Never descend to poetry, my boy.

C.d.i.c.kens.

They kept on repairing the Aldan all night. When I went to Electronics next morning, the sleepy and annoyed engineers were sitting on the floor berating Cristobal Joseevich in uninspired invective. They were calling him a Scythian, barbarian, and Hun, who had gained access to computers. Their despair was so complete that for a while they actually listened to my advice and attempted to follow it. But then the chief arrived, a certain Savaof Baalovich Uni, and I was immediately displaced from the machine. Moving out of the way, I sat down at my desk and observed how Savaof Baalovich was divining the essence of the damage.

He was very old, but strong and sinewy, sunburned with a shiny bald head and closely shaved cheeks, dressed in a blinding white tussah suit.

This man was regarded with great reverence by everyone. I saw for myself once how he was reading Modest Matveevich a lecture in a soft voice, and the menacing Modest Matveevich was bowing and repeating, "I understand. My fault. It won't happen again. . . ." A kind of monstrous energy emanated from Savaof Baalovich. It was noted that in his presence watches gained time, and the tracks of elementary particles, curved by a magnetic field, would straighten out. All the same, he was not a magus. At least, not a practicing magus. He didn't go through walls, never transgressed anyone, and never created his own doubles, though he worked an inordinate lot. He was the head of the Technical Maintenance Department, knew all the technology in the Inst.i.tute to the finest detail, and was a consultant to the Kitezhgrad magitechnic plant. In addition, he was involved in the most unexpected matters far removed from his profession.

I learned about his past only recently. In olden times, S.B. Uni was the leading magus on Earth. Cristobal Junta and Gian Giacomo were pupils of his students. Evil was exorcised with his name. Jinn bottles were sealed with his name. King Solomon wrote him letters of pa.s.sionate admiration and erected temples in his honor. He seemed to be all-powerful. And then, sometime in the middle of the sixteenth century, he did become all-powerful.

Having achieved a numerical solution of the integro-differential Equation of Perfection, which was postulated by some t.i.tan before the Ice Age, he acquired the ability to perform any miracle. Each of the magi had his own limits. Some were unable to rid themselves of the growth on their ears.

Others were in possession of the generalized Lomonosov-Lavoisier law, but were powerless before the second law of thermodynamics. Still others-- and they were very few-- could stop time, but only in Riemann s.p.a.ce and only for a short period. Savaof Baalovich was omnipotent He could do anything. And he could do nothing. Because the limiting boundary of the Equation of Perfection proved to be the condition that the miracle must not harm anyone.

Not one intelligent being. On Earth or anywhere in any other part of the universe. But no one could envisage such a miracle, not even Savaof Baalovich himself. And so, S.B. Uni renounced forever the practice of magic and became the Head of the Department of Technical Maintenance at SRITS....

With his arrival, the affairs of the engineers quickly got on the mend.

Their movements became purposeful and their nasty comments withered away. I got out the folder with my current a.s.signments and was about to go to work, when Stellotchka, that very sweet, gray-eyed, and retrousse-nosed undergraduate witch in Vibegallo's lab, came in and invited me to join her in the composition of the Inst.i.tute gazette.

Stella and I were on the editorial staff, and we wrote satirical verses, fables, and captions for the ill.u.s.trations. In addition to all this, I also drew clever pictures of a mailbox for notices, with winged letters converging on it from all sides. In general, the gazette artist was mynamesake, Alexander Ivanovich Drozd, cinephotographer, who had successfully infiltrated the Inst.i.tute. He was also our specialist on headlines. The editor-in-chief was Roman Oira-Oira, and Volodia Pochkin was his a.s.sistant.

"Sasha," said Stellotchka, gazing at me out of her honest gray eyes.

"Let's go."

"Where to?" I said. I knew where.

"Make up the issue."

"Why?"

"Roman is asking for it, very insistently, because Cerberus is complaining. He says there are only two days left and there's nothing ready."

Cerberus Curovich Demin, comrade Personnel Director, was the curator of our paper and its chief expeditor and censor.

"Listen," I said. "Let's do it tomorrow, OK?"

"I can't, tomorrow," said Stellotchka. "Tomorrow I'm flying to Sukhumi, to tape baboons. Vibegallo says that we should make records of the leader, as the most responsible of the baboons. . . . He himself is afraid to go near the leader because he is jealous of him. What do you say, Sasha? Let's go."

I sighed, put away my worksheets, and followed Stellotchka, since I couldn't compose verse alone. I needed Stellotchka. She always suggested the first line and the basic idea and, in my view, that was the main thing in poetry.

"Where are we going to work?" I asked on the way. "Over at the local committee room?"

"That's taken, for putting Alfred on the carpet. On account of his tea.

As for us, Roman has made room in his lab."

"So what do we write about this time? About the steam-baths again?"

"About the steambaths, too. About that, about Bald Mountain, and, also, we have to roast Homa Brutus."

"Homa Brutus-- how badly you treat us."

"Et tu, Brutus," said Stella.

"That's a thought," I said. "I'll have to work on that."

On the table in Roman's laboratory the paper was laid out-- a huge, virginally clean sheet of drafting paper. Reclining next to it, among the gouache containers, atomizers, and notes, was our artist and cinephotographer Alexander Drozd, a cigarette hanging from his lip. As usual, his cute shirt was open, displaying a hairy potbelly through the crack.

"Greetings," he said.

"h.e.l.lo," I said.

There was loud music-- Sanya was exercising his portable receiver.

"What have you here?" I said, collecting the notes. There wasn't much.

There was the lead article, "The Coming Holiday." There was the item from Cerberus Curovich, "Results of the Investigation of the Status of Conformance to Management Directives Regarding Work Discipline for the Period from the End of the First to the Start of the Second Quarter." There was a Professor Vibegallo article, "Our Duty-- Is the Duty to Subsidiary Rural and City Economics." There was an article by Volodia Pochkin, "All-Union Conference on Electronic. Thaumaturgy." There was the note from some house ghost, "When Will the Steam Pipes in the Fourth Floor Be Blown Clear?" There was the article of the Chairman of the Mess Committee, "Neither Fish Nor Fowl"-- six typewritten pages with a single break. It began with the words, "Phosphorus is as necessary to man as air." There was a short piece by Roman on the work of the Unapproachable Problems Department. For the section t.i.tled "Our Veterans," there was an article by Cristobal Junta, "From Seville to Granada in 1547." There were several other small contributions in which were criticized: the absence of an adequate orderliness in the account of the credit union; the presence of someslovenliness in the organization of the volunteer fire department; the permissive att.i.tute toward gambling in the vivarium. There were several caricatures. One showed a draggle-tailed Homa Brutus with a purple nose.

Another was ridiculing the steam-baths-- it showed a blue, naked man congealing under an icicle shower.

"What a bore!" I said. "What do you say we don't need verses?"

"We do need them," said Stellotchka with a sigh. "I've been making layouts this way and that, and there's always some empty s.p.a.ce."

"Let Sanya draw something. Some sort of wheat sheaf, or blooming pansies. How about it, Sanya?"

"Go on and get to work," said Drozd. "I have to draw the banner."

"Big deal," I said. "Three whole words!"

"Against a background of a starry night," Drozd said weightily. "Also a rocket. And headlines for the articles, too. And I haven't had my dinner yet. Or breakfast."

"Then go eat," I said, irritated.

"I bought a tape recorder. At the commission shop. Here you are fooling around when you'd do better to make me a sandwich or two. With b.u.t.ter and jam. A dozen would be good!"

I took out a ruble and showed it to him from a distance.

"When you finish the banner I'll give it to you."

"For keeps?" said Sanya, animated.

"No, for a loan."

"Well, that's the same thing," he said. "Consider the possibility that I'm going to die right now. I've already started to have spasms. Also my extremities are growing cold."

"That's a pack of lies," said Stella. "Let's sit down over at that table, Sasha, and finish those verses right now."

We sat down at the separate table and spread out the caricatures before us. For some time we sat and looked at each other in the hope that an inspiration would come forth.

"That Brutus is a brute-- beware, he'll swipe your shoes to boot."

"Swipe?" I said. "Did he steal something?"

"No," said Stella. "He had a fight and was a hooligan. I just said that for the rhyme."

We waited. Nothing more came into our heads. "Let's approach this logically. There is this Homa Brutus. He drank himself stupid. He fought.

What else did he do?"

"He pestered the girls," said Stella. "Broke some gla.s.s."

"All right," I said. "What else?"

"He expressed himself"

"That's strange," Sanya Drozd piped up. "I worked in the projection booth with this Brutus. He was a regular guy. Normal"

"And?" I said.

"And, that's all."

"Can you come up with a rhyme for Brutus or maybe Brute?"

"Knout."

"Sounds like we had that with the boot."

"A knout is different. They whip you with one of those."

Stella said, with expression, "Comrade, before you is a Brute.

Pick up your trusty knout And whack him head to foot."

"No good," said Drozd. "That would be propaganda for physical punishment."

"Kaput," I said.

"Behold, my friend, there is that Brute," said Stella, "His words so rough and tough That it's enough To make the flies kaput."

"It's your poetry that'll do the flies in," said Drozd.

"Have you lettered the banner?" I asked.

"No," Drozd said coquettishly.

"Then work on it."

"They shame our proud Inst.i.tute," said Stella, "such drunkards as our Brutus Brute."

"That's good," I said. "We'll use that for the finale. Write it down.

It will be a moral of freshness and originality."

"What's original about that?" said the simple Drozd.

I didn't bother responding to him.

"Now we have to describe," I said, "how he engaged in hooliganism.

Let's say . . . 'The disgraceful buffoon!.

Drunk like a baboon!. . . With language vile did ears defile!... Was born a man, became a holligan.'"

"Awful," Stella said in disgust.

I propped up my head on my hands and continued to stare at the caricature. Drozd, his tail stuck up in the air, was stroking the paper with his paintbrush. His legs, encased in maximally tight jeans, were bowed out in a reverse curve. I was struck with an idea.

"Knees to the rear!" I said. "The popular song."

"'The little gra.s.shopper sat, knees to the rear,'" said Stella.

"Precisely," said Drozd, without turning around. "I know it, too. "'All the guests were scattering, knees to the rear,' " he sang.

"Wait, wail," I said. I felt inspired. " 'He fights and curses and here is the result:!. . . To the prison cell, knees to the rear.'"

"That's not bad," said Stella.

"You follow?" I said. "Another pair of verses and all with the refrain 'knees to the rear.' 'Drunk beyond all reason . . . the girls he's a-teasing. . . .' Something along these lines."

"'He drank in desperation! . . . Without any ration,'" said Stella. "'A stranger's door he crashes! . . . And nothing him abashes! . . . Ignoring law and fear! . . . knees to the rear. '

"Brilliant," I said. "Write it down! He did break in?"

"Indeed, indeed."

"Excellent!" I said. "Now another verse."

"'He chased a girl! . . . Knees to the rear.' We need the first line."

"Ambition, ammunition," I said. "Police, just-ice."

"'And he has this charming way! . . .'" said Stella, "'Not to wash or shave each day.'"