in medicine, but we’re aiming for something bigger — the transformation of an entire person! We can’t putter around here, or we’ll spend another twenty years around the tank. And I’m the one who has to go in, an ordinary, natural person. There’s nothing more for Kravets to do in the tank.
Actually, I’ll be testing myself, not the computer — womb. All our knowledge and usage of the word “good” isn’t worth a thing if man won’t have the will power and determination to undergo informational transformation in the liquid.
Of course, I won’t come out of the bath transformed. First of all, we don’t have the necessary information to make substantial changes in the organism or
intellect; and secondly, we don’t need that for a beginning. It’s enough to experience being plugged into the computer — womb, to prove that it’s possible and not dangerous — and, well, to change something in me. Make that first orbit around the earth, so to speak.
Is it possible? Is it dangerous? Will I return from the orbiting capsule, from the experiments? The computer — womb is a complicated thing. We’ve discovered so many new things in it, and we still don’t know everything about it. I’m not too comfortable with the shining prospects of our research.
This is the very time I should get married. The hell with my careful relations with Lena; I need her. I want her to be with me, take care of me, worry about me, yell at me when I come home late, but give me dinner first. And (since everything is clear with the synthesis of doubles) let future Krivosheins appear not from the computer but as a result of good, highly moral relations between parents. And let them complicate our lives — I’m for it. I’m getting married! Why didn’t I think of it before?
Of course, to get married now when we’re about to do this experiment… well, at least there’ll be a permanent reminder of me — a son or daughter. People used to go to war, leaving wives and children behind. Why can’t I behave in the same way?
This may not be on the up and up — getting married when there is a possibility of leaving a widow behind me. But let those who have done what I’m doing condemn me. I’ll accept it from them.
May 12. “Marry me, Lena. Let’s live together. And we’ll have children as beautiful as you and as smart as me. Hummmm?”
“Do you really think you’re smart?”
“Why not?”
“If you were smart you wouldn’t make suggestions like that.”
“I don’t understand.”
“There, you see. And you think you’ll have smart children.”
“No, tell me. What’s wrong? Why won’t you marry me?
She stuck the last pin into her hair and turned from the mirror to me.
“I love it when you pout. Darling Val! My lovely red — haired bear. You mean you’ve developed some honorable intentions? You sweetie!”
“Wait! Are you agreeing to marry me?”
“No, my love.”
“Why not?”
“Because I understand a little more than you do about family life. Because I know nothing good will come of it for us. Just think back. Have we ever talked about anything serious? We just meet, spend time…. Think. Haven’t there been times when I come to see you, and you’re busy with your thoughts and you’re not happy, even angry, that I’m there? Of course, you make believe — you try hard, but I can tell. What will happen if we’re together constantly?”
“Do you mean — you don’t love me?”
“No, Val,” she looked at me sadly. “And I won’t fall in love with you. I don’t want to. I used to… to tell the truth, I worked at this 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 the
y 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.
Self-discovery Page 29