Red Star Tales

by Yvonne Howell

  5. Lipsi is a German style of improvisational ballroom dance that was developed in the late 1950s in the GDR to counter the more sexual rock n’ roll.

  6. Indricotherium: a prehistoric herbivore that lived in the forests of Central Asia roughly 20 to 30 million years ago. A predecessor to the elephant and the rhinoceros, it is the largest land mammal ever discovered.

  7. George Sand used this term to describe an evening with Chopin and Delacroix, when Chopin tried to find the color “blue” in music.

  8. From Ezekiel 18: 1-2. The proverb “The parents ate sour grapes, and now the childrens’ teeth are set on edge” has been interpreted to mean that one must take personal responsibility for one’s own sins. The childrens’ teeth ache not because their parents ate those sour grapes, but because of their own unwise actions.

  9. Official Soviet political rhetoric insisted that the “radiant future” of full communism was just ahead, on the horizon. By the 1970s, the endlessly receding “radiant future” had become the butt of sardonic jokes, whereas this passage makes the same point in a more elegiac mode.

  10. The steppes of Kazakhstan were the site of Soviet nuclear weapons testing from 1949 on. The devasting environmental and human impact of these tests was officially covered up.

  11. Note the author’s metaliterary intent here: he is commenting on the genre of “fantastic literature” itself, implying that it is in some ways the most truthful.

  12. “Wanda” was a famous Moscow store that sold cosmetics, perfumes, and other women’s products imported from Poland. It became a symbol of luxury during the 1980s, when such goods were scarce in the Soviet Union.

  13. Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923) was a French actress who became known as “the most famous actress in all the world” for her dramatic roles in early films.

  SERGEI DRUGAL

  1979

  THE EXAM

  Nuri sat in a tree. Beneath him some kind of spotted beast raged and clawed at the bark. This went on for about ten minutes and it was starting to annoy Nuri. The beast took a running leap and the claws of its splayed paws flashed a centimeter short of his boot. Nuri pulled up his legs, grabbed the trunk, and leaned over.

  “Impressive,” he said, “but totally out of control.”

  The beast acknowledged this with a grunt and climbed into the tree. Nuri sighed and gripped the branch more firmly.

  “You’re not taking the situation into account, that’s bad.”

  He moved down the trunk and poked the beast’s snout with his boot heel. The beast flopped onto its back, sprang back up, hissed, and then charged at the aviaplane, as if it had forgotten all about Nuri. Grumbling, it sank its teeth into the plastic covering of a wing and started to tear it apart. The wing shook fiercely. Nuri couldn’t stand it. Muttering to himself about how people’s nerves can only take so much, he leaped down from the tree, grabbed the beast by the scruff of its neck and the root of its tail, and flung it to the side. The beast landed on all fours, roared, whipped its tail against one flank, and then the other, and jumped again…

  Nuri was rummaging in a box under the seat of the aviaplane, looking for a flask, when the voice of the IRN’s1 watchman came on over the PA system:

  “What’s going on, Nuri? Can’t see you and can’t hear you.”

  Nuri rubbed his palm.

  “I was sitting at the edge of the forest, just wanting to relax a bit, and then this spotted, whiskered thing comes along…”

  “And…?”

  “And I remembered the instructions on our agenda sheet and avoided contact. I climbed into a tree. But then he bit into my aviaplane.”

  “Into a tree!” cried the dispatcher. “Do you need help?”

  “I’ll make it.”

  Nuri turned the beast over onto its back and emptied the contents of the flask into its jaws. The beast sputtered and opened its eyes.

  “There you go,” said Nuri happily, “alive and well. Just a little bit perplexed.”

  “Can you get home by yourself?” asked the dispatcher.

  “Absolutely. I’m flying out right now.”

  But Nuri was not able to fly at all. The beast had bitten through the plastic, so that the remaining glucose leaked out onto the grass, forming a light blue puddle. Nuri pulled off the torn edges of the covering, applied a bandage, and reconsidered.

  He had no glucose in reserve. Maybe, by substituting a sugar solution, he might be able to make it to the Center, but he didn’t have any sugar either. Somewhere he had read that if you inject adrenaline, the aviaplane could fly for a while on almost dry muscle, but where was he to find adrenaline?

  The beast was already sitting up again, blinking its green eyes.

  “See what you’ve done?” Nuri scolded. Then he froze with breathless excitement.

  A fat piebald donkey had trotted out of the forest into the field, and on its back, legs dangling down to the grass, sat a cyber. His goldplated body gleamed. An ostrich feather waved out of his straw hat. A blue and red parrot flew over his head screeching:

  “Cyber is an idiot! Idiot!”

  The cyber unexpectedly lurched, stretching out its mechanical arms to catch the parrot, and fell off the donkey.

  “Stupid bird,” he said, getting back up. “Really stupid. I don’t see anything funny about it.”

  “Just a second,” Nuri’s voice still shook. “As soon as I stop laughing, I’ll get serious.”

  “I hereby report that somebody damaged the leopard,” stated the cyber, without looking at Nuri. “If everybody feels free to damage animals…”

  “Two questions,” Nuri interrupted him. “First of all, where did you get the feather? If everybody feels free to snatch a feather, pretty soon the ostrich will be bald. Second of all, what’s the leopard got to do with you, and vice versa?”

  “I found the feather on the savannah. Secondly, I have a side-job as a ranger. I am responsible for the welfare of animals. I am entrusted with this work because I am kind and invulnerable. I’ve even been kicked all over, and look at this!” The cyber tried to puff out his chest.

  “Look at what?”

  “That’s the point! Not a single dent.”

  “So you are invulnerable…” Nuri thought for moment. “Are you also responsible for the welfare of insects?”

  “Not included in my orders.”

  “In that case, bring me some honeycomb. A piece about as big as the palm of your hand. There should be wild bees around here somewhere.”

  “There are bees, but I’m not in the business of poaching.”

  “You have to start sometime. And I need honey.”

  The cyber fell silent and started to think. The donkey munched on some grass nearby. The whiskered beast completely regained consciousness and rubbed its sore snout against the cyber’s leg. Nuri sprawled on the grass, looking up at the sky. The air smelled of sap, and a light breeze ruffled the crowns of the trees. Strictly speaking, there was no rush, but he had promised his grandfather he would get home earlier, and he didn’t want to be late. Exams were still three days away. He wondered: how were the others getting back?

  “I’ll get the honey,” the cyber said, breaking the silence.

  Nuri nodded, chewing on a piece of grass as he watched the cyber disappear into the bushes. His thoughts flowed lazily and seemed unusual in their laziness. The parrot has red pants, and you, Nuri, have a highly developed imagination, as his summer instructor had said, so that you could fly like a swallow, too bad there’s not enough time for training. The swallows shoot straight up, fold their wings, and then their flight is a free-fall powered by gravity. Sparrows also fly like that. Actually, it is a fairly simple problem, a matter of ballistics and aerodynamics. It’s odd the way living things utilize gravity, whereas machines work against it…. For three years he’d been racing against himself, exhausted and exhilarated. Ostensibly this is the normal creative process in any branch of knowledge. And knowledge is the mother of invention…. or is it? What are the formal markers of
an inventive imagination? In the Institute there were endless discussions on this topic, but the only aspect of imagination that was ever formalized during work on the Great State Machine was imagination as an object of programming. Actually, “state” was a strange name for that supercomputer, whose main processors consisted of computing systems from other friendly countries, and whose components consisted of all the main computing centers on the planet, with very few exceptions. Today anyone can connect to this machine to get a consultation on any issue, and if necessary, to model any conceivable process. Any process? Nuri recalled his attempt to model his condition right before an exam and snickered – the result was too banal. In general, the programs that had to do with emotions all needed corrections, but was it really possible to create a perfect program? Nonsense. He was right to quit. He’d finished the most important work, and the rest of the revisions would require a much lower level of creativity. Can one really think of oneself in these terms when one chooses a new path? “I can work at the highest level?” That means other people work at a lower level, right? So what? Not modest enough? Creativity does not involve the concept of modesty. Isn’t that like being shy in a battle? Could Khachaturian really be humble about composing his “Sabre Dance,” knowing that nobody had ever written anything like it before? Could Pushkin be modest about his poem “The Prophet,” knowing that it would stand as an incomparable work of art? Poor Pushkin, not modest enough… “with me, poetry awakes…” Poetry is the child of silence and concentrated thought. The section of the supercomputer’s program devoted to creating poetry is empty. There is only information about poetry. The act of creation itself could not be formalized, although what contains more logic than that?

  “The cyber is in the weeds!” screamed the parrot.

  The cyber was indeed emerging from the bushes, holding a piece of honeycomb in its outstretched palm. Bees swarmed over his head, and a giant snake was twisted around his body. The snake’s head, with yellow spots for eyes, rested on the cyber’s shoulder, and a white flower on a long stem hung from its jaws. At the sight of the snake, the donkey snorted and stomped. The whiskered one quietly disappeared.

  “I brought honey,” said the cyber.

  Nuri sat up and silently observed the snake.

  “I unwrapped her from a tree and wrapped her around myself,” the cyber felt it necessary to explain. “She fell in love with me for my looks.”

  “At first sight?”

  “Of course. They always fall for looks, and also, I guess, for reaction speed.”

  “For speed, certainly! Listen, can you fulfill one more request for me?”

  “I am obliged to, if it is within my capabilities.”

  “Then here’s the request: Step off to the side, unwrap that snake from yourself and wrap it back around a tree. I am sure that this lies within your capabilities.”

  The cyber put the honeycomb on the grass and left.

  “The cyber is an idiot!” reconfirmed the parrot. The donkey sighed with relief.

  Waving off the bees, Nuri threw the honeycomb into a pot, splashed in some water, shook it up and poured the mixture into the fuel tank. Within a minute the wing grew taut and straight. Nuri closed the cover of the saddle, got into it, and fastened the biocontrol bracelets onto his arms.

  “All the best!” he said to the parrot. “It was nice to see you, but... gotta go!”

  Nuri piloted the machine into the air. The damaged wing did not respond well. Nuri was good at transforming himself into a healthy stork without trouble. But to imagine himself as a stork with an injured wing took a lot of effort. His flight was uneven, and in order to smooth it out, he made a few circles over the field.

  “It’s only a glider,” he whispered. An aviaglider. One could go by foot. Or on horseback.

  Nuri bent down. The cyber was trying to convince the donkey of something.

  “What is your name, servant?”

  “Telesik,” the answer floated up from below. “Director Saton’s domestic cyber.”

  Flapping his wings, Nuri gained altitude and with relief settled into his usual gliding flight. The IRN’s forest expanse spread out beneath him as far as the eye could see. Occasionally he flew over emerald clearings, and the unusual silence was pierced by the sound of screeching monkeys and birdcalls. On a small panel in front of him there was only one green light, to indicate direction. The aviaglider was designed so that once the pilot plugged into its bio-orientation system, he could feel the feedback with his entire body, making it effortless to diagnose and correct any deviations from the course. The injured wing produced a painful pulling sensation under his scapula. But the adventure in the field had turned out okay, and he could already see the spire of the IRN’s main building in the clear distance. Nuri began to relax.

  “Hello,” he heard close by. Nuri glanced around. A raven hovered, barely moving, about a meter away.

  “Hi!” Nuri answered. “Do all the birds around here talk?”

  “The smart ones do,” said the raven.

  “I already ran into a talking parrot. Even parrots talk?”

  “Some of them.”

  “That sounds like progress,” said Nuri. “I guess Saton doesn’t just restore Nature. He modernizes it. Why are you so tense? Sit down, let’s talk.”

  “I’m a raven,” said the raven.

  Nuri thought about it. It was worth trying to keep up the conversation. It was not every day that one had the opportunity to talk with a raven.

  “Are you married?” he asked.

  “Three times. Last time to a white clow,” he answered with a slight Japanese accent. “Sepalated. Character diffelences.”

  “Aha. And how long did you live together?”

  “One and a half centulies.”

  “No way!” Nuri gazed at the bird with respect. “One hundred and fifty years. With a white crow. I wouldn’t have been able to stand it.” His companion remained silent. Either he was upset, or he was really angry. When Nuri, aiming for the Institute’s tower, made a wide flat turn, the crow said sarcastically:

  “You call that flying….?” With just a slight movement of his tail, the raven effortlessly executed several loops in front of Nuri.

  “Is it really to your credit that you know how to fly?” Nuri was having fun. “But I’ll accept your criticism. Without spite. As constructive criticism. So teach me, which feather do you move in order to make those turns?”

  “The question is not hald,” said the raven. “This is how it’s done…” He tried to look underneath himself, fanned out his tail feathers, and dropped like a rock.

  “So there,” said Nuri. “Don’t brag in advance.”

  The raven hid from sight and did not appear again. Nuri soon landed successfully on the small grass pad of the Institute’s airport.

  Nuri awoke to the clamor of birds calling and began listening to it. He heard Telesik clomp into the kitchen, the lid of the food processor started to rattle. In the distance, probably from the airport, he could hear garbled voices coming over the speaker.

  The door creaked open and a sunbeam fell onto his face. When Nuri opened his eyes, Telesik was standing next him. Telesik clacked his jaw a few times disapprovingly and said, “Get up.”

  Nuri didn’t feel like getting up. The cyber stomped around a bit near his bed and then left to do more housework. The cyber never ceased to be amazed by the human capacity for sleep.

  Nuri stepped onto his balcony. Below, in the swimming pool, Granddad was snorting and splashing. He was playing with a dolphin, holding on tight as they raced around near the very bottom of the pool. Nuri followed them with his eyes to the turn, then climbed onto the railing and jumped into the pool, describing a large arc through the air. He swam in the depths along the walls, looking into grottos, scaring out two little crabs with one shell to share between them, and poking at a colony of mussels before, on his last breath, he shot up to the surface like a cork.

  Granddad lay on the cool sand of the shore. He sp
rinkled sand onto his belly and observed Nuri.

  “Healthy lad,” Granddad summed up his observations. “Sedentary life has not affected you.”

  “Basically that’s true. But my muscle mass hasn’t gotten any bigger this year. My physical development has stopped… We should stock this pool with fish, it’s empty.”

  “Won’t work, the dolphin will eat them all. Recently a pair of lost mackerel managed to swim in, and you barely saw them before they were gone.”

  Around the rim of the basin a young wunderkind – accelerated student Alyoshka – hopped on one foot while rolling a hoop in front of him with a stick. He nodded politely to Nuri and reminded him about tomorrow’s scheduled tour of the IRN’s town center.

  “And yesterday, Nuri, you promised to tell me a fairytale!”

  “My apologies,” sighed Nuri. “Only geniuses can invent fairytales out of the blue. I don’t have it in me. I’ll try, only later. And don’t judge too harshly.”

  “Don’t judge?” Wunderkind thought about this, tracing something with his toe in the sand. “Well, we’ll see. Yesterday you were pretty good at deriving the cosine and sine values of the Mathieu functions. I liked the way you did that, although you ended up with a tabular integral…”

  “Master!” they heard in the distance. “Master, time for breakfast!”

  “I want to change that cyber’s voice.” Saton got up without touching his hands to the ground, then brushed the sand off of his body. “It has too much bass. With his complexion, a baritone would be more appropriate.”

  They walked through a small garden. White-winged birches, tangled up in vines, willows and palm trees, sycamores and smooth, thornless, almost black cacti all thrived in this garden.

  “Hybrids,” Saton remarked absentmindedly. “We’re trying to simulate older forms.”