While Nuri ate breakfast, Alyoshka waited impatiently. He brought food out to the dolphin and then chased the cat into a poplar tree. Syntax the cat had a bumpy head and hard little meowsers – that’s what Grandma called the parts where a cat’s whiskers grow. He hissed at Alyoshka, but it was more like a sigh, since he knew the “accelerated” boy would never do him any harm. It’s just that Syntax, an inveterate curmudgeon, didn’t need anyone’s attention, least of all Alyoshka’s.
Afterwards the three of them, Alyoshka, Nuri, and the cyber, strolled down a wide street through the residential base of the Institute for the Restoration of Nature.
They went by the parking area for on-call flyers. Nuri spoke with the mechanical surgeons, who had transplanted a new muscle into the wing of his aviaglider. Then they all continued on to the hotel. Outside, at little tables that had been carried onto the lawn, people who seemed oddly familiar sat in shorts and sandals eating grapes spilling in purple bunches from baskets centered on each table. Two spotted puppies chased around nearby. A jolly giant with a bandage wrapped around his head – Nuri immediately recognized him from portraits of the Yogi-Commando who first set foot on the fiery surface of Venus – squinted with one eye. With the other eye he peered through a large glass of ruby-colored wine. Spying Alyoshka, he put down the glass and said dramatically:
“Take pity on an old man! Once upon a time I grew the most incredible vegetables. In the middle of the night an overly ripe watermelon exploded, and as you see, a shard of it hit me in the face.” He shook the wine bottle. “I’m treating my wound… Here, we’ll drink this up. Come to our table, Nuri.”
“Leave them alone, Rakhmatulla,” his companion interrupted. He had a long, immobile face and his voice seemed to emanate from the space around him. “These folks have their own agenda. Let them continue on. You’d be better off noticing the fancy cyber that just showed up. Look at how much sunlight reflects off his rounded belly. I’m going to collect it.”
The companion stretched out his hands and held between his palms a blindingly white ball of sunshine, about the size of a soccer ball.
“The sun!” said Alyoshka.
“Here, do you want me to give it to you? No? Well, then, I’ll let it go.”
He tossed the blinding sphere lightly upwards, and the small sun shot up towards the big sun and dissolved in its rays. Alyoshka and Nuri stared openly at the famous magician they were seeing for the first time in real life, not on a screen.
“Give him a rainbow, Ivan,” said Rakhmatulla.
The magician snapped his fingers and pulled a black box out of the air, divided it in half, and spread the two parts out as wide as he could. A rainbow hung over the basket, the air smelled as if it were charged with freshness, and tiny droplets of rain moistened the grapes. Ivan admired the rainbow along with everyone else, heaved a sigh, and then wound the rainbow around his finger, slipped the coil off, and placed it back into the box, which he handed to Alyoshka. The wunderkind took the box with trembling hands and whispered:
“Thank you very much. I will occasionally let her out in the evenings.”
“Just make sure she doesn’t burn out,” said the third member of their party, a fat black man with thick lips. Everybody knew him. This was the town doctor, Akanius. He was the only person in town who never had anything to do: his patients were the completely healthy employees of the Institute for the Restoration of Nature.
When they resumed their walk down the main street, Nuri said:
“I shouldn’t have flown in. If people like Rakhmatulla and Ivan Ivanov are here, then there’s no reason for me to be here.”
“Ivan Ivanov is a very smart person.” The cyber stroked his belly with the soft paws of his mechanical hands. He glanced at the black box and added “And he is kind, too.”
The reached the stadium where soccer players trained. The stadium only had one side, so the entire field eventually merged into a meadow at the far end. At the edge of the meadow a large moose stood grazing. The players didn’t pay any attention to her, and she didn’t pay any attention to them, either.
Alyoshka wandered off towards the goal posts and suddenly squatted down: not far away little ugly ducklings were nipping the grass. One of them came right up to Alyoshka, took a grass stem in her beak, and pulled. The grass didn’t break. The duckling gathered her strength, orange feet set wide apart, while the accelerated child braced himself in empathy. Finally the fledgling managed to break off the piece of grass.
“She bit it off,” the cyber whispered. “An unproductive waste of energy. She won’t eat that grass anyway.”
They had seen enough and moved on. A milk cart drawn by two zebras rushed by; on it they glimpsed “IRN. Milk Cans.” To avoid the risk of getting run over, the cyber jumped to the shoulder of the road and continued to stare. The cart bore a handwritten sign:
“Monday is a voluntary workday to sort robin and nightingale eggs. Only domestic cybers with suction cups allowed.”
Telesik flexed his four-fingered hand thoughtfully. Doctor Akanius emerged from the door of the corner drugstore holding a pipette. A twelve-year old boy turned up out of nowhere. He was dragging along a puppy on a leash. The boy’s entire expression reflected a kind of militant independence and did not bode well for the puppy. He was naked above the waist and barefoot, but what really did Nuri in was the boy’s pants. They were so impeccably ironed that they had a light sheen.
Alyoshka focused on the puppy; the boy focused on Alyoshka. Then the boy looked Nuri in the eyes and said:
“The dog is the embodiment of good qualities, walking loyalty, a clump of humanity and love. In short, I will trade the dog for that bracelet.”
Nuri listened to this surprising boy’s bombastic speech and sighed. It was perfectly clear to him that Alyoshka would not leave without the puppy, but his own coded bracelet…how could he give that up?
“You won’t catch me empty-handed,” said the boy. “Give me the bracelet device, and take the dog. Otherwise, we’ll just take this pup back to the lab and see what its insides look like….”
He addressed the last few words to Alyoshka, and made a cruel face.
Alyoshka slumped to the grass and started rocking back and forth.
The boy snickered.
“As you like,” he said, and jerked the leash.
“What do you think you’re doing?” said the cyber. “He may be a wunderkind, but he’s only five years old. What do you expect from a five-year old?” The cyber pulled off the wunderkind’s shirt, which was wet with tears, and helped him blow his nose.
The boy gave a fake sigh. “You don’t feel sorry for animals, but you’re sorry for your little ward, you stamp-collector.”
Nuri shuddered. Nobody had ever called him a “stamp-collector” before, but sure enough, that time had come. He was going to have to do what it would take to pacify both this little puppy-peddler and the distraught wunderkind. He took his bracelet off. The boy dropped the leash, grabbed the bracelet, and laughed.
“That’s right! A few more puppies and I’m done for the day!” He wiggled his ears, turned on his heel and disappeared, exactly as if he had dematerialized, leaving only a ripple in the air.
The fat man with the pipette had stood aside and observed with obvious pleasure while Nuri bargained.
“Nuri, for me you are nothing more than a potential patient. But you can understand the kid. For him, you are the Designer-in-Chief, and your bracelet is going to occupy a place of honor in our Museum of Heroes. It’s not every day that the Designer-in-Chief of our Great State Machine comes to visit. And in general, these kinds of opportunities to add to the museum won’t happen again. I myself didn’t expect to see so many celebrities in one place.”
“But the way he did it... the means… ”
“What about the means?” The doctor crossed his eyes and slapped Telesik’s resonant belly a couple of times. “Does a little joke offend you so badly?”
“I’m just a stamp-collec
tor, that’s all.”
The puppy sat on the porch. He was starting to perk up, although he still seemed to feel a bit subdued. Alyoshka petted him. Members of the family gave their two cents’ worth.
“No, it’s not a poodle,” said Grandma, and she was right, as always. “Stupid of you both, but of course he can live with us.”
Grandpa touched the puppy’s disproportionately large paws and stiff little whiskers, but didn’t say anything about the leonine features of this “puppy.”
Syntax the cat lay on his back on the couch with his belly facing up. He disdain for everyone was so thorough that he even allowed himself to purr a bit, which, as Grandma pointed out, hadn’t been heard for years. Granddad tried to push him a bit to the edge of the sofa. Syntax stopped purring but didn’t even open an eye, although his head now hung off the sofa. Finally he slid to the floor on his side and remained there without moving. It was only when Grandma started to lightly make fun of him that he jumped up and snarled at everyone. His tail twitched.
“S-s-s-atton,” the cat hissed. “Pssst!”
“Hey, what’s that? He’s learned to talk?” the cyber asked nobody in particular.
“He’s always been able to swear, even as a kitten,” answered Grandma. “But no matter how hard Alyoshka tried, he’s never wanted to talk. Too lazy.”
The cat got up and made straight for the garden, shaking his paws. However, he did return for lunch.
Two identical sculptures decorated the entrance to the Institute: a mongoose named “Beauty” reclining on a golden dolphin. Beauty gazed serenely at all the visitors. The best people on the planet strolled on the Institute’s lawns, conversing. Rakhmatulla sat with his face turned toward the sun, in a pose of deep concentration. He had not taken a breath in twenty minutes and could not answer any questions. He was wearing a Cosmonaut’s Belt around his bare torso – only three other people had ever earned the highest honor of the Belt. Ivan Ivanov stood next to him, holding a little devil in his hands. The imp was about the size of a kitten. It blinked its eyes sleepily, then lay its head with tiny corkscrew horns on Ivan’s shoulder and yawned sweetly.
“Is it a real one?” asked Nuri.
“More than real. You can test it out.”
“Holiest of holies! Perish, unclean spirit!” said Nuri, making the sign of the cross over the little devil. There was no reaction from the imp except a light waft of sulphuric anhydride.
“A bit of hell gas,” said Ivan apologetically.
The imp snuggled more comfortably in his hands and fell asleep again.
The majestic Hogart Brown approached, wrapped in an orange toga. His violet-tinted eyes watered. The great spelunker, cave expert, and humorist never wore his prescribed sunglasses. On the other hand, he always wore brightly colored clothes and an enormous emerald jewel hung from his right earlobe. Hogart spent most of his life underground, so when he came to the surface he relished in the colors of the sky, the forest, and the water. Soon it would be time for another descent into the kingdom of darkness and silence. His best jokes, of one or two lines, were composed in the gloom of the caves, where he and others like him risked their lives. Hogart insisted that he had no sense of humor at all, and therefore he tried out all his jokes on himself: if even he managed to smile, then anybody else would laugh hysterically.
“A little devil, that’s nice…” Hogart said seriously. “But I wonder, why hold today’s celebration of heroes in the Institute for the Restoration of Nature? I received the summons and was surprised. Naturally, I came. On a double-humped camel. But there are not many of us here.”
“Plenty of people wanted to come,” said Nuri. “But today is Exam Day, with exams in every restoration center. One hundred centers, ten people in each. But why hold exams in the Institutes for Restoration, after all? I think it’s because the demands on us are too contradictory.”
“Demands…?”
“Well, you have nothing to fear. Right, Beauty?”
Beauty opened her jaws, showing a firm pink tongue, and turned the other way.
“Doctor Nuri Metti, your presence is requested in the office of the director of the Institute for the Restoration of Nature!” blared the loudspeaker over the entrance.
“Looks like you’re the first,” said Ivanov. “I don’t know if that’s good or bad. I’m a little bit worried.” The imp stirred in his arms, opened one eye and yelled after Nuri: “Break a leg!”2
“Go to the devil,” muttered Nuri, opening the door to the elevator. He had just enough time to see the little devil vanish, prompting Ivan Ivanov to wave his empty hands and shout:
“Nuri, what have you done? I worked so hard to domesticate him…”
The ascent was fast, at least one and a half g-forces, so that Nuri’s head began to spin. At the top, from a broad platform surrounding the building, the turquoise bay looked like a careless smudge on the side of the ocean. Beyond the smudge one could clearly see a line of green mountains, bending around the bay in a gigantic arc. From this altitude, nearly a kilometer above sea level, the entire territory of the Maritime Branch of the IRN was visible.
The director’s office was enormous and almost completely empty. A green square in the middle of the room attracted Nuri’s attention. Inside the square was a miniature jungle with trees that barely reached to Nuri’s waist. A white sphere hung over the jungle, and opposite it, Saton sat at a large old-fashioned desk. Saton glanced at the armchair next to his desk, indicating that Nuri take a seat.
A tiny deer stepped out of the jungle onto a miniature meadow. It was actually a real deer, graceful and perfectly proportioned. It froze and tilted up its head, crowned with tiny branching antlers. You could see the muscles rippling under its brown velvet haunches. The deer stamped its leg – a sharply cloven hoof flashed in the light – and started to walk around. Saton picked him up and placed him on top of the desk, offering him a tiny cube of salt on his palm. The deer sniffed at the crystal and began to lick at it with great concentration.
Nuri watched this tiny miracle with bated breath.
“Dwarf deer,” said Saton sadly. “The last one like it was killed in the last century. We managed to resurrect them, but there are not even two hundred of them in the entire herd, and the demand is so high! A deer is fairly simple, though – make a small one out of a big one. It’s harder with predators…” Saton hooked a finger under the deer’s belly and lowered it to the floor. The deer disappeared into the jungle’s undergrowth. “Or maybe you are against predators?” Saton looked towards the corner of the room, where a cyber held a muzzled leopard on a leash.
A raven flew in through the window and landed on the desk. Nuri winked at him: “Hello.”
The raven did not answer. It cocked its head to the side and calmly studied its reflection in the polished desktop. A few feathers bristled out of his crown, revealing the blue-black, wrinkled skin underneath.
Then Alyoshka, the boy in the shiny pants, and Doctor Akanius quietly entered the office and sat around the desk. Saton pulled a piece of paper out of his drawer and announced ceremoniously:
“The commission has gathered. Sociologists from the toddler group could not be here and will participate virtually.” The sphere above the desk grew bright and then disappeared. In its place arose a three-dimensional image of two naked children holding onto a low railing, which surrounded a small pen.
“Here are the facts: Nuri Metti. Twenty-seven years old. Born in the third Martian colony. Has worked on Earth for eight years. Ph.D. in mathematics. Last assignment – chief designer of the Great State Machine. Bachelor. Application submitted two years ago. That’s it. Please feel free to ask for information.”
“I testify that for all intents and purposes, comrade Netti is perfectly healthy. I have a question: What is your secondary specialization?” asked Doctor Akanius.
“Fauna Mechanic.”
The sociologists in the toddler group exchanged glances. The puppy-seller wrinkled his nose.
“
A hard-to-fill profession,” he said. “Of course, children’s establishments nowadays are almost guaranteed to have live stock on hand. However, adults snap up mechanical beasts by the thousands. Puppies and kittens that don’t shed and don’t grow, little caged birds with programmed songs, cybermockingbirds and synthetic storks that clack under roof rafters. Are you the one that made all this stuff?”
“Well, it wasn’t just me…”
“I don’t see what’s so bad about it,” said Alyoshka. “As you know, the Earth Council does not limit IRN in time or material resources. But it will still take about ten years for us to restore the forests and waters here on this continent. As far as fauna goes, it’s probably impossible to ever restore it completely, the way it was. It’s easier to create a new species of animal, as, for instance, you know we cultivated multiple spotted cheburashkas – everyone’s favorite little cartoon creature. We are able to control the direction of mutations, the manipulation of stem cells, the process of selection. But there just isn’t enough original material... so for the time being, why not let the cybermockingbirds sing?”
“Fine,” said the boy in the shiny pants, “but I want to know, Nuri: what is your moral profile?”
“Objection!” chorused the toddlers. “What kind of moral profile does a bachelor have? We’d rather see if he can tell us a good story.”
This whole unexpected discussion among the various members of the commission put Nuri in a state of pleasant stupefication. On top of it, the raven still sat there, looking as if the entire outcome depended on his vote alone. Nevertheless, Nuri had to come up with a story. He’d prepared, but he hadn’t thought up a fairytale in advance. He began to improvise, and this is what came of it.
A fairytale.
“It’s awful to live without a name!” thought the small, shaggy one. “But that’s hardly the worst problem, when our meadow is overgrown with prickly thistles.”
The grey shaggy one ran over on his short little legs to admire a scarlet-purple flower. He guessed that the flower would smell of sultry heat; and if the sun itself does have a scent, then it would indeed smell like a thistle. Still, the shaggy grey one wanted to smell the flower, but he was too short to do so. He wanted to try to taste the thistle as well, but prickles got in the way. So the shaggy grey one ran off to do his errands, leaving a green trail in the dewy morning grass.
Red Star Tales Page 35