Worlds Apart

by Alexander Levitsky

  Kirpichnikov looked at the opposite bank of the little river and immediately noticed a small irrigation pump, half-hidden by a bush, and some sort of compact instrument. Probably the resonator-receiver, Kirpichnikov guessed.

  After Mathiessen had spoken the word “irrigate,” the pumping unit began to operate, the pump began to draw water from the river, and small fountains, spraying tiny droplets, began to strike the entire cabbage patch from nozzle-tipped sprinklers. The sun’s rainbow played in the little fountains and the entire patch began to make sounds and came alive: the pump buzzed, the moisture fizzed, the soil became saturated, and the young plants freshened.

  Mathiessen and Kirpichnikov stood quietly some twenty meters from this strange independent world and observed.

  “Do you see what human thought has become? The impact of intelligent will! Isn’t that true?”

  Mathiessen smiled dolefully with his lifeless face.

  Kirpichnikov felt a hot burning current in his heart and in his brain—the same as had struck him the moment he met his future wife. And yet Kirpichnikov also was aware in himself of some kind of secret shame and silent timidity—feelings that inhere in every murderer when murder has been committed in the interests of the whole world. In Kirpichnikov’s eyes, Mathiessen had clearly violated nature. And the crime was that neither Mathiessen himself nor all mankind had yet to make of themselves gems more precious than nature. To the contrary, nature was still more profound, greater, wiser, and more variegated than any human being.

  Mathiessen explained:

  “The whole thing is extremely simple! A human being, in this case I, is in the domain of actuating mechanisms, and his thought (for example, “irrigate”) has the potential of actuating machines: this is how they are constructed. the thought—irrigate—is received by the resonator. A strictly unique system of waves corresponds to this thought. It is precisely only waves of such and such wavelength and such and such period, such as are equivalent to the thought, “irrigate,” that close the circuit of those relays in the actuating mechanisms that control irrigation. That is, the circuit is directly opened there to the current and the electrical motor-pump begins to operate. Therefore, water glistens under the cabbage roots the very instant after the person’s thought—irrigate.

  “The purpose of high technology is to free man from working with his muscles. It will suffice to think out what would be needed for a star to change its course … But I want to reach the point of managing without actuating mechanisms and without any intermediaries, of acting on nature directly and without mediation—by sheer perturbation of the brain. I am sure of the success of machineless technology. I know that mere contact between man and nature—thoughts—is sufficient to control the entire substance of the world! You’ve understood! … I will explain. You see, there is a place, a core, in each body, such that if it is clicked, the entire body is yours: do whatever you like with it! And if you prick the body where necessary and when necessary, it will do what you compel it to do by itself! That’s why I believe that the electromagnetic force emitted by the human brain in the course of any thinking is entirely sufficient to so prick nature that it will be ours! …”

  Kirpichnikov shook Mathiessen’s hand as he said good-bye, then embraced him and said with warmth and complete sincerity:

  “Thanks, Isaac! Thanks, my friend! You know, there is just one other problem equal to yours! But it is still not solved, and yours is almost there … Good-bye! Thanks again! Everyone should work the way you do—with keen intelligence and a cool heart! So long!”

  “Good-bye,” answered Mathiessen, and, without taking his shoes off, started to wade to the other side of his little shallow river.

  * * *

  While Kirpichnikov was on vacation in Voloshino, a sensation shook the world. In the Bol’sheozersky tundra Professor Gomonov’s expedition had unearthed two mummies: a man and a woman lay together in an embrace upon a well-preserved carpet. The carpet was light blue in color and unfigured, covered over with the soft pelt of an unknown animal. The couple lay clothed in thick, seamlessly woven fabric of dark hues, closely embroidered with depictions of a tall, elegant plant topped by a double-petaled blossom. The man was elderly, the woman young. It was likely that they were father and daughter. Their faces and bodies were like those found in the Nizhnekolymsky tundra. There was the same expression on their calm faces—a slight smile, a suggestion of pity or pensiveness—as if a warrior had conquered an impregnable marble city, but, amid the statuary, edifices, and unfamiliar structures had fallen and died from exhaustion and amazement.

  The man was holding the woman close, as if to defend her peace and chastity in death. Under the carpet on which these long-dead inhabitants of the ancient tundra reposed were found two books—one was printed in the same script as the book found on the Nizhnekolymsky tundra, the other bore different characters. These characters were not letters, but a sort of ideograph system, in which each ideograph had a precise correspondence to a particular concept. There were an extraordinary number of ideographs, and in consequence five years were spent deciphering them. The book was then translated and published under the supervision of the Academy of Philological Studies. A portion of the text in the unearthed volume remained unintelligible since some sort of chemical compound, doubtless found in the carpet, had irremediably damaged the precious pages—they had blackened, and no reagent could clarify the ideographic signs they bore.

  The content of the discovered works was abstract philosophy and, to a certain extent, historical sociology. Nevertheless the compositions were so profoundly interesting, both for their thematics and their brilliant style, that in the course of two months the book went through eleven editions.

  Kirpichnikov ordered a copy. He was leaving no stone unturned in his single-minded search—for assistance in solving the ether channel enigma.

  Returning home from his visit with Matthiesen, he had felt that something was coming together in his mind. This made him very happy, but once again it all dispersed—and Kirpichnikov saw that Matthiesen’s research had only the most distant connection with his own tormenting problem.

  When the book arrived Kirpichnilov plunged into it, hounded by an single idea, searching between the lines for a cryptic hint pointing to the solution of his own problem. Despite the wild improbability, the madness, of looking for help with the discovery of the ether channel in the Lakes culture, Kirpichnikov read through the works of the long-dead philosopher with bated breath.

  The composition did not have the name of its author, it was called “The Songs of Aiuna.” Having read it, Kirpichnikov was not struck—the composition contained nothing remarkable: “How boring,” he observed. “Even out on the tundra they couldn’t think sensibly! It’s all love, creativity, and the soul. But where’s the bread,—and where’s the iron?”

  * * *

  Kirpichnikov got seriously depressed, as all humans inevitably do. He was already past thirty. His ether channel generators stood silent, underscoring his confusion. He ceaselessly pondered Popov’s words: “Simple solution—an electromagnetic track …” but the result was always another conundrum. An ether feed-line into the electron eluded him. [He felt he could not go on living just for the sake of the bliss offered by marriage. Spending nights working on a solution to the Ether tract idea, he felt uneasy with the directionless comfort offered at home. Remembering another conversation with Popov, during which the latter likened Earth to a giant spaceship created for true seekers rather than home-dwellers, he simply decided to leave his sleeping family one night without saying a good by. His search for a solution to Popov’s problem lead him eventually to America, where he hoped to find the secret of the composition of rose-oil, which he believed to be a substitute for the elixir of life. After some agonizing months of search he was no closer to it. Then he read by chance an ad in a Chicago daily, placed there by his wife, who begged him to come home. As he decided to go, he could not know that Mathiessen continued his research during his absenc
e and that these dangerous experiments would soon begin to have global consequence and affect his own fate] < … >

  * * *

  The Hamburg-American Line steamship carried him at an average speed of sixty kilometers an hour. Kirpichnikov knew his wife, and was sure she would be dead unless he made it home in time. He did not grant the possibility of suicide, but what else could it be? He had heard that in ancient times people died of love. Nowadays this was merely worthy of a smile. Was it possible that his tough, daring Maria, thrilled by every triviality of life, was capable of dying of love? People don’t perish from an ancient tradition—so why then would she die?

  Pondering and in agony, Kirpichnikov wandered about the deck. He noticed the searchlight of a far-off ship coming toward them, and stopped.

  Suddenly it got cold on the deck—a frightening northerly wind began to beat; and then a watery mass came down over the ship, and in an instant knocked people, objects, and the vessel’s paraphernalia off the deck. The ship listed 45° toward the mirrored surface of the ocean. Kirpichnikov was saved by chance, when his leg got stuck in a hatch.

  The air and the water thundered and howled, shifting densely about, breaking apart the ship, the atmosphere, and the ocean.

  The noise of destruction and the pitiful squeal of despair before death went up. Women grabbed the legs of men and prayed for help. The men beat them about the head with their fists and saved themselves.

  The catastrophe struck in an instant, and despite the great discipline and manliness of the crew, it was impossible to anything of substance to save the people and the ship.

  Kirpichnikov was struck at once not by the storm itself and the blank wall of water, but by the instantaneous suddenness with which they descended. The ocean was calm and all horizons were open half a minute before their arrival. The steamship blasted all its horns, the radio gave off sparks of alarm, the rescue of passengers washed overboard began. But the storm suddenly subsided, and the ship rocked peacefully, groping about for equilibrium.

  The horizon opened up; a kilometer away a European steamship was coming, shining its searchlights and speeding to the rescue.

  The wet Kirpichnikov busied himself in a boat, fixing a motor that was refusing to work. He wasn’t fully aware how he had ended up in the boat. But the boat had to be lowered quickly: hundreds of people were choking in the water. In a minute the motor was up and running: Kirpichnikov had cleaned off its oxidized contacts, which had caused the problem.

  Kirpichnikov crawled into the boat’s cabin and shouted: cast off!

  At that moment an impenetrable acrid gas covered the entire ship, and Kirpichnikov could not see his hands. And just then he saw the sinking, wild, unbearably shining Sun, and through a fissure of his shearing brain he heard for an instant a Song—unclear as the pealing of the Milky Way—and regretted its brevity.

  A government report placed in the New York Times was transmitted abroad by the Telegraphic Agency of the USSR:

  “At 11:25 AM on 24/IX of this year, at 35°11’ north lat. and 62°4 east longitude, the American passenger ship California (8,485 persons, including crew), and the German ship Klara (6,841, with crew), going to the aid of the former, sank. The precise reasons have not been determined. Both governments are conducting a detailed investigation. No one was rescued and there are no witnesses to the catastrophe. However, the chief cause of the wreck of both ships was deemed unequivocally established: a meteor of gigantic dimensions struck the California vertically. This meteor dragged the ship to the ocean floor; the funnel created by this sucked the Klara under as well.

  * * *

  [Mathiessen’s experiment]

  Mathiessen finally got dressed and went into the other room. It held a flat low table, 4 by 3 meters. Equipment had been placed on the table. Mathiessen approached the smallest device. He switched on the current and lay down on the floor. He lost lucid consciousness at once, and murderous nightmares of almost fatal power began to torment him, nearly physically destroying his brain. His blood overflowed with toxins and blackened his vessels; every ounce of Mathiessen’s health, all the latent forces of his body, all his means of self-defense were mobilized and fought against the poisons carried by the blood circulating in his brain. But the brain itself lay nearly defenseless under the blows of the electromagnetic waves beating against it from the equipment on the table.

  These waves aroused peculiar thoughts in Mathiessen’s brain, and the thoughts were shot into the cosmos by spherical electromagnetic charges. They landed somewhere, maybe in the hinterlands of the Milky Way, in the heart of the planets, and disordered their pulse, —and the planets swerved from their orbits and died, falling and passing into oblivion, like drunken vagrants.

  Mathiessen’s brain was a secret machine that newly assembled the abysses of the cosmos, and the device on the table actuated this brain. A human being’s everyday thoughts, the usual movements of the brain, were powerless to affect the world; this required vortices of cerebral particles,—then the storm would shake the world’s substance.

  Mathiessen did not know when he had begun the experiment, or what was happening on the Earth or in the heavens as a result of his new storm. He had not yet learned to control the marvelous and unreproducible structure of the electromagnetic wave which his brain had launched. The entire secret of its power resided in the unique structure of the wave; it was precisely that which hammered the world’s substance in its most tender place; the pain caused it to give way. And the human brain alone could produce such complex waves only with the cooperation of the lifeless equipment.

  After an hour a special clock was supposed to interrupt the current feeding the brain-exciting apparatus, and the experiment would end. But the clock had stopped: Mathiessen forgot to start it before the experiment began. The current fed the apparatus indefatigably, and the apparatus quietly hummed along in its work.

  Two hours passed. Mathiessen’s body melted, in proportion to the square of the time elapsed. The blood from his brain advanced like a solid lava of red corpuscle cadavers. The equilibrium within his body was disrupted. Destruction gained the upper hand over repair. The last incredible nightmare penetrated the still-living tissue of Mathiessen’s brain, and the merciful blood extinguished the final image and the final suffering. Black blood burst into the brain like a storm through a ruptured vein and curbed the pulsating fighting heart. But Mathiessen’s last image was full of humanity; his living, tormented mother rose before him; blood poured from her eyes, and she complained to her son of her torment.

  At nine in the morning Mathiessen lay dead—with white eyes open, his nails dug into the floor in a fighting frenzy. The apparatus hummed assiduously and ceased only towards evening when the energy in the battery ran low. < … >

  * * *

  Two days later, Izvestia printed a notice from the Main Astronomical Observatory in the “From Around the World” section:

  “The Alpha star in the constellation, Canes Venatici, the Greyhounds, has not been seen in a clear sky for two days. An empty space, a breach, has formed in the Milky Way at the 4th distance (9th sector). It’s Earth angle = 4°71’. The constellation Hercules is displaced somewhat, as a result of which the entire solar system must change the direction of its flight. Such strange phenomena, violating the eternal structure of the heavens, point to the relative brittleness and flimsiness of the cosmos itself. Stepped-up observations to uncover the causes of these anomalies are being carried out by the observatory.”

  In addition to this, a discussion with Academician Vetman was promised for an upcoming issue. With the exception of a brevier bulletin from Kamchatka, it did not appear from other telegrams from a quarter of the globe (the size of the USSR at that time), that Earth had suffered anything substantial from the stellar catastrophes. The bulletin noted:

  “A small celestial body, about 10 kilometers in cross-section, has landed on the mountains. Its structure is unknown. It is spheroidal in form. The body flew in at considerable speed and came smo
othly to Earth on the mountaintops. Massive crystals are visible on its surface through binoculars. An expedition has been outfitted by the local Society of Amateur Naturalists for a preliminary study of the descended body. But the expedition is unable to provide quick answers: the mountains are nearly inaccessible. Planes have been ordered from Vladivostok. A small squadron of Japanese planes was observed today flying in the direction of the celestial body.”

  This note became a sensation the next day, and a three hundred line article was devoted to the strange event by Academician Vetman.

  On the same day Bednota [Poverty] reported the death of agronomist engineer Mathiessen, a worker well-known in specialist circles in the field of optimal soil moisture conditions.

  And the startling thought of a connection between the three notes only occurred to assistant agronomist Petropavlushkin in Kochubarov, who subscribed to both Izvestiya and Bednota: Mathiessen had died—a little planet had landed on the Kamchatka mountains—a star had gone missing and the Milky Way had burst. But who would believe such rural delirium?

  Mathiessen was buried with solemnity. Nearly the entire Kochubarov agricultural commune followed his body. The tiller of the soil always loves religious pilgrims and eccentrics. The taciturn loner Mathiessen was one of these—everyone clearly sensed this in him. The last thin rim of hair on Mathiessen’s bald pate fell out when clumsy hands roughly shoved his coffin. This surprised all the peasants, and they were filled with even greater pity and respect for the dead man.

  Mathiessen’s funeral coincided with the end of the work of the underwater expedition sent by the American and German governments to look for the sunken California and Klara, [the sinking of which his previous experiments caused] < … >

  * * *

  [The Aiuna]

  Maria Alexandrovna did not entirely understand her husband: the goal of his sudden departure from their home was incomprehensible to her. She did not believe that a living man would trade warm, genuine happiness for the desert cold of an abstract, lonely idea. She thought that man seeks only man, and did not know that the path to man might lie through the severe frost of wild open spaces. Maria Alexandrovna assumed that just a few steps separated people.