Toivo scratched his cheek and groaned.

"I don't know what you can do, but I do know that three months without you is horrible."

"And two years without me? When you were on that... whatsitsname..."

"Really! Bringing that up! I was young, I was a fool...I was a Progressor then! Iron man -- muscles, mask, jaw! Listen, why doesn't your Sonya go? She's young and pretty; she can get married there. How about it?"

"Of course Sonya's going with me. Any other ideas?"

"Yes. Let Master go. He started this whole thing, now let him go fix it."

Asya merely looked at him.

"I take it back," Toivo said quickly. "A mistake. An error."

"He's not even allowed to leave Sverdlovsk! He has taste buds! He hasn't left his block in a quarter of a century!"

"I'll keep that in mind." Toivo began berating himself. "Forever. Never again. I blurted it out. Made a gaffe. Let Bruno go."

Asya spent several seconds burning him with an angry stare and then turned back to the window.

"Bruno won't go," she said angrily. "Bruno is going to work on the new bouquet. He wants to capture and standardize it... We'll see about that..."

She gave Toivo a sidelong glance and laughed. "Aha! Got you down! 'Three months... without you.' "

Toivo immediately got up, crossed the room, and sat on the floor at Asya's feet, resting his head on her lap.

"You're due for a vacation," Asya said. "You could hunt there ... It's Pandora, after all! You could go to the Dunes... Look at our plantations ...

You can't imagine what the Pashkovsky plantations are like!"

Toivo was silent, and pressed his cheek harder against her knees. Then she stopped talking, and they were silent for a while, until Asya asked: "Is something going with you?"

"What makes you think that?"

"I don't know. I can see."

Toivo sighed deeply, got up from the floor, and went to the windowsill.

"You are right," he said. "Something's happening."

"What?"

Toivo, squinting, examined the black streaks of clouds cutting across the coppery sunset. The bluish-black cl.u.s.ters of forest on the horizon. The thin black vertical of the thousand-story buildings, standing in blocks. The gigantic dome of the Forum on the left, shimmering copper, and the unrealistically smooth surface of the sea on the right. And the black, creeping swifts, darting from the hanging gardens a block higher and disappearing in the foliage of the hanging gardens a block lower.

"What's happening?" Asya asked.

"You are amazingly beautiful," Toivo said. "You have sable eyebrows. I don't know exactly what those words mean, but they were used for someone very beautiful. You. You're not even beautiful, you're gorgeous. Sweet to look at. And your concerns are sweet. And your world is sweet. Even yew Bruno is sweet, if you think about it... And the world is fine, if your must know... 'The world is fine, a pretty flower/Happiness for five hearts all in power/For nine kidneys/and four livers...' I don't know what that poem is.

But it floated up in my memory, and I wanted to read it to you... Here's what I have to tell you. Remember this! It's quite possible that I'll fly out to join you on Pandora soon. Because his patience will burst any minute, and he will send me off on vacation. Or just send me old for good. That's what I read in his nut-brown eyes. As clear as on a monitor. And now let's have some tea."

Asya stared at him.

"It's not working?" she asked.

Toivo avoided her eyes and shrugged his shoulders vaguely.

"Because from the very beginning, you were operating on the wrong theory," Asya said hotly. "Because you set up the problem incorrectly. You can't set up a problem so that no result satisfies you. Your hypothesis was flawed to begin with -- remember, I told you that. If the Wanderers really were discovered, would that make you happy? And now you're beginning to realize that they don't exist, and you're not happy either. You were wrong, you expressed the wrong hypothesis, feel as if you're losing, when actually you haven't lost anything."

I've never argued with you." Toivo said meekly. "It's all my fault, that's my fate."

"You see, now he's disillusioned in that idea of yours, too. Of course I know he won't fire you; you're just blabbering. He like you and appreciates you, and everyone knows that... But really, you can't waste all these years -- and for what, really? After all, you two don't have anything but the naked idea. No one's arguing. The idea is rather curious, it can tickle the nerves of anyone at all; but it's nothing more! Basically, it's simply the inversion of a longtime custom of humanity... it's just Progressorism in reverse, and nothing more... If we intervene in someone's history, then someone could intervene in ours... Wait, listen to me! First of all, you two forget that not every inversion is expressed in reality.

Grammar is one thing, and reality is another. So at first it seemed interesting, and now it seems simply... well, indecent, I guess... Do you know what one big shot said to me yesterday? He said, "We're not COMCONites, you know', those COMCONites are enviable. When they come up against a truly serious mystery, they quickly attribute it to the work of the Wanderers, and they're done!"

"Who said that, I wonder'!" Toivo asked grimly.

"What difference does it make! Now our fermenters are rebelling. Why should we seek the causes? It's perfectly clear its the work of the Wanderers! The b.l.o.o.d.y hand of a supercivilization! Don't get mad, please.

Don't get mad! You don't like jokes like that, but you almost never hear them. But I hear them all the time. You don't know how much trouble I get just from the Sikorski Syndrome alone... And it's not even a joke. It's a sentence, my dear people! It's a diagnosis!"

Toivo had gotten himself under control.

"Well, actually, the yeast is a thought," he said. "It's an unexplained event! Why didn't you report it?" he demanded severely. "Don't you know the regulations? I'm calling Master on the carpet!"

"It's all a joke to you," Asya said angrily. "Everybody's joking around here!"

"And that's fine!" Toivo said. "You should be happy. When it really starts, you won't feel like joking."

Asya struck her fist on her knee.

"Oh, G.o.d! What are you pretending for? You don't feel like joking, you don't have time for joking, and that's what irritates people about you COMCONites. You've built this grim, gloomy world around you, a world of threats, fear, and suspicion... Why? Where did you get it? Where did that cosmic misanthropy come from?"

Toivo said nothing.

"Maybe it's because all your unexplained events are tragedies? But all UEs are tragedies! Whether they're mysterious or ordinary, they're UEs!

Right?"

"Wrong," Toivo said.

"What, are there happy Ues?"

"Sometimes."

"For instance?" Asya demanded, filling with venom.

"Let's have some tea instead," Toivo suggested.

"Oh no, you please give me an example of a happy, joyous, life-affirming UE."

"All right," Toivo said. "But then we'll have tea. Is it a deal?"

"The h.e.l.l with you," Asya said.

They were silent. Below, through the thick foliage of the gardens, through the silvery blue twilight, multicolored lights went on. And the black columns of the thousand-story buildings were covered with the sparks of lights.

"Do you know the name Guzhon?" Toivo asked.

"Naturally."

"And Soddi?"

"Of course!"

"What, in your opinion, makes these people special?"

"'My opinion!' It's not my opinion. Everyone knows that Guzhon is a marvelous composer and Soddi a great confessor... And in your opinion?"

"In my opinion, they are special for a completely different reason,"

Toivo said. "Albert Guzhon, until he was fifty, was an ordinary -- but no more than that -- agrophysicist without any talent for music. And Bartholomew Soddi studied shadow functions for forty years and was a pedantic, unsociable man. That's what makes these people special, in my opinion."

"What are you trying to say? You found intervention in that? People with hidden talents worked long and hard... and then quant.i.ty turned into quality..."

"There wasn't any quant.i.ty, Asya, that's the point: Only the quality changed suddenly. Radically. In an hour. Like an explosion."

Asya was silent, chewing her lip, and then asked sarcastically, but uncertainly: "So in your opinion, the Wanderers inspired them, right?"

"I didn't say that. You asked me to cite examples of happy, life-affirming UEs. There you are. I can list another dozen names -- not as famous, though."

"All right. But why are you dealing with this? What business is it of yours, really?"

"We deal with any unexplained events."

"That's what I'm asking: what was unexplained or extraordinary about them?"

"Within the parameters of current concepts, they are inexplicable."

"Well, lots of things are inexplicable in the world!" Asya cried.

"Reeders are inexplicable; we're just used to them."

"We don't consider things we're used to as unexplained events, Asya We deal with incidents, events. Something hasn't happened ever in a thousand years, and then it happens. Why did it happen? Unclear. How can it be explained! Specialists are confounded. Then we take note of it. See, Asya, you're not cla.s.sifying UEs the right way. We don't divide them into happy and tragic ones, we divide them into explicable and inexplicable ones."

"Well, do you think that any inexplicable event carries a threat?"

"Yes. Including happy ones."

"What threat can there be in the unexplained transformation of a run-of-the-mill agrophysicist into a genius musician?"

"I didn't express myself accurately enough. The threat isn't in the event. The most mysterious events, as a rule, are the most harmless.

Sometimes even funny. The cause of the event may be the threat. The mechanism that gave rise to the event You can put the question this way: why did someone need to turn an agrophysicist into a musician?"

"Maybe it's just a statistical fluctuation!"

"Maybe. That's the point, that we don't know... Incidentally, note where you have arrived. Tell me, please, why is your explanation any better than ours? Statistical fluctuation, by definition unpredictable and uncontrollable, or the Wanderers, who of course are no bowl of cherries, but who at least in principle can be caught red-handed. Of course, 'statistical fluctuation' sounds much more solid, scientific, objective -- not those corny, cheap-romantic, ba.n.a.lly legendary --"

"Wait, don't be spiteful, please," Asya said. "No one is denying your Wanderers. That's not what I'm talking about. You've confused me... you always get me off the track! Both me and your Maxim, and then you go around with your nose drooping, and want to be consoled... Yes, here's what I wanted to say. All right, let's a.s.sume that the Wanderers are interfering in our lives. That's nor the issue. Why is it bad? That's what I'm asking! Why are you turning them into bugbears? That's what I can't understand! And no one can understand... Why, when you were changing the course of history in other worlds that was all right, but when someone wants to change your history... Today, every child knows that super-reason is always good!"

"Super-reason is supergood," Toivo said.

"Well, all the more, then!"

"No," Toivo said. "Not all the more. We know what good is, though not very firmly. But as for supergood --"

Asya struck her knees with her fists again.

"I don't understand! I can't understand this! Where do you get all this presumption of a threat? Tell me. Explain it!"

"None of you understands the premise here," Toivo said, angry now. "No one thinks that the Wanderers are planning to do evil to earthlings. That is really very unlikely. We're afraid of something else altogether. We're afraid that they'll start doing good here, as they understand it!"

"Good is always good!" Asya said.

"You know perfectly well that that isn't so. Or maybe you really don't know? But I've explained it to you. I was a Progressor for only three years; I brought good, only good, nothing but good, and Lord,! how they hated me, those people! And they were right. Because the G.o.ds had come without asking permission. No one had called them in, and there they were, doing good. The good that is always good. And they were doing it secretly, because they know that mortals would not understand their aims, and if they did understand them, they wouldn't accept them... That's the moral and ethical structure of that d.a.m.n situation! A feudal slave in Arkanara could not understand what communism is, while a smart bourgeois three hundred years later would understand and recoil from communism in horror... Those are the ABCs, which we however don't know how to apply to ourselves. Why? Because we can't imagine what the Wanderers could have in mind for us. The a.n.a.logy doesn't work! But I do know two things. They came without an invitation -- that's one. And they are certain that we will either not understand or not accept their goals -- that's two. And I don't know about you, but I don't want that I do not! That's it!" he said with determination. "Enough. I'm a tired, unkind, careworn man who has shouldered a burden of indescribable responsibility. I have the Sikorski Syndrome, I'm a psychopath and a paranoid. I don't love anyone; I'm a monster, a martyr, a monoman; I have to be cuddled and soothed... You have to tiptoe around me, kiss my shoulder, cajole me with jokes... and tea. My G.o.d, aren't I going to get any tea around here today at all?"

Without a word, Asya jumped up and went off to make tea. Toivo lay down on the couch. Through the window, just on the threshold of hearing, came the buzz of some exotic musical instrument. An enormous b.u.t.terfly flew in, circled the table, and settled on the visor screen, spreading its patterned black wings. Toivo, without get ting up, started to reach for the service console, but didn't reach it and dropped his hand.

Asya came in with a tray, poured tea into the gla.s.ses, and sat down next to him.

"Look," Toivo whispered, indicating the b.u.t.terfly with his eyes.

"How beautiful," Asya replied, in a whisper, too.

"Maybe it'll want to live with us here?"

"No, it won't."

"Why not? Remember, the Kazaryans had a dragonfly --"

"It didn't live with them. It just visited --"

"So this one can visit, too. We'll call her Martha."

"Why Martha?"

"What else?"