I was getting hungry, and it was time to go to the post office, where my friends might be waiting for me even then. I locked the car and went out the gate. I was unhurriedly sauntering down Lukomoriye Street, hands in the pockets of my gray GDR jacket, looking down at my feet. In the back pocket of my favorite jeans, crisscrossed with zippers, jingled the crone's coppers. I was reflecting. The skinny brochures of the "Znanie" society had accustomed me to the concept that animals were incapable of speech. Fairy tales from childhood, on the other hand, had insisted on the opposite. Of course, I agreed with the brochures, since never in my life had I seen talking animals. Not even parrots. I used to know one parrot who could growl like a tiger, but human-talk he could not do. And now-- the pike, the tomcat Basil, and even the mirror. Incidentally, it is precisely the inanimate objects that speak the most often. And, by the way, it's this last consideration which would never enter the head of my great granddaddy. In his ancestral viewpoint, a talking cat would be a much less fantastic item than a polished wood box, which howls, whistles, plays music, and talks in several languages. As far as the cat goes, it's more or less clear. But how about the pike? A pike does not have lungs. That's a fact. True, they do have an air ballast bladder whose function as far as I know is not entirely understood by icthyologists. My icthyologist acquaintance, Gene Skoromahov, postulates that it is truly totally unclear, and when I attempt to reason about it with arguments from the "Znanie" brochures, old Gene growls and spits in contempt. His rightful gift of human speech seems to desert him completely.

I have this impression that as yet we know very little about the potential of animals. Only recently it became clear that fish and sea animals exchange signals under water. Very interesting pieces are written about dolphins. Or, let's take the ape Raphael. This I saw for myself. True, it cannot speak, but instead it has this developed reflex: green light-- banana; red light-- electric shock. Everything was just fine until they turned on the red and green lights simultaneously. Then Raphael began to conduct himself just like, for instance, old Gene. He was terribly upset. He threw himself at the window behind which the experimenter was seated, and took to spitting at it, growling and squealing hideously. And then there is the story-- "Do you know what a conditioned reflex is? That's what happens when the bell rings and all these quasi-apes in white coats will run toward us with bananas and candies,"-- which one ape tells the other.

Naturally, all of this is not that simple. The terminology has not been worked out. Under the circ.u.mstances, any attempt to resolve the questions involving the potential and psychology of animals leaves you feeling totally helpless. But, on the other hand, when you have to solve, say, a system of integral equations of the type used in stellar statistics, with unknown functions under the integral, you don't feel any better. That's why the best thing is to-- cogitate. As per Pascal: "Let us learn to think well-- that is the basic principle of morality."

I came out on the Prospect of Peace and stopped, arrested by an unusual sight. Marching in the middle of the pavement was a man with flags in his hands. About ten paces behind him, engine revving and laboring, a huge white truck was drawing a gigantic cistern-like silvery trailer, from which issued wisps of smoke. Fire Danger was written all over the cistern, and busy little fire engines, bristling with fire extinguishers, were rolling along, keeping pace on its right and left. From time to time, mixing in with the steady roar of the engine, a different sound issued forth, somehow chilling the heart with a strange malaise. Simultaneously yellow tongues of flame spurted out of the cistern's ports. The faces of the firemen, hats pushed low on their ears, were stern and manly. Swarms of children swirled around the cavalcade, yelling piercingly, "Ti-li-lee ti-li-lay, they're caning the dragon away." Adult pa.s.sersby fearfully hugged the fences. Their faces clearly depicted a desire to save their clothing from possible damage.

"There they go with dear Unc," a familiar raspy ba.s.s p.r.o.nounced in my ear.

I turned around. Behind me, looking miserable, stood Naina Kievna witha shopping bag full of blue packets of granulated sugar.

"Trucking him off," she repeated. "Every Friday they take him."

"Where to?" I asked.

"To the test pad, old friend. They keep experimenting. Nothing else to do!"

"And whom are they taking, Naina Kievna?"

"What do you mean-- whom? Can't you see for yourself?"

She turned and strode off, but I caught up with her.

"Naina Kievna, there was a telephonogram for you."

"From whom would that be?"

"From H.M. Viy."

"What about?"

"You are having some kind of fly-in today," I said, looking at her hard. "On Bald Mountain. Dress-- formal."

The old woman was obviously pleased.

"Really?" she said. "Isn't that nice! Where is the telephonogram?"

"In the entry, by the phone."

"Anything about membership dues in it?" she asked, lowering her voice.

"In what sense?"

"Well, you know, such as, 'You are requested to settle your arrears from seventeen hundred . . .'" She grew quiet.

"No," said I. "Nothing like that was mentioned."

"Well enough. And how about transportation? Will there be a car to pick me up?"

"Let me carry your bags," I offered.

She sprang back.

"What do you have in mind?" she asked suspiciously.

"You cut that out-- I don't like it. The bag he wants! Starting in young, aren't you?"

No way do I like old crones, I thought.

"So how is it with transportation?" she repeated.

"At your own expense," I gloated.

"Oh, the skinflints!" moaned she. "They took the broom for the museum, the mortar is in the shop, contributions are levied by the five-ruble bill, but to Bald Mountain-- at your expense, please! The meter won't read low, my good fellow, and then he has to wait. . .

Muttering and coughing, she turned from me and walked away. I rubbed my hands and went off in my own direction. My suppositions were being borne out. The skein of wondrous events was getting tighter. And, shame to admit, but this seemed a lot more fascinating at the moment than, say, even the modeling of a reflex process.

The Prospect of Peace was now deserted. A gang of kids were loitering at the cross street, apparently playing tip-cat. Catching sight of me, they quit the game and took off in my direction. Sensing unfavorable developments, I pa.s.sed them quickly and bore off toward downtown. Behind my back a stifled and excited voice exclaimed, "Stilyaga." I quickened pace.

"Stilyaga," bawled several at once. I was almost running, pursued by yells of, "Stilya-aga! Spindle-legs! Papa's Pobeda-driver... Pa.s.sersby were looking at me with compa.s.sion.

In such eventualities, it's best to dive into some refuge. I dived into the nearest door, which turned out to be a food store. I walked up and down the counters, a.s.sured myself that there was plenty of sugar, and found the choice of sausages and candies rather limited, which was amply compensated by the variety of fish products surpa.s.sing all expectations. Such appetizing and variegated salmon! I had a gla.s.s of soda water, and scanned the street.

The kids were gone. Thereupon I left the store and continued my journey.

Presently the grain stores and log-cabin fortresses came to an end and were replaced by modern two-storied houses, interspersed with small parks.

In the parks, small children were running about, old women were knittingwarm things, and old men were playing dominoes as if for keeps. A s.p.a.cious square turned up in the center of town, surrounded with two- and three-story buildings. It was paved with asphalt, punctuated in the center by the greenery of a garden. Above it rose a large red poster t.i.tled Honor RoIl and several smaller posters with plotted curves and diagrams. I discovered the post office right there, in the square. The fellows and I had agreed that the first one to get to the town would leave a note with his coordinates in general delivery. There was no note, and I left a letter with my address and instructions on how to find the cottage on hen's legs. Next I decided to have breakfast Circling the square, I found a cinema playing Kozara; a bookstore, closed for inventory; the town hall with several dusty cars in front; the Hotel Frigid Sea, without vacancies as per usual; two kiosks with soda and ice cream; one general goods store, No. 2; an agricultural goods store, No.

18; dining room No. 11, which opened at noon; and a buffet, No. 3, closed without explanation. Next I observed the town police station and had a chat in its open doorway with a very young policeman about the location of the gas pump and the state of the road to Lezhnev.

"But where is your car?" inquired the policeman, looking around the square.

"Over with some people I know," I replied.

"Aha, with acquaintances . . ." he said meaningfully. I felt he took note of me. Timidly I bowed off.

Next to the three-storied building of the local fisheries co-op, I finally located a small, clean tearoom, No. 16/27. It was a pleasant sort of place. There weren't too many customers, but those were indeed drinking tea, talking about simple and comprehensible things such as that over by Korobetz the little bridge had finally fallen in and one had to ford the stream; that it was a week since they had removed the Main Motor Vehicle Inspection Station at the fifteen-kilometer milepost and that, "The spark is a beast-- it will knock an elephant down-- but won't do its job worth a d.a.m.n." There was a smell of gasoline and fried fish. Those who were not involved in conversation were eyeing my jeans, and I was happy to recall that on my rear there was a highly professional spot-- the day before yesterday I had sat down most propitiously on my grease gun.

I took a full plate of fried fish, three gla.s.ses of tea, three sandwiches, paid up with a heap of the coppers from my crone friend ("Been out begging on the church steps." muttered the cashier), and settled in a cozy corner and proceeded to eat, enjoying the sight of those hoa.r.s.e-voiced, heavy-smoking types. It was a pleasure to take in their sunburned, wiry, independent countenances with that I've-seen-it-all look, and watch how they ate with appet.i.te, smoked with appet.i.te, and talked with appet.i.te. They were making use of their free time to the last second before the long hours on a b.u.mpy, tiresome, dusty road in their hot and stuffy cabs under a hot sun. If I weren't a programmer, I would surely become a driver, and, of course, of no light-weight truck or even a bus, but of some freight monster with a ladder to the cab and a small crane for changing a wheel.

The neighboring table was occupied by a pair of young men who didn't look like drivers, and for this reason I didn't pay them any heed at first.

Just as they didn't notice me, either. But as I was finishing my second gla.s.s of tea, the word "sofa" floated into my consciousness. Then, one of them said, ". . . In that case it doesn't make sense to have the hen's-legs cottage at all," so I began to listen. To my regret, they spoke quietly, and I had my back to them, so I couldn't hear too well. But the voices seemed familiar.

"no thesis. . . the sofa only. . ."

"..... to such a hairy one . . ."

"...sofa . . . the sixteenth stage . ."

".....with only fourteen stages in transvection..."

"...it's easier to model a translator. ." "...does it matter who's t.i.ttering!"

"... I'll make a gift of a razor..."

"...we can't do without the sofa. .."

At this point, one of them began to clear his throat, and in such a familiar way that I a.s.sociated it instantly with last night and I turned around, but they were already on their way to the exit-- two big men with square shoulders and strong, athletic necks. For some time, I could see them through the window as they crossed the square, circ.u.mnavigated the garden, and disappeared behind the diagrams. I finished my tea and sandwiches and also went out. There you have it. The mermaid didn't excite them. The talking cat did not intrigue them. But they couldn't do without the sofa. .

. . I tried to remember what that sofa looked like, but nothing unusual came to mind. A proper sofa. A good sofa. Comfortable. Except when one slept on it, one dreamed of a strange reality.

It would have been good to return home at that point and get into all those sofa affairs in earnest. To experiment a bit with the shape-shifter book and have a heart-to-heart talk with Basil the tomcat and poke around the hen's-legs cottage to see if there were other interesting things in it.

But the car was also waiting there for me, which necessitated both a DC and a TS. I could put up with DC-- it was only the Daily Care, calling for the shaking out of floor mats and the washing of the body with a stream of water under pressure, which washing, incidentally, could, in case of necessity, be performed by the subst.i.tute method of ablution with a watering can or a pail. But the TS . . . that was a frightening concept for a neat person on a hot day. Because TS was none other than Technical Service, which technical service consisted of my lying under the car with the grease gun and gradually transferring its contents to the grease fittings and equally well to my person. It's hot and stuffy under a car and its undercarriage is covered with a thick layer of dried mud. . . . In short, I was not very anxious to go home.

Chapter 4.

Who has permitted himself this diabolical jest?

Seize him, and tear off his mask so that we may know whom we shall hang this morning from the castle wall.

E. Poe I bought a two-day-old Pravda, drank a gla.s.s of soda water, and settled down on a bench in the park, in the shade of the Honor Roll. It was eleven o'clock. I looked through the paper carefully. This took seven minutes. Then I read the article about hydroponics, the feature about the doings in Kansk, and a long letter to the editor from the workers of a chemical plant. This took altogether twenty-two minutes.

Perhaps I should visit the cinema, I thought. But I had already seen Kozara, once in the theater and once on television. So I decided to have something to drink, folded the paper, and stood up. Of all the copper collection from the old hag, there remained only a single five-kopeck piece.

Finish it up, I decided; had a gla.s.s of soda with syrup, got a kopeck back, and bought a box of matches in the adjoining stall. There was nothing else to do downtown. So I started off at random-- into a narrow street between store No. 2 and dining room No. 11.

There were almost no pedestrians. A huge dusty truck with a rattling trailer pa.s.sed by. The driver, head and elbow stuck out of the window, was tiredly scanning the Belgian block pavement. Descending, the street turned sharply to the right, where the barrel of an ancient cast-iron cannon, frill of b.u.t.ts and dirt, was stuck in the ground. Soon the street ended at thecliff by the river. I sat a while on the edge admiring the landscape, then crossed over to the other side and strolled back to the center of town.

Curious, where did the truck go? I thought suddenly. There was no way down the cliff. I started looking around, searching for a gate, and then discovered a small but very strange-looking building squeezed in between grim brick warehouses. The windows of the lower story were set with iron bars, and the bottom halves were painted white. As to doors, there weren't any. I noticed this at once because the usual sign, which is normally placed next to the gates, was here hung between two windows. It read: Academy of Sciences, U.S.S.R., Srits. I went back to the middle of the street. Sure enough-- two stories with ten windows apiece and not a single door.

Warehouses to the right and left. Srits, thought I. Scientific Research Inst.i.tute of TS. Meaning what-- Technology of Security, Terrestrial Seismology? The cottage on hen's legs, it occurred to me, is a museum of this SR1TS. My hitchhikers are probably also from here. Also those two in the tearoom. ... A flock of crows took off from the roof of the house and began circling about, cawing loudly. I turned around and started back toward the square.

We are all naive materialists, I thought, and also rationalists. We demand that everything should be explained immediately in rationalist terms; that is, reduced to fit in with the handful of known facts. No one applies a penny's worth of dialectics. It enters n.o.body's head that between the known data and some new phenomena, there could be an ocean of unknowns, and so we declare the new phenomenon to be supernatural and therefore impossible. Say, for instance, the way Maitre Montesquieu would take the message about the resuscitation of a dead man forty-five minutes after his heart stopped beating. With a bayonet counterattack, that's how he would take it. Toss it on pikes, so to speak. He would no doubt dub it obscurantism and clericalism. That is, if he would not just wave such a datum away. If it happened right in front of his own eyes, he would be placed in an extremely difficult position. Such as my own at the moment, except that I was more accustomed to it. But for him, it would be necessary either to consider it a fraud, or to disbelieve his senses or even to renounce materialism. Most likely he would opt for fraud. Nevertheless, to the end of his days the memory of this adroit trick would irritate his thinking, like a mote in the eye. . . . But we, we are the children of a different age. We have seen a lot: the live head of a dog sewn to the body of another; the artificial kidney as big as a closet; the iron hand operated by the nerve signals from a live one; the people who can say, casually, "This was after I had died for the first time.."

Yes, in our times Montesquieu would have had a poor chance of remaining a materialist. Nonetheless we remain materialists and there is no harm done!

True enough, this can get to be difficult sometimes when a chance wind, blowing across the ocean of the unknown, will carry our way some strange petals from unexplored continents. Most often it happens when one finds that which one was not looking for. Soon enough there will appear new and amazing animals from Mars or Venus in our zoos. Of course, we will be ogling them and slapping our sides, but we have been waiting for them a long time, and we are prepared for their appearance. We would be much more astounded and disappointed if there would not be any such animal or if they would be like our cats and dogs. As a rule, science, in which we have faith (and often, blind faith), prepares us well in advance for the coming miracles, so that a psychic shock occurs in us only when we collide with something unpredicted-- some hole into a fourth dimension, or biological radio communication, or a living planet. . . . Or, say, a cottage on hen's legs. Anyway, that hawk-nosed Roman was right with a vengeance; it's very, very, and very fascinating here with them.

I came out on the square and stopped by the soft-drink kiosk. Iremembered that I didn't have any change and that I would have to break a bill. I was formulating an ingratiating smile, knowing full well that the girls who sold the drinks couldn't stand changing bills, when I felt a fivekopeck piece in my jeans pocket. I was both astonished and delighted, but more the latter. I drank up my soda water with fruit syrup, accepted a wet kopeck in change, and chatted with the girl about the weather. Next I set out homeward with great determination so as to finish with the DC and the TS and be free to continue with my dialectic and rationalistic explanations. I shoved the kopeck down into my pocket and stopped, discovering that there was another five-kopeck piece already in it. I took it out and studied it. It was somewhat damp and on it was stamped 5 kopecks, 1961, and the numeral 6 was marred with a small gouge. It may be that even then I would not have paid this little incident any attention, except for that instant feeling, with which I was already familiar, that I was simultaneously standing in the Prospect of Peace and sitting on the sofa looking at the wardrobe. And just as before the feeling disappeared when I shook my head.

For a while I kept on walking slowly, absentmindedly tossing the piece (it kept landing heads-up in my palm) and attempting to focus my thoughts.

Then I saw the food store where I had fled from the kids in the morning, and entered. Holding the coin between two fingers, I went up to the counter and drank, this time without any pleasure at all, a gla.s.s of plain seltzer.

Next, gripping the change in my hand, I went aside and checked the pocket.

It was one of those cases where there was no psychic shock. More likely I would have been surprised if the piece had not been in my pocket. But it was-- damp, 1961, and with a gouge in the numeral 6. Someone b.u.mped into me and inquired as to whether I was taking a nap. Apparently I was standing in the line for the cashier. I said I wasn't and punched a ticket for three boxes of matches. Standing in line for the matches, I verified that the piece was back again in my pocket. I was absolutely calm. Having received my three boxes of matches, I returned to the square and proceeded to experiment.

The experiment took about an hour. During this hour, I circ.u.mnavigated the square ten times, swelled up from the seltzer, acc.u.mulated match boles and newspapers, got acquainted with all the clerks, male and female, and arrived at a series of interesting conclusions. The five-kopeck piece came back if you paid with it. If you just simply threw it away, or dropped it, it stayed where it fell. The coin returned to pocket at the moment when the change moved from the hands of the seller to the hands of the buyer. If you kept your hand in one pocket, it appeared in the other. It never appeared in a zippered pocket. If you kept a hand in each pocket, and accepted the change with your elbow, the coin appeared anywhere on your body. (In my case, it turned up in my shoe.) The disappearance of the piece from the saucer with the coppers cannot be observed: it is immediately lost to sight in the pile of other coppers, and no motion of any kind takes place in the instant of the transfer to the pocket.

And so, we were faced with a so-called unspendable five-kopeck piece in the process of its functioning. In itself the fact of the unspendability did not interest me. My imagination was primarily overwhelmed by the possibility of an extra-dimensional transference of a material object. It was abundantly clear that the mysterious move of the coin from seller to buyer represented none other than a special case of the legendary matter transmission, so well known to the friends of science-fiction under the pseudonyms of hyper transposition, similarization, Tarantog's phenomenon. . . . The unfolding perspectives were overpowering.

I didn't have any instruments. An ordinary minimum-recording lab thermometer could tell a lot, but I didn't even have that. I was forced to limit myself to purely visual subjective observations. I started my last tour of the square, with the following self-a.s.signed task: "Having placed the coin next to the change saucer, and impeding to the maximum possibleextent the cashier's mixing it with the rest of the coins before pa.s.sing the change, to trace visually the process of transference in s.p.a.ce, attempting simultaneously to determine, even qualitatively, the change in the temperature of the air near the presumed Trajectory of Transit" However, the experiment was cut short right at the start.

When I approached Manya, my first seller, I was already expected by the same young police sergeant whom I had met before.

"So," he said in a professional tone.

I looked at him searchingly, with a premonition of disaster.

"May I see your papers, citizen," he said, saluting and looking past me.

"What's the problem?" I asked, taking out my pa.s.sport.

"And I'll be asking you for the coin, too," said the policeman, accepting the pa.s.sport.

I handed him the five-kopeck piece in silence. Manya was regarding me with accusing eyes. The policeman studied the coin and, stating with satisfaction, "Aha," opened the pa.s.sport. He studied that pa.s.sport like a bibliophile would study a rare incunabulum. I waited, mortified. A crowd grew slowly around us. Various opinions about me were expressed by its members.

"We'll have to take a walk," the policeman finally said.

We took a walk. While we walked, several variants on my unsavory biography were created in the accompanying crowd, and a series of antecedents was formulated for the court case that was initiated right in front of everybody's eyes.

In the station house, the policeman handed the pa.s.sport and the five-kopeck piece to the lieutenant on duty. He examined the coin and offered me a chair. I sat down. The lieutenant said disdainfully, "Hand in the change," and also immersed himself in the study of my pa.s.sport. I shoveled out the coppers. "Count them, Kovalev," said the lieutenant and looked at me steadily.

"Bought much?" he asked.

"A lot," I answered.

"Hand it in, too," said the lieutenant.

I laid out four issues of two-day-old Pravdas, three issues of the local Fisherman, two issues of the Literary Gazette, eight boxes of matches, six pieces of Golden Key toffee, and a marked-down wire brush for cleaning kerosine stoves.

"I can't hand in the drinks," I said dryly. "Five gla.s.ses with syrup and four without syrup."

I was beginning to comprehend what was involved, and I was extremely nauseated and discomfited at the idea that it would be necessary to find excuses for myself.

"Seventy-four kopecks, comrade Lieutenant," reported the youthful Kovalev.

The lieutenant pensively regarded the pile of newspapers and match boxes.