"What is that over there?" I asked a beautiful woman ambling listlessly to the Pantheon-Refrigerator.

"It's the Iron Curtain," she replied without stopping.

With each pa.s.sing minute I was becoming more and more tired of the whole thing. Everyone was crying; the orators had grown hoa.r.s.e. Next to me a young man in a light blue one-piece suit was saying good-bye to a girl in a pink dress. The girl monotonously intoned, "I would like to become a cloud of stardust. As a cosmic mist I would embrace your ship. . . ." The youth harkened. Then orchestral music broke out over the crowd, and my nerves could not stand any more and I jumped onto the seat and fed the machine some "gas." I still caught the sight and the roar of the planetary ships, the starships, the ion ships, the astroplanes, the photon flyers, and theastromats leaping up over the city, and then everything but the gray wall was enveloped in a luminescent fog. After the year 2000, rifts in time started to appear. I flew through times devoid of matter. In such spots it was dark, and only occasionally explosions flared and fires cast a glow into the sky behind the gray wall. Now and again the city crowded back around me, and each time, the buildings were taller, its rounded domes more transparent, its parked s.p.a.ceships fewer in number. Smoke rose from behind the wall without interruption.

I stopped for the second time when the last astromat disappeared from the plaza. The sidewalks were moving. There were no noisy stalwarts in union suits. No one swore. Some colorless individuals diffidently strolled about the streets in twos and threes, dressed either weirdly or poorly. As far as I could tell, they were all talking science. Someone was about to be revived and the professor of medicine-- an athletic intellectual, looking most uncommon in his lonely vest-- was explaining the procedure to a giant of a biophysicist, who was introduced to all comers as the author, initiator, and main implementer of this undertaking. Somewhere they were going to bore a hole right through the earth. The project was being discussed right on the street with a considerable gathering of people, drawings being made with chalk on the sidewalks and walls. I thought I might listen in, but it became so boring, including sallies against an unknown conservative, that I heaved the machine on my shoulders and moved away. I was not surprised that the discussion of the project stopped at once and everyone got down to business.

But as soon as I stopped, some citizen of indefinite profession began a discourse. For no apparent reason he carried on about music. Listeners converged from all sides. They looked totally absorbed and asked questions attesting to a h.o.a.ry ignorance. Suddenly, a man ran screaming down the street. He was being pursued by a spiderlike mechanism. Judging by the cries of the pursued, it was an autoprogramming cybernetic robot with trigonic quoators with inverse feedback, which were malfunctioning, and . . . oi-oi, he is going to dismember me .

Strange, no one as much as lifted an eyebrow. Obviously no one believed in machine mutiny.

Two more spiderlike mechanisms of smaller size suddenly jumped out of an alley. Before I could begin to react, one of them quickly shined my shoe and the other washed and pressed my handkerchief. A large white tank on treads drew up and, blinking with numerous lights, sprayed me with perfume.

I was about ready to move on when a thunderous crash sounded in the plaza as an enormous rusty rocket fell from the sky. At once the crowd started commenting.

"It's the Star of Hope."

- "Yes, that's it."

"Of course it is. That's the one that left two hundred and eighteen years ago, and has been all but forgotten. But due to the Einstein time-contraction brought on by sublight speeds, the crew is only two years older!"

"Due to what? Oh, Einstein. . . . Yes, yes, I recollect I covered that in my second year at school."

A one-eyed man, without his, right leg and left arm, struggled out of the rocket.

"Is this Earth?" he asked irritably.

"Earth! Yes!" responded the crowd.

Smiles began to bloom on their faces.

"Thank G.o.d," said the man, and everyone exchanged glances. Either they did not understand him or pretended that they didn't understand.

The amputee astronaut took up a pose and launched into a speech in which he called on all humanity, each and every man, to go to the planet w.i.l.l.y-Nily in the Aeolian star system, in the Minor Magellanic Cloud, inorder to free their brothers in reason, groaning under a bondage to a fierce cybernetic dictator. (He said this groaning with emphasis.) The roar of exhausts drowned him out. Two more rockets, also rusty, were descending on the plaza. Frosted women ran out of the Pantheon-Refrigerator. A crush ensued. I knew I had landed in the epoch of returns and hurriedly pressed the gas pedal.

The city vanished and did not reappear for a long time. Behind the wall, blinding flashes and sky-lighting fires continued with depressing regularity. Then, finally, the world became brightly illuminated and I stopped immediately.

A blooming, unpeopled landscape stretched around me. Wheat fields waved. Fatted herds grazed, but cultured herdsmen were not in evidence.

Familiar transparent cupolas, viaducts, and helical ramps glimmered on the horizon.

Quite nearby, to the west, the wall continued to tower over me.

Someone touched me on the knee and I jumped. A small boy with deep-set eyes stood alongside.

"What is it, little boy?" I asked.

"Apparatus busted?" he inquired in a melodious voice.

"You should address your elders politely," I said tutorially.

He was very astonished, then his face cleared.

"Ah, yes, I remember. If my memory does not betray me, that was customary in the Epoch of Compulsory Politeness. If to tutoyer is disharmonious to your emotional rhythm, I am prepared to address you in any manner you find in consonance with your inner equilibrium."

I was at a loss to answer, so he squatted by my machine and touched it here and there, commenting in terminology with which I was totally unfamiliar. A nice youngster, very clean, very well groomed, healthy, but a bit too serious for his age in my opinion.

"Listen, young one," said I. "What wall is that?"

He turned his attentive, shy eyes on me.

"It's called the Iron Curtain," he replied. "Unhappily, I am not versed in the etymology of both these words, but I am informed that it divides two worlds-- the World of Humanist Imagination and the World of Fear of the Future." He was quiet and then added, "The etymology of the word 'fear' is also unknown to me."

"Curious," I said. "Would it be possible to see? What is that World of Fear?"

"Of course it's possible. Here is the communication port. You may quench your curiosity."

The communication port had the appearance of a low arch closed with an armored door. I approached and grasped the bolt with some trepidation. The boy followed up on his comments.

"I cannot refrain from warning you. If some misadventure should befall you there, you will be required to present yourself before the United Council of One Hundred and Forty Worlds."

I pushed the door ajar. Crash! Bang! W-o-o-w! A-y-i-i! Toot-toot-toot!

All of my five senses were instantly traumatized. I saw a good-looking blond with an indecent tattoo between her shoulder blades, all nakedness and long legs, firing two automatics into an ugly brunette, who showered red drops with each shot. I heard the thunder of explosions and the soul-rending cries of monsters. I smelled the indescribable stench of rotting and burned nonprotein flesh. The searing wind of a proximate nuclear explosion burned my face and I felt on my tongue the repulsive taste of pulverized protoplasm scattered through the atmosphere. I shied back and shut the door in haste, almost slamming it on my head. The air now seemed sweet and the world beautiful. The boy had disappeared. I was slowly reconst.i.tuting myself and then became concerned that the pest might have run to his United Council to complain. I ran to my machine.

Once more, the dusk of dimensionless time closed over me. But I did nottake my eyes off the Iron Wall, as my curiosity was aroused. In order not to lose time for nothing, I jumped a whole million years into the future in one leap. Jungles of atomic mushrooms grew behind the wall and I was overjoyed when light again glimmered on my side of it. I braked and groaned in disappointment.

The vast Pantheon-Refrigerator towered not far away. A rusty s.p.a.ceship of spherical shape was descending from the sky. There was no one around; wheat fields waved. The sphere landed and the erstwhile pilot in blue came out. The girl in pink appeared at the door of the Pantheon. She was covered with the red spots of bedsores. They ran toward each other and clasped hands. I turned away, feeling ill at ease. The blue pilot and the pink girl started a dreary dialogue.

I got off the machine to flex my legs and only then noticed that the sky behind the wall was unprecedentedly clear. There were no roars of explosions nor cracks of shots. Emboldened, I went to the communications port.

A perfectly flat field extended on the other side of the wall, cleft all the way to the horizon with a deep ditch. There was not a living thing to the left and the entire area was covered with low metallic domes, not unlike bulging manhole covers. Hors.e.m.e.n were prancing about on the horizon on the right side. Then I noticed a squat darkfaced man in armor sitting with his legs dangling over the edge of the ditch. Something resembling an automatic rifle with a very thick barrel was hung on his chest by a leather strap. He was chewing slowly, spitting every minute, and regarded me without any particular interest. I held the door open and looked at him too, not daring to speak. His appearance was just too strange. Uncommon. Savage. Who knew what sort of man he was?

Having looked his fill, he reached under his armor and pulled out a flat flask, pulled the cork out with his teeth, took a swig, spit into the ditch again, and said in a rusty voice in English, "h.e.l.lo! You from that side?"

"Da," I said. "I mean, yes."

"And how is it going on out there?"

"So-so," said I, shutting the door. "And how is it going on here?"

"It's OK," he said phlegmatically, and was silent.

After a while I asked what he was doing there. At first, he replied reluctantly, but then gradually grew more talkative. I learned that, to the left of the ditch, humanity was living out its last days under the heel of savage robots. The machines there had become more intelligent than men, had seized power and were now basking in all the delights of life, and had driven the men underground to work on the conveyors. To the right of the ditch, on the territory guarded by him, the men were enslaved by wanderers from a neighboring galaxy. They, too, had seized power, installed a feudal order, and were making the fullest use of the right of first night. They lived quite high, these wanderers (would that everyone could do as well), and this and that goody fell to those who served them well. About twenty miles from here along the ditch, there was a region where men were enslaved by conquerors from Altair, intelligent viruses which invaded people and forced them to do what they willed. Even farther to the west there was a large colony of the Galactic Federation. The men there were also enslaved, but their lot wasn't all that bad because His Highness the Viceroy fed them well and enlisted them into the personal guard of His Majesty and Galactic Emperor E-U 3562-nd. There were also regions enslaved by intelligent parasites, intelligent plants, and intelligent minerals. Finally, over the mountain there were areas enslaved by still others, but all sorts of fairy tales were told about them, which no serious man could accept. ...

Here our conversation was interrupted. Several saucershaped flying machines flew low over the plain. Tumbling and twisting, bombs fell out of them. "It's started up again," growled the man, and he lay down with his feet toward the explosions and opened fire on the hors.e.m.e.n prancing on thehorizon. I jumped out the gate, slammed the door, and leaning on it with my back, listened for some time to the bombs whisfling, roaring, and thundering. The pilot in blue and the girl in pink on the steps of the Pantheon still had not concluded their dialogue. Once more I looked behind the door cautiously: over the plain, fireb.a.l.l.s slowly bloomed. The manhole covers opened one after another, and pale, tattered men with bearded savage faces were pouring out, brandishing iron staves. The hors.e.m.e.n had ridden up to my erstwhile interlocutor, and were backing him to ribbons with long swords, while he hollered and tried to parry their blows with his automatic rifle.

I closed the door and carefully drew the bolt shut.

Returning to my machine, I sat in the saddle. I was tempted to fly another million years forward and view the dying earth described by Wells.

But here, for the first time, something got stuck in the machine; the clutch did not seem to engage. I pressed it once, twice, then pushed the pedal with all my strength; something cracked, rang, the waving wheat fields stood on end, and I had the feeling of coming out of a profound sleep. I was sitting on the viewing stand on the stage of the small auditorium of our Inst.i.tute and everyone was looking at me with awe.

"What happened to the transmission?" I asked, looking around in search of the machine. There was no machine. I had come back alone.

"That's not important!" cried out Sedlovoi. "A big Thanks to you! You have really helped me out... . Now, that was interesting: isn't that a fact, comrades?"

The auditorium buzzed loudly to the effect that, yes, it was interesting.

"But I have read all of it somewhere," one of the magisters in the first row said dubiously.

"And how else? How else?" cried L. Sedlovoi. "Was he not in the described future?"

"Not much adventure," said the players of the Functional Sea Warfare game in the rear row. "Conversations, endless conversations"

"Well, I can't help that," Sedlovoi said forcefully.

"I like that," I said, getting off the stand. "Just talk, eh?" I recollected how they had chopped my dark-visaged conversationalist and felt ill.

"No, after all, some interesting spots had occurred," said one of the baccalaureates. "That machine, for instance . . . do you remember? With trigonic quoaters that's really something. .."

"Now, then," said p.o.o.pkov-Lahggard. "It seems we are already having a discussion. But then, perhaps, someone has a question for the lecturer?"

The dreary baccalaureate at once asked about the polyvelocity transmission (you see, he was interested in the coefficient of volume expansion) and I quietly withdrew.

I was experiencing a novel sensation. Everything around me seemed so real, solid, and material. People were pa.s.sing by, and I could hear their shoes squeaking and feel the breeze from their motion. They were all very laconic, they were all working, thinking, and no one was prattling, reading poetry, or pouring forth bombastic speeches. Everyone knew that the laboratory was one thing and the stage of the union meeting, another, while a holiday meeting was something else again. So much so, that when Vibegallo pa.s.sed me, slithering his leather-soled felt boots, I was almost sympathetic toward him, just because he had the usual bits of cereal in his beard and was picking his teeth with a long fine nail and didn't even say h.e.l.lo. He was a live, visible, and ponderable boor; he didn't wave his arms, or strike academic poses.

I looked in at Roman's because I wanted badly to tell someone about my adventures. Roman, chin in hand, was standing over a lab table, staring at a small green parrot lying in a petri dish. It was quite defunct its eyes covered with a dead whitish film. "What is the matter with him?" I asked.

"I don't know," said Roman. "Just croaked, as you can see.,'

"Where did you get it?"

'I don't understand it myself," said Roman.

"Perhaps it's artificial," I offered.

"Not at all; it's a parrot-type parrot, all right"

"Probably Victor sat on the umclidet again."

We bent over the bird and examined it attentively. It had a ring on its black stiff claw.

"Photon," read Roman. "And some numbers... nineteen, oh-five, seventy-three."

"So," said a familiar voice behind us.

We turned and stood respectfully.

"Good day," said Ja.n.u.s-U, walking up to the table. He had come out of his laboratory door in the back of the room, and he somehow projected a very tired and very sad look.

"Good day, Ja.n.u.s Poluektovich," we said in a chorus of utmost respect.

Ja.n.u.s saw the parrot and again said, "So." He took the small bird in his hands, very gently and tenderly, stroked its bright red crest, and said softly, "What happened, little Photon?"

He wanted to say something more, but glanced at us and remained silent.

We stood together and watched him, walking with an old man's gait, slowly go to the far corner of the room, open the door of the electric furnace, and drop the little green corpse in.

"Roman Petrovich," he said. "Be so kind, throw the switch, please."

Roman obeyed. He had that look of having been struck with a far-out idea. Ja.n.u.s-U, head bowed, stood a while by the furnace, sc.r.a.ped out the hot ashes carefully, and opening the window ventilator, threw them out into the wind. He looked out the window for some time, then told Roman that he was expecting him in his office in half an hour, and left.

"Strange," said Roman, following him with his eyes.

"What is strange?" I asked.

"The whole thing is strange," said Roman.

It seemed strange to me too, both the appearance of the green parrot, apparently so well known to Ja.n.u.s Poluektovich, and the altogether unlikely ceremony of the fiery funeral with the scattering of ashes on the wind, but I couldn't wait to tell about my journey into the imagined future, so I began my tale.

Roman listened inattentively, looked at me in a resigned way, nodded in the wrong'places, and then suddenly said, "Go on, go on, I am listening,"

crawled under the table, came out with the wastebasket, and started to paw through the crumpled paper and pieces of magnetic tape. When I finished my story he asked, "Didn't this Sedlovoi try traveling in the described present? In my opinion that would have been much more amusing...

While I was thinking about this suggestion and appreciating the acuity of Roman's wits, he turned the basket over and poured its contents on the floor.

"What's the matter?" I asked. "Lost your dissertation?"

"You know, Sasha," he said, looking at me with unseeing eyes, "it's a curious thing. Yesterday I was cleaning out the furnace and found a charred green feather in it. I threw it into the basket, but it's not here today."

"What feather?" I asked.

"You know very well that green bird feathers occur quite rarely in our lat.i.tudes. And the parrot we just burned was green."

"What sort of nonsense is that?" I said. "Didn't you find the feather yesterday?"

"That's the point," said Roman, putting the litter back in the basket.

Chapter 3.

Verse is unnatural, no one speaks in verse.