"Ja.n.u.s hasn't come in yet. And, anyway, I don't think he's back from Moscow."

"So, what are we supposed to make of it?" I asked.

"I don't know. We'll see." We were silent.

"You'll call me?" I asked. "If something interesting develops?"

"Of course. Without fail. So long, old chum."

I forced myself not to think about the parrot, which was, after all, none of my business. I finished with all the doubles, checked all the programs, and took up the nasty little problem that had been hanging over me for a long time. It was given me by the absolutists. At first I had told them that it had neither sense nor solution, as was the case with most of their conundrums. But then I consulted with Junta, who had a sharp insight into such matters, and he gave me a few encouraging pieces of advice. I had reverted to the problem several times and put it off as many, but now I was able to finish it off. It worked out most elegantly. Just as I finished and leaned back in my chair to contemplate with delight the solution from a distance, Junta arrived, ominous and irate. Looking down at my feet, he inquired in a dry, menacing tone as to when I had ceased to understand his writing. It reminded him quite strongly of sabotage, he informed me.

I was looking at him with a melting mien.

"Cristobal Joseevich," I said. "I finally did find the solution. You were absolutely right. Conjuration s.p.a.ce can indeed be folded along any four variables."

Finally he raised his eyes to me and looked me in the face. I must have had an especially happy expression because he softened and growled, "May I see it?"

I handed him the sheets and he sat down next to me and, together, we went over the problem from beginning to end, savoring the two most elegant transformations, one of which he prompted to me, and one which I found myself.

"You and I don't have such bad heads, Alessandro," Junta said finally.

"We have a certain artistry of thought. What do you think?"

"I think we're pretty good," I said sincerely.

"And I concur," he said. "We'll publish it. No one should be ashamed to publish that. It's not anything like self-powered galoshes or invisibility pants."

We had reached a fine state of satisfaction and began to a.n.a.lyze his new problem. In no time at all he told me that be had previously judged himself a bit inept and had come to the conclusion that I was a mathematical ignoramus at our very first meeting. I hotly agreed with him and expressed the opinion that he was conceivably quite ready to retire on pension, and as for me, I should be ejected bodily from the Inst.i.tute to load lumber because I wouldn't quality for any other job. He contradicted me. He said there could be no talk of any pension and that he should be processed for fertilizer, while I should not be allowed within a kilometer of a sawmill, where a certain intellectual level was still required, but should be a.s.signed as a junior trainee on the cesspool pumper at the cholera barracks.

So we sat, propping up our heads and abandoning ourselves to mutual devaluation, when Feodor Simeonovich looked in. As near as I could make out, he was impatient to hear my opinion of his program.

"Program!" exclaimed Junta, smiling biliously. "I haven't seen your program, Feodor, but I am sure that it is a work of genius in comparison to this-- " He handed Feodor Simeonovich the sheet with the problem, holding it in ginger disgust between two fingers. "Regard this exemplar of mental poverty and vapidity."

"B-but, my dear f-fellows," said Feodor Simeonovich, having diligently deciphered the handwriting. "This is BBen B-Beczalel's problem! Didn't C-Cagliostro prove ththat it had no s-solution?"

"We know that it has no solution, too," said Junta, bristling immediately. "But we wish to learn how to solve it"

"H-how strangely you r-reason, C-Cristo. . . . H-how can you look for a solution, where it d-does not exist? It's s-some sort of n-nonsense.

"Excuse me, Feodor, but it's you who are reasoning strangely. It'snonsense to look for a solution if it already exists. We are talking about how to deal with a problem that has no solution. This is a question of profound principle, which, I can see, is not within your scope, since you are an applications type. Apparently I started this conversation with you for nothing."

Cristobal Joseevich's tone was exceedingly insulting and Feodor Simeonovich became angry.

"I'll t-tell you what, my g-good fellow," he said. "I can't d-debate with you in such a v-vein, in the presence of the young man. Y-you astonish m-me. It's not s-scholarly. If you wish to continue, let's go out in the hall."

"As you wish," replied Junta, drawing himself up like a steel spring and reaching convulsively for a nonexistent rapier hilt at his hip.

They walked out ceremoniously, holding their heads high and not looking at each other. The girls t.i.ttered. I wasn't particularly concerned, either.

Sitting down, I put my hands around my head, studying the sheet that had been left behind and listening to the mighty rumble of Feodor Simeonovich's ba.s.s and the dry, angry expletives of Cristobal Joseevich cutting through, out in the hall.

In the end, Feodor Simeonovich bellowed, "Would you please follow me to my office!"

"A pleasure!" grated Junta. They had now a.s.sumed the formal "you."

Their voices faded in the distance.

"Duel! A duel!" chittered the girls.

Junta had an arrant fame as a duelist and for picking quarrels. They said that he would bring his adversary to his laboratory, offer him a choice of rapiers, swords, or halbards, and then start jumping on tables and overturning cabinets a La Douglas Fairbanks. But there was no need to worry about Feodor Simeonovich. It was quite clear that, having arrived in his office, they would gloom in silence at each other across the table for half an hour, then Feodor Simeonovich would sigh heavily, open his liquor cabinet, and fill two gla.s.ses with the Elixir of Bliss. Junta would flare his nostrils, twist his moustache, and drink up. Feodor Simeonovich would fill the gla.s.ses again without delay and shout into the lab, "Fresh pickles!"

Roman called at this time and asked in an odd voice that I go to his place at once. I ran upstairs.

In the lab were Roman, Victor, and Eddie. Besides them, there was also a green parrot. Alive. He sat, just as yesterday, on the balance beam, ogled each one of us in turn out of one eye or the other, poked around under his feathers with his beak, and obviously exhibited excellent health. The scientists, in contradistinction, looked far from well. Roman hunched over the bird and periodically sighed with a jerk. A pale Eddie gently ma.s.saged his temples, wearing the agonized expression of a migraine sufferer. Victor, too, astride a chair, rocked it like a bug-eyed schoolboy and grumbled indistinctly, sotto voce.

"The same one?" I asked weakly.

"The same one," said Roman.

"Photon?" I began to feel poorly, too. "And the number coincides?"

Roman did not reply.

Eddie said in a lugubrious tone, "If we knew how many feathers the parrot has in his tail, we could count them over again and account for the one lost yesterday."

"Would you like me to go and fetch Braem?" I offered.

"Where is the corpse?" asked Roman. "That's where we should start from!

Listen, detectives-- where is the corpse?"

"Corpse," barked the parrot. "Ceremony! Corpse overboard! Rubidium!"

"The devil knows what he's talking about," said Roman with feeling.

"'Corpse overboard' is a typical pirate expression," elucidated Eddie.

"And rubidium?" "R-rubidiuml Res-erve! Tr-tremendous!" said the parrot.

"The rubidium reserves are huge," translated Eddie. "It would be interesting to know where."

I bent over to examine the ring.

"Could it be that it's still not the same one?"

"And where is the one?" asked Roman.

"Well, that's a different question," I said. "That would be easier to explain."

"Explain," Roman demanded.

"Wait," I said. "Let's first decide the question: Is it the same one or not?"

"I think it's the same one," said Eddie.

"And I think it's not the same one," I said. "Here there's a scratch on the ring, where the three..."

"Three!" p.r.o.nounced the parrot. 'Thr-ree! Hard-a-starboard! Sprout!

Water-r sprout!"

Victor suddenly perked up. "I have an idea," he said.

"What?"

"Word-a.s.sociation test."

"How?"

"Wait! Everybody sit down and be quiet and don't interfere. Roman, do you have a tape recorder?"

"I do."

."Let's have it. But everyone must be quiet. I'll open him up, the rascal. He'll tell me everything."

Victor pulled up a chair, sat down with the recorder in his hand opposite the parrot, puffed himself up, fixed the parrot with one eye, and yelled, "R-rubidium!"

The parrot started and almost fell off the scales. Flapping his wings to regain equilibrium, he responded, "Rreserve! Cr-rater Ritchey!"

We looked at each other, "R-reserve!" yelled Victor.

"Tr-remendous! Riches! R-riches! Ritchey is r-right! Ritchey is r-right! R-robots! R-robots!"

"Robots!"

"Cr-rashes Bur-rning! Atmospher-re bur-rning! Scrram! R-retreat! Scram!

Dr-ramba Retr-reat!"

"Dramba!"

"R-rubidium! R-reserve!"

"Rubidium!"

"R-reserve! Cr-rater! Ritchey!"

"Short circuit," said Roman. "Full circle." "Wait, wait," Victor rattled on. "In a minute-- " "Try something different," counseled Eddie.

"Ja.n.u.s!" said Victor.

The parrot opened its beak and sneezed. "Ja-nus!" Victor repeated sternly. The parrot gazed pensively out of the window. "There's no letter 'R,' " I said.

"Possible," said Victor. "Let's try . . . Nevstr-r-uev!"

"Pr-ressing maneuver!" said the parrot. "Wizar-rd! Wizar-rd! Kr-rib transmitting!"

"That is not a pirate's parrot," said Eddie.

"Ask him about the corpse," I said.

"Corpse," Victor said reluctantly.

"Bur-rial cer-remony! Temporal restriction! Or-ration! Or-ration!

Cr-rap! Work! Work!"

"He must have had some curious owners," said Roman. "What do we do now?"

"Victor," said Eddie, "I think he's using s.p.a.ce terminology. Try something simple, routine."

"Hydrogen bomb," said Victor.

The parrot lowered its head and cleaned its beak with a claw. "Tractor," said Victor.

The parrot remained silent.

"It doesn't work," said Roman.

"Devil take it!" said Victor. "I can't think of a single everyday item with an 'R' in it. Table, stool, ceiling, sofa . . . oh, translator!"

The parrot looked at Victor out of one eye. "Kor-rneev, r-request!"

"What?" asked Victor. For the first time in my life I saw Victor at a loss for words.

"Kor-rneev r-rude! R-rude! Great worker! R-rare rrude! Dr-roll!"

We giggled. Victor looked at us and said vengefully, "Oira-Oira!"

"Elder-ny! Elder-rly!" the parrot responded readily. "Cheer-rful!

R-reaching."

"Something isn't right," said Roman.

"Why not right?" said Victor. "It's very much to the point. . . .

Privalov!"