Grandma Albina smiled condescendingly.
I can"t help stressing a circ.u.mstance that very accurately characterizes Toivo Glumov as a worker. If there had been a green probationer in his place, he would have decided that Duremar was trying to confuse things and that the picture in general was perfectly clear: Fleming created a new type of embryoph.o.r.e, his monsters had escaped, he could go off to sleep, and report in the morning.
An experienced worker -- say, Sandro Mtbevari -- would not have had coffee with Basil; embryoph.o.r.es of a new type were no joke. He would have immediately sent out twenty-five queries to every possible place, and he would have rushed down to Lower Pesha to grab the Fleming hooligans by the throat before they had a chance to come up with an alibi.
Toivo Glumov did not budge from the spot. Why not? He had smelled sulfur. Not even a smell, just a whiff. An unusual embryoph.o.r.e! Yes, of course, that"s serious. But that"s not the smell of sulfur. Hysterical panic? Closer, much warmer. But most important -- the strange old lady from cottage number 1. There! Panic, hysteria, escape, emergency squads, and she asks them to keep down the noise. Now that did not fall under traditional explanations. Toivo didn"t even try to explain it. He simply waited for her to wake up to ask her a few questions. He waited, and he was rewarded. "If I hadn"t thought of having a bite with Basil," he later told me, "if I had rushed off to report to you right after my interview with that Tolstov, I would have remained with the impression that nothing mysterious had taken place in Little Pesha, nothing except wild panic caused by an invasion of strange animals. But along came the boy Kir and Grandma Albina, and they brought an essential dissonance to the orderly but primitive scheme..."
"Thought of having a bite" was the way he put it. Probably so as not to waste time trying to put into words the vague and troubling sensations that had caused him to stay around.
LITTLE PESHA. THE SAME DAY. 8 AM.
Kir managed to stuff himself into the zero-cabin with the galley in his arms and vanished off to his Petrozavodsk. Basil took off his monstrous jacket, flopped down in the gra.s.s in the shade, and apparently dozed off.
Grandma Albina floated off to her cottage number 1.
Toivo did not go back to the pavilion; he sat down on the gra.s.s, crossed his legs, and waited.
Nothing special was happening in Little Pesha. Cast-iron Jurgen bawled from time to time in his cottage, number 7 m- something about the weather, something about the river, and something about his vacation. Albina, still all in white, appeared on her veranda and sat down under the awning. Her voice, melodic and low, reached Toivo -- she must have been talking on the videophone. "Duremar" Tolstov appeared in his field of vision several times.
He was hanging around the cottages, crouching down, examining the ground, digging into the bushes, sometimes even crawling along.
At seven-thirty, Toivo got up, went into the club, and called his mother on the video. The usual check-in call. He was afraid that the day would be very busy and he wouldn"t have another time to call. They talked about this and that. Toivo told her that he had met an aged ballerina named Albina. Could it be the Albina the Great; about whom he had heard so much in his childhood? They discussed the question and decided that it was quite possible, and that there was also another great ballerina Albina, who was about fifty years older than Albina the Great... They said good-bye until the next day.
Outside came a loud roar: "The crawfish? Lev, what about the crawfish!"
Lev Tolstov was approaching the club at a fast pace, irritatedly waving his left arm; he was pressing a voluminous package to his chest with his right hand. At the entrance of the pavilion, he stopped, and with a squeaky falsetto called in the direction of cottage number 7: "I"ll be back! Soon!"
He noticed Toivo looking at him, and explained, as if in apology; "An extraordinarily strange story. I have to get to the bottom of it."
He went into the zero-cabin, and then nothing happened for quite some time. Toivo decided to wait until eight.
At five minutes to eight, a glider flew in over the woods, circled Little Pesha several times, gradually getting lower, and landed softly in front of cottage number 10, the one that seemed to be inhabited by an artist"s family. A tall man jumped out of the glider, ran up the steps lightly, and, turning back to the glider, called: "Everything"s all right!
Nothing and no one!" While Toivo walked over across the square, a young woman with short hair in a violet dress above her knees got out of the glider. She did not go up to the porch; she stayed near the glider, holding the door with her hand.
As it turned out, the artist in the family was the woman, named Zosya Lyadova, and it was her self-portrait that Toivo had seen in the Yarygin cottage. She was twenty-five or twenty-six. She was a student at the Academy, in Komovsky Korsakov"s studio, and had not created anything significant yet. She was beautiful -- much more beautiful than in her self-portrait. In some way, she reminded Toivo of his Asya. Of course, he had never seen his Asya that scared.
The man"s name was Oleg Olegovich Pankratov, and he was a lecturer in the Syktyvkar School District; before that, for almost thirty years, he had been an astroarchaeologist, working in Fokine"s group, taking part in the expedition to Kala-i-Moog (a.k.a. the "paradoxical planet Morokhasi"), and in general had seen the world in all its shades. He was a very calm man, even phlegmatic, with hands like shovels. Dependable, st.u.r.dy, substantial, you couldn"t budge him with a bulldozer. His face was white and rosy-cheeked, with blue eyes, a potato nose, and reddish hair, like the mythic warrior Ilya Muromets...
And there was nothing strange in the fact that during the events of the night the spouses had behaved quite differently. The sight of living sacks trying to crawl into the bedroom window surprised Oleg Olegovich, but naturally did not scare him. Perhaps because he immediately thought of the branch inst.i.tute in Lower Pesha, where he had been more than once, and the sight of monsters did not make him feel endangered. Disgusted, yes, but not threatened. Disgust and revulsion, but not fear. He barred the way and did not let the sacks into the bedroom. He pushed them back out into the garden, and they were slimy, sticky, and yucky. They were unpleasantly soft and spongy under his hands, and they reminded him of the innards of some huge animal. Then he moved around the bedroom trying to figure what to wipe his hands on, but Zosya began screaming on the veranda and he didn"t have time to be fastidious...
Oh, none of us behaved very well, but still, you can"t let yourself go like some people. Some of them are still in shock. Frolov had to be hospitalized right in Sula. They had to pull him out of the glider part by part; he had really lost it... Grigorian and family didn"t even stay in Sula; they rushed into the zero-cabin, all four of them, and headed straight for Mirza-Charle. Grigorian shouted in farewell: "Anywhere, as long as it"s far and forever!"
Zosya understood Grigorian very well. She had never experienced anything so horrible in her life. And it wasn"t a question of whether the animals were dangerous or not. "If we were moved by horror... Don"t interrupt, Oleg, I"m talking about us simple unprepared people, not thunder throwers like you... If we were all moved by terror, then it wasn"t because we were afraid of being eaten, suffocated, and digested alive and so on...
No, it was a different feeling!" Zosya was hard put to characterize that sensation more precisely. The closest she could get was that it wasn"t horror but a feeling of total incompatibility, the impossibility of being in the same s.p.a.ce with these creatures. But the most interesting part of her story was something else.
They were beautiful, the creatures! They were so horrible-looking and revolting that they represented a kind of perfection -- the perfection of ugliness. An esthetic clash between ideal ugliness and ideal beauty.
Somewhere it was said that ideal ugliness should elicit the same esthetic sensations as ideal beauty. That had always seemed paradoxical to her until last night. But it wasn"t a paradox! Or was she simply so perverse?..
She showed Toivo her sketches, made from memory two hours after the panic. She and Oleg had taken an empty little house in Sula, and at first Oleg made her drink tonic and tried psychoma.s.sage. But it didn"t help. Then she grabbed a piece of paper, a disgusting marker, inflexible and clumsy, and hurriedly, line after line, shadow after shadow, began transferring onto paper what was before her eyes like a nightmare, blocking out the real world...
The drawings didn"t show anything special. A spiderweb of 1ines, familiar objects: the veranda railing, table, bushes, and, above it all, blurry shadows of vague outlines. Of course, the drawings did elicit a feeling of anxiety, discomfort... Oleg Olegovich felt that there was something in them, even though everything was much simpler and more disgusting. Of course, he didn"t know much about art. He just knew what he liked.
He asked Toivo what he bad learned. Toivo told him his suppositions: Fleming, Lower Pesha, a new form of embryoph.o.r.e, and so on. Pankratov nodded in agreement, and then said with sadness that the thing that grieved him most in this business... how could he put it? Well, the excessive nervousness of today"s earthier. They all ran off, all of them! At least one would have stayed, have shown a little curiosity... Toivo sprang to the defense of today"s earth-dweller and told them about Grandma Albina and the boy Kir.
Oleg Olegovich grew incredibly animated. He slapped his shovel-like hands on the armrests of the chair and on the table, looked triumphantly at Toivo and at Zosya, and, laughing, exclaimed: "Go, Kir! What a hero! I always said something would come of him... But what about our Albina! So much for hoity-toity!" Zosya pointed out that there was nothing amazing about it, that old and young were always berries from the same patch... "And s.p.a.ce travelers, my beloved!" They parried, half-seriously, half-jokingly, when suddenly a minor incident occurred.
Oleg Olegovich; listening to his beloved with a grin from ear to ear, suddenly stopped smiling, and his expression became one of concern, as if something had shaken his very foundations. Toivo looked and saw that the inconsolable and disappointed Ernst Jurgen was standing in the doorway of his cottage number 7, no longer in his crab-catching wet suit, but in a beige outfit with a flat can of beer in one hand and a colossal sandwich with something red and white in the other, and he was bringing first one hand and then the other to his mouth, chewing and swallowing, and staring across the square at the club.
"There"s Ernst!" Zosya exclaimed. "And you said everyone left!"
"Amazing!" Oleg Olegovich said slowly with that same worried look.
"Ernst, as you see, also was not frightened off," Zosya said, not without malice.
"I see," Oleg Olegovich replied.
He knew something about that Ernst Jurgen, and he had never expected him to be here after last night He shouldn"t have been here now, on his own veranda, drinking beer and eating boiled crawcrabs. No, Ernst Jurgen should have hightailed it back to t.i.tan or even farther.
And Toivo hurried to set things straight, and told them that Ernst Jurgen had not been in the village last night, that he had been fishing several kilometers upriver. Zosya was very disappointed, and Oleg Olegovich, as it seemed to Toivo Glumov, even sighed in relief.
"That"s another story!" he said. "You should have said so in the first place..." And even though no one had asked him any questions, he suddenly began explaining: he had been confused, because last night during the panic he had seen Ernst Jurgen pushing everyone aside to get to the pavilion and the zero-cabin. Now he realized that he was mistaken, that it hadn"t happened, and couldn"t have. But at first, when he saw Ernst Jurgen with a can of beer...
It"s not clear whether Zosya believed him or not, but Toivo didn"t believe a word of it. It hadn"t happened; Ernst hadn"t appeared to Oleg Olegovich during the panic. But Oleg Olegovich did know something about Jurgen, something more interesting, but apparently bad, because he was too embarra.s.sed to tell it.
And here a shadow fell on Little Pesha, and the air was filled with a velvety cooing, and Basil came shooting out from behind the pavilion like a shot, pulling on his jacket as he ran, and the sun was shining once more aver Little Pesha, and a pseudograf of the Puma cla.s.s, a super new one, majestically landed on the square, without bending a blade of gra.s.s, all golden and shiny, like a gigantic round loaf of bread, and immediately all its round portholes flew open, and through them scattered dozens of long-legged, tanned, busy, and loud-voiced men -- they scattered and began dragging crates with funnels, pulled hoses with bizarre tips, ran around, waving their arms, and the one who bustled, ran, and waved his arms the most, dragging crates and pulling hoses, was Lev-Duremar Tolstov, still wearing clothing covered with dried green seaweed.
OFFICE OF THE HEAD OF THE UE DEPT. 6 MAY 99. AROUND 1:00 P.M.
"And what did they achieve with their technology?" I asked.
Toivo was looking drearily out the window, his gaze following the Cloud Settlement, unhurriedly floating somewhere over the southern suburbs of Sverdlovsk.
"Nothing essentially new," he replied. "They re-created the most probable appearance of the animals. Their a.n.a.lyses were the same as those of the emergency squad. They were amazed that the embryoph.o.r.e sh.e.l.ls had not remained. They were astonished by the energy and insisted that it was impossible."
"Did you send the queries?" I made myself ask.
I have to stress here once more that by then I already saw it all, knew it all, understood it all, but I had no idea what I could do with my vision, knowledge, and understanding. I couldn"t come up with anything, and my colleagues and coworkers were simply in my way. Especially Toivo Glumov.
More than anything in the world, I wanted to go on vacation right there, without leaving my chair. Send them all on vacation, every last probationer, and then cut off all communications lines, shut down the screens, shut my eyes, and be completely alone at least for twenty-four hours. So that I would not have to watch my face. So I would not have to think when my words. sounded naturaland when they sounded strange. So that I wouldn"t have to think about anything, so that there would be a gaping emptiness in my head, and then the right vision would appear on its own in that emptiness. It was like a hallucination -- one of those that come when you have to bear nagging pain.
I had borne it for more than five weeks, and my spiritual strength was waning. But for the time being I still could control my face, manage my behavior, and ask totally appropriate questions.
"Did you send the queries?" I asked Toivo Glumov.
"I sent the queries," he replied in a monotone. "To Burgermayer at Embryomechanics. To Gorbatsky. Personally. And to Fleming. Just in case. All in your name."
"Fine," I said. "We"ll wait."
Now I had to let him talk it out. I could see he needed to talk. He had to make sure that the most important thing was not missed by the chief.
Ideally, the chief should have noticed and stressed that important thing himself, but I didn"t have the strength for that anymore.
"Do you want to add anything?" I asked.
"Yes, I do." He flicked an invisible mote of dust from the desk "Unusual technology is not the main thing. The main thing is the dispersion of reactions."
"That is?" 1 had to hurry him along, too!
"You might have noticed that these events divided up the witnesses into two uneven groups. Strictly speaking, into three. The majority of witnesses gave in to uncontrollable panic. Me devil in a medieval village. Total loss of self-control. People ran from Little Pesha. People ran from Earth. Now the second group: zoo technician Anatoly Sergeyevich and artist Zosya Lyadova, though frightened at first, find the strength to return, and the artist had even seen something charming in the creatures. And finally, the elderly ballerina and Kir. And, I suppose, Pankratov, Lyadova"s husband They weren"t frightened at all. On the contrary. Dispersion of reactions," he repeated.
I saw what he wanted from me. All the conclusions were on the s.p.a.ce.
Someone had run an experiment on artificial selection in Little Pesha, dividing up people, according to their reactions, into those who are worthy of something. Just as that someone made a selection fifteen years ago in the subs.p.a.ce sector at entrance 41/02. And there was no question as to who that someone with the technology unknown to us was. The same one who for some reason blocked the path of f.u.kamization... Toivo Glumov could have formulated all that for me himself, but from his point of view it would have been a violation of work ethics and the principle of it. Drawing a conclusion was the prerogative of the chief and the senior member of the clan.
But I did not use my prerogative. I didn"t have the strength for that, either.
"Dispersions," I repeated. "That"s convincing."
I must have sounded a false note, because Toivo suddenly raised his white lashes and stared at me.
"Is that all?" I asked immediately.
"Yes," he replied. "That"s it."
"Fine. Let"s wait for the experts" results. What are you planning to do now? Go to bed?"
He sighed. Barely perceptibly. A less controlled person in his place would have been insolent. But Toivo said, "I don"t know. I"ll probably go do some more work I have to finish the head count today."
"The whales?"
"Yes."
"Fine," I said. "Whatever you want. But tomorrow, please leave for Kharkov."
Toivo"s white eyebrows went up, but he said nothing.
"Do you know what the Inst.i.tute of Eccentrics is?" I asked.
"Yes. Kikin told me."
Now I raised my brows. Mentally. d.a.m.n them all. They were out of control. Did I have to warn each one every time to watch his tongue? This wasn"t COMCON-2 but a clubhouse...
"And what did Kikin tell you?"
"That it"s a branch of the Inst.i.tute of Metapsychic Research. They study the limits and beyond the limits of the human psyche. It"s chock full of weird people."
"Right," I said. "You"re going there tomorrow. Listen to your a.s.signment."
I formulated his a.s.signment this way. On March 25, the Inst.i.tute of Eccentrics in Kharkov was honored by the presence of the famous Wizard from the planet Saraksh. Who was the Wizard? He was without a doubt a mutant.
Moreover, he was the lord and master of all mutants in the radioactive jungles beyond Blue Snake. He had many amazing abilities, including the fact that he was a psychocrat. What was a psychocrat? That was the general term for creatures capable of subordinating someone else"s psyche. Besides which, the Wizard was a creature of extraordinary intellectual power, one of those sapiens who need no more than a drop of water to conclude the existence of oceans. The Wizard came to Earth on a private visit. For some reason the thing that interested him most was the Inst.i.tute of Eccentrics. Perhaps he sought others like him; we don"t know. The visit was planned far four days, but he left after an hour. He went back to Saraksh and vanished in his radioactive jungles.
Up until that point, my introduction to Toivo Glumov was the truth and nothing but the truth. Now came the pseudoquasi part.
During the last month, our Progressors on Saraksh at my request have been trying to enter into communications with the Wizard. They have been failing. Either we had insulted the Wizard somehow here on Earth, without knowing it, or one hour was enough for him to get the needed information about us. Or else something happened that was specifically "Wizardy" and therefore unimaginable for us. In short, he had to go to the Inst.i.tute, find all the materials on the study of the Wizard, if there were any, talk to everyone who dealt with him, and find out if anything strange had happened to the Wizard. For instance, did they remember anything he might have said about Earth and about people? Did he commit any acts that pa.s.sed without notice then but were now seen in a new light?
"Is everything clear?" I asked.
He gave me another quick look.
"You did not say which theme my trip falls under."
No, it wasn"t a flash of intuition. And I doubt that he had caught me pseudoquasying. He simply could not understand how his chief, who had such serious information relating to the penetration of his hated Wanderers, could get sidetracked.
I said, "It"s the same theme. A Visit from an Old Lady."
(Actually, it really was. In the broad meaning of the word. The broadest.) For some time, he was silent, noiselessly drumming his fingers on the desk Then he spoke, almost apologetically.
"I don"t see the connection..."
"You will," I promised.
He said nothing.
"And if there is no connection, all the better," I said.
"He"s a Wizard, understand? A real Wizard, I know him. A real Wizard from fairy tales, with a talking bird on his shoulder and all the other accoutrements. And he"s a Wizard from another planet, yet. I desperately need him!"
"A possible ally," Tolvo add with a weak interrogative intonation.
There, he explained it to himself. Now he would work like the d.a.m.ned.
Maybe he would even find the Wizard, which, to tell the truth, I doubted.
"Bear in mind," I said, "that in Kharkov you will represent yourself as a worker of the Big COMCON. That"s not a cover; Big COMCON really is looking for the Wizard."
"All right," he said.
"Is that it? Then go. Go, go. My best to Asya."
He left, and at last I was alone. For several blissful minutes. Until the next videophone call. And in those blissful moments I decided for sure: I had to go to Athos. Immediately, because once he went in for surgery, I would have no one nearby to whom I could go.
COMCON-2 Sverdlovsk To Kammerer.Director of the Biocenter TPO Gorbatsky.
In answer to your query of 6 MayYou are being led by the nose. Such a thing cannot be.Pay it no mind.