“Hey! Stop! Don’t be a jackass!”
“Easier said than done….” muttered the jackass, and rambled on.
The man in the raincoat noticed Krivoshein, turned to him, and stared.
“God, what a bumbling amateur detective!” Krivoshein thought to himself. “None of this watching my reflection in store windows or hiding behind a newspaper — he’s pushing his way toward me like a preneanderthal on a county bus! Don’t they train these guys? They should at least read comic books to improve their technique. A guy like this is really going to solve a crime, hah!”
He was angry. He walked right up to the man.
“Listen, don’t you ever get relieved? Doesn’t the seven — hour workday law apply to detectives?”
The man raised his eyebrows quizzically.
“Val….” he said in a soft baritone. “Val, don’t you recognize me?”
“Hm….” Krivoshein blinked, stared, and whistled. “I see… you must be the double Adam — Hercules? So that’s it! And I thought….”
“And then, you’re not Krivoshein? I mean, you are Krivoshein, but the Moscow one?”
“Right. Well, hello… hello Val — Adam, you lost soul!”
“Hello.”
They shook hands. Krivoshein examined Adam’s wind — burned, tanned face: the features were coarse, but handsome. “Val did a good job, just look at him!” But the light eyes behind the bleached lashes hid a certain temerity.
“There’s going to be an awful lot of Valentin Vasilyevich Krivosheins around here.”
“You can call me Adam. I think I’ll adopt the name.”
“Where have you been, Adam?”
“In Vladivostok. God….”He chuckled, as though not sure whether he had the right to joke or not. “In Vladivostok and its environs.”
“Really? Teriffic!” Krivoshein looked at him enviously. “Did you work on the ships?”
“Not quite. I blew up underwater cliffs. And now I’m back to work here.”
“And you’re not scared?”
Adam looked into Krivoshein’s eyes.
“I’m scared, but… you see, I have an idea. Instead of synthesizing artificial people I want to try to transform regular ones in the computer — womb. Well… you know, put them in the liquid and act on them with external information. I guess that’s possible, no?”
Adam was too diffident, he knew he was, and was sorry that he put the idea so clumsily.
“It’s a good idea,” the student said. He looked at Adam with new interest. “I guess we’re not that different,” he thought. “Or is it just the internal logic of the discovery?” He went on. “But it’s been done, Val. They put various parts of their bodies into our native element. I think they’ve even gotten in completely.”
“Is it working?”
“It’s working… only I’m not sure about the last experiment.”
“That’s marvelous! You see… then… then we can introduce art information into man with retrieval on a feedback basis.” And Adam, still shy and confused, told Krivoshein his plan for ennobling man through art.
The student understood.
He quoted from Krivoshein’s diary: “We have to base our work on the fact that man strives for the best, that no one, or almost no one, consciously wants to perform vile or stupid deeds, that such deeds are a result of misunderstanding. Things are complicated in life; you can’t figure out right away whether you’re behaving the right way or not. I know that from my own experience. And if you give a person clear information that his psychology can respond to — about what’s good, what’s bad, what’s stupid — and a clear understanding that any of his vile or stupid acts will eventually turn against him, then you don’t have to worry about him or his behavior. This information could be introduced into the computer — womb as well — “
“He’s done that, too?” Adam was surprised.
“No. There was only a vague idea that it was necessary. That the rest would be meaningless without it. So your idea is right on the mark. It fills in the blank, as we say in academic circles. Listen!” Krivoshein suddenly realized. “And with an idea like that you walked around, following me like a detective instead of just hailing me or coming up to the apartment?”
“You see,” Adam tried to explain, “I thought that you… were him. You walked right past me, didn’t recognize me, didn’t acknowledge me. I thought you — or rather he — didn’t want to see me. We parted unpleasantly….” He lowered his head.
“Yes…. Have you been to the lab?”
“The lab? But I don’t have a pass. And my papers are Krivoshein’s, they know them there.”
“How about over the fence?”
“Over the fence?” Adam shrugged in embarrassment. The idea hadn’t occurred to him.
“The man develops the most audacious, daring ideas but in real life… my God!” Krivoshein shook his head in disapproval and tried to explain: “You have to get rid of that lousy temerity before life, before people or we’ll be lost. And the work will be lost. Well, all right.” He handed him the keys. “Go make yourself at home and get some rest. You’ve been hanging around all night; you need it!
“Where is… he?”
“That’s what I’d like to know: where he is, and what happened to him.” The student looked worried. “I’ll try to clear all that up. I’ll see you later. So long.” He smiled. “It’s really terriffic that you came.”
“No, a person can’t be thrown off the track that easily!” Krivoshein thought as he headed for the institute. “A great project, a major idea can subjugate anything, can make you forget insults and personal goals, and imperfections. Man strives for the best: he’s absolutely right!”
Overcrowded morning buses rushed past him. The student noticed Lena in one of the them: she was sitting by the window and staring abstractly into space. “Ah, Lena, Lena, how could you?” Reading the diary had a tremendous effect on him: he felt that he had spent that year in Dneprovsk. Now he was simply Krivoshein and his heart contracted with the memory of the pain that that woman had caused him (yes, him!).
I know what our research is leading up to, there’s no point in kidding ourselves: I have to get into the tank. Kravets and I are performing minor educational experiments with our extremities. I even used the liquid circuit to fix up my knee tendons, torn so long ago, and now I don’t limp. All this represents marvels in medicine, but we’re aiming for something bigger — the transformation of an entire person! We can’t putter around here, or we’ll spend another twenty years around the tank. And I’m the one who has to go in, an ordinary, natural person. There’s nothing more for Kravets to do in the tank.
Actually, I’ll be testing myself, not the computer — womb. All our knowledge and usage of the word “good” isn’t worth a thing if man won’t have the will power and determination to undergo informational transformation in the liquid.
Of course, I won’t come out of the bath transformed. First of all, we don’t have the necessary information to make substantial changes in the organism or intellect; and secondly, we don’t need that for a beginning. It’s enough to experience being plugged into the computer — womb, to prove that it’s possible and not dangerous — and, well, to change something in me. Make that first orbit around the earth, so to speak.
Is it possible? Is it dangerous? Will I return from the orbiting capsule, from the experiments? The computer — womb is a complicated thing. We’ve discovered so many new things in it, and we still don’t know everything about it. I’m not too comfortable with the shining prospects of our research.
This is the very time I should get married. The hell with my careful relations with Lena; I need her. I want her to be with me, take care of me, worry about me, yell at me when I come home late, but give me dinner first. And (since everything is clear with the synthesis of doubles) let future Krivosheins appear not from the computer but as a result of good, highly moral relations between parents. And let them complicate our lives — I’m for it. I’m getting married! Why didn’t I think of it before?
Of course, to get married now when we’re about to do this experiment… well, at least there’ll be a permanent reminder of me — a son or daughter. People used to go to war, leaving wives and children behind. Why can’t I behave in the same way?
This may not be on the up and up — getting married when there is a possibility of leaving a widow behind me. But let those who have done what I’m doing condemn me. I’ll accept it from them.
May 12. “Marry me, Lena. Let’s live together. And we’ll have children as beautiful as you and as smart as me. Hummmm?”
“Do you really think you’re smart?”
“Why not?”
“If you were smart you wouldn’t make suggestions like that.”
“I don’t understand.”
“There, you see. And you think you’ll have smart children.”
“No, tell me. What’s wrong? Why won’t you marry me?
She stuck the last pin into her hair and turned from the mirror to me.
“I love it when you pout. Darling Val! My lovely red — haired bear. You mean you’ve developed some honorable intentions? You sweetie!”
“Wait! Are you agreeing to marry me?”
“No, my love.”
“Why not?”
“Because I understand a little more than you do about family life. Because I know nothing good will come of it for us. Just think back. Have we ever talked about anything serious? We just meet, spend time…. Think. Haven’t there been times when I come to see you, and you’re busy with your thoughts and you’re not happy, even angry, that I’m there? Of course, you make believe — you try hard, but I can tell. What will happen if we’re together constantly?”
“Do you mean — you don’t love me?”
“No, Val,” she looked at me sadly. “And I won’t fall in love with you. I don’t want to. I used to… to tell the truth, I worked at this relationship. I thought a quiet and unattractive man would love me and appreciate me. You have no idea, Val, how I needed the warmth and comfort of a relationship! But I didn’t get warm near you. You don’t love me very much either. You don’t belong to me, I can see that. You have another love, science!” She laughed angrily. “You’ve invented all sorts of toys for yourselves: science, technology, politics, war. And women are just something on the side. Well, I don’t want to be something on the side. It’s well known: women are fools. We take everything seriously. We know no bounds in love and can’t do a thing with ourselves….” Her voice trembled and she turned away. “I would have said all this to you anyway. I was wrong again!”
Actually, there’s no need for details. I threw her out. I’m sitting here over my diary.
So, it was all planned. Don’t love a handsome man, love a crummy one. And I wanted to create a big family….
I feel cold. Oh, so cold!
Lena’s not mercenary. Then what is she? Actually, she was right: I knew that myself. And how! But this light relationship suited me before. “Will it do?” — as they ask in the store, offering you margarine instead of butter.
Nothing happens in life to no purpose. I’m the one who changed, who realized things in time, and she’s still the same. I fell for a storybook illusion, what a jerk. I wanted to get warm.
And that’s it. There will never be anything in my life. I’ll never find anyone like Lena. I’m not willing to go in for one — night stands.
Lena didn’t want to become my widow.
It’s cold….
We’ve lost spontaneity, the ability to follow our feelings, to believe on faith because we believe, to love because we’re in love. It’s possible that it happened because everyone got burned more than once, or because in the theater and movies we see how those feelings are manufactured, or because life is so complicated and everything must be thought out and planned — I don’t know. “Tenderness, in a Taylor series expansion….” I’ve been expansive enough.
Now we have to understand with our reason just how important solid, strong feelings are in human life. Who knows, maybe it’s good that it has to be proven. And it will be proven. Then people will develop a new naturalness of feeling, strengthened by reason, and they’ll understand that without feelings there is no life.
And for now… it’s cold.
Ah, Lena, Lena, my poor frightened girl! Now, I think, I really do love you.
Investigator Onisimov reached the New Systems Laboratory at 8:30 in the morning. The guard on duty, Golovorezov, was sitting in the sun on the porch, leaning against the door with his cap over his eyes. Flies were crawling around his open mouth and on his cheeks. The guard moved his facial muscles, but didn’t wake up.
“You’ll get a bad burn on duty, comrade guard,” Onisimov said sternly.
The guard woke immediately, fixed his cap, and stood up.
“Everything quiet here, comrade captain. There were no incidents in the night.”
‘I see. So you have the keys?”
“Yes sir.” He pulled the keys from his pocket. “You gave them to me, and I have them.”
“Don’t let anyone in.”
Onisimov unlocked the door and shut it behind him. He found his bearings in the dark hallway easily, maneuvering among the boxes and crates, and reached the door to the lab.
He looked around carefully in the laboratory. There were gelatinous puddles on the floor, their dried edges curling up. The hoses of the computer — womb hung limply from the bottles and flasks. The lights were out on the control panel. The switches on the electric panel were sticking out sideways. Onisimov inhaled the stale air carefully and turned his head: “Aha!” Then he took off his blue jacket, hung it neatly on a chair back, rolled up his sleeves, and got to work.
First of all he rinsed the teflon tank with water, stood it back up on the floor, and removed all the hoses and conductors from it. Then he followed the power cable and found the burnt — out part that had shorted, eaten away by acids, near the wall board. He took rubber gloves from the drawer, got the right tools from the cabinet, went back to the cable and cleaned and patched it up with insulated tape.
A few minutes later it was all done. Onisimov, taking a breather, stretched and turned on the electricity. The transformers in the TsVM — 12 began humming. The air vents rustled, and the exhaust fan whined, picking up speed. The green, red, blue, and yellow lights on the control panel blinked aimlessly.
Onisimov, biting his lower lip in anxiety, got a full flask of distilled water and added it to all the flasks; he got Krivoshein’s lab journal from the desk, and deciphering the notations, started adding reagents to the bottles and flasks. When he finished all this, he stood in the middle of the room expectantly.
The trembling light flitted from one end of the control panel to the other, and up and down and down and up — tearing around like a maddened bulb on an electronic billboard. But gradually the random movement began forming a pattern of broken lines. The green vertical lines were shaded with blue and yellow lights. The red lights blinked more slowly: soon they went out completely. Onisimov kept waiting for the “Stop!” signal to go on at the top of the panel. Five minutes, ten, fifteen… the signal didn’t come on.
“I think it’s working.” Onisimov rubbed his face with his hand.
Now he had to wait. So as not to sit by idly, he filled a pail with water and washed the floor. Then he taped up the torn wires of Monomakh’s Crown, read the notes in the journal, got together some more reagents and poured them in. There was nothing else to do.
He heard footsteps in the hall. Onisimov turned toward the door sharply. Golovorezov came in.
“Comrade captain, scientific secretary Hilobok is out there. He wants to come in. He says he has something to tell you. Should I let him in?”
“No. Let him wait. I have to talk to him, too.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, I guess I’ll have to talk to Harry,” Onisimov chuckled. “The perfect time to remind him of recent events.”
May 17. But Harry Haritonovich bent the truth when he said he didn’t have time to write his dissertation! He lied. Yesterday, it turns out, he had his preliminary defense of his doctoral at a closed session of our scientific council. We do what so many organizations do: before letting one of our people out into the world, we listen to him in our private circle. His official defense will take place in a few days at Lena’s construction project bureau.
Oh, Harry isn’t lying for nothing! There’s something going on.
May 18. Today I knocked at the window next to which a local institute poet, who wished to remain anonymous, had written in pencil:
Be worthy of the first form.
The enemy does not sleep!
Major Pronin.
I was worthy. That’s why Joahann Johannovich let me into the closed reading room and gave me a copy of the dissertation of technical sciences candidate H. H. Hilobok to attain the degree of doctor of technical sciences on the top of… well, I can’t write about that.
Well, brother…. First of all, the topic deals totally with the development of the blocks of memory that Valery and I had done long ago, and it looks like Hilobok was at least the inventor and director of the project; it doesn’t come out and say so, but you can read it between the lines. Secondly, he allowed himself free improvisation in part of the explanation and interpretation of the results, and made major mistakes. Thirdly, he has long — proven facts, determined by foreign systemologists and electronics people, introduced by “It has been determined by experiments that….” How could the scientific council let that get by? It’s May, and half the people are on business trips or vacation.
No, he won’t get away with this.
May 19. “Do you know math?” Kravets asked when I told him about it and my plans for it.
“Yes, why?”
“Then add it up: two days to prepare for participation in the defense, plus a day for the defense, plus a month of hassles afterward. You’re not a baby. You know you won’t get by with a joke like this. What’s more important: you’ll be squandering a month of our work, the results of which will influence the world more than all the technology extant today, or some lousy dissertation, which won’t affect anything? One more or less in the world, no difference.”
“Hmm… and now I’ll show you a different math. You and I are identical people with identical ability, and in some ways you’ve surpassed me. But if I were to go over to that Harry Hilobok and, without delving into particulars, tell him that student Kravets is stupid, hasn’t the slightest understanding of computers (even is weak in math), breaks equipment, and secretly drinks alcohol, what do you think would happen to Kravets? Kicked out of the institute and out of the dorms. And he’s gone. He won’t be able to prove anything to anyone, because he’s only a student. And that’s the comparative power that Hilobok will have over us when he becomes a doctor of sciences. Have I convinced you?”
I convinced him so well that he set off immediately for the library to take notes from open sources.
I have another justification: we have to think not only about our research but also about defending the correct application of our discovery some day. And we don’t yet know how to do that. We have to learn.
The hell with careful justification! I mean am I alive in this world or is it only my imagination?
May 22. It all began normally enough. A small but impressive audience gathered in the hall of the construction bureau. Harry Haritonovich put up several sheets of oaktag with graphs and charts on the board, struck a picturesque pose next to them and delivered the usual twenty — minute talk. The audience listened with the usual discomfort. Some had no idea what he was talking about; others understood some of it; and still others understood it all: just what this Hilobok was, and what his dissertation was on, and why he kept it secret. But all those present thought glumly that it was none of their business, and really, that they could not cast the first stone — the usual sleepy thoughts that permit thousands of inept and sneaky louts into science.
Harry finished. The chairman read critical response to the work. The response was good (but who would submit unfavorable ones to his dissertation defense?). The only serious unexpected thing was that Arkady Arkadievich had written a response to the work, too. Then the official opponent took the stage. Everyone knows what an official opponent does: in order to earn his name, he notes several inconsistencies, several incomplete thoughts, and “yet in sum total the work corresponds… the author is deserving of….” Well, I won’t lie about this one: the opponent from Moscow was a highly qualified man and he mocked all the propositions of the dissertation and made it clear that he could expose the whole thing, but he did it so carefully and subtly that probably even Harry didn’t see it. “Yet in sum total the work deserves….”
And finally: “Who would like to speak?” Usually by this time everyone is disgusted by the proceedings; no one wants anything; the candidate thanks everyone — and it’s over.
Laboratory head V. Krivoshein breathed in and out deeply (by then I realized how much trouble this would cause) and raised his hand. Harry Haritonovich was unpleasantly surprised. I spoke twenty minutes, as he had, and in unfolding my point of view I handed the council members journals, magazines, monographs, brochures, and so on that contained the results Hilobok was defending without any mention of him. Then I re — created his circuit for… never mind for what, particularly since its only redeeming feature was its “originality,” and proved that the circuit would not work in the frequencies of the required range. There was a hubbub in the hall.
Then appeared candidate of sciences V. Ivanov, who had specially made the trip from Leningrad (not without a phone call from me). He clarified the borrowed data and took apart the “original” part of the dissertation; Valery’s speech was full of erudition and subtle humor. The audience grew noisier — and then it began!
My old friend Zhalbek Balbekovich Pshembakov tried to find out from Harry how was it that in circuit number two… it’s not worth writing about either. Hilobok didn’t know how it was, but he tried to get away with some bull and babble. Then the other colleagues of the construction bureau entered the fray. The last speaker was the chief engineer, a professor and Nobel Prize winner (I won’t mention his name in this context). “I had the feeling from the first that there was something wrong here,” he began.
So the first form didn’t help Hilobok; they squashed his dissertation like God can squash a turtle! Harry was a pitiful sight. Everyone was going off to his office and he was taking down his magnificent displays, and the stiff oaktag rolled up and hit him in the mustache. I went over to help.
“No, thank you,” Hilobok muttered. “Are you satisfied? You don’t write anything and you don’t let anyone else do it, either. It’s an easy life. Valentin Vasilyevich, nature has endowed you with certain gifts….”
“Sure, it’s easy! My salary is half of yours, and my vacation time, too. And I’m swamped with work and responsibilities.”
“You add to your worries unnecessarily. Why did you have to get involved in this?” Harry, rolling up his displays, gave me a threatening and angry look. “You have to think about the institute, not just about yourself and me. Well, this isn’t the place to talk about it.”
So that’s the ticket. Well, it doesn’t matter. I feel wonderful now. As though I had done something that was infinitely more valuable and meaningful than even our discovery: I squashed a viper. That means it’s possible. And not as terrible as I had expected.
Now I’m not so worried about our work’s future. Problems like this can be surmounted, too.
“But it did have an effect on his work,” muttered Onisimov — Krivoshein, watching the computer — womb. “Everything has an effect on the work.”
May 29. Today I was called onto Azarov’s thick carpet. He has just gotten back from a trip.
“So you realize what you’ve done?”
“But, Arkady Arkadievich, the dissertation — “
“We’re not talking about Harry Haritonovich’s dissertation, but about your behavior! You’ve undermined the institute’s prestige, and in no small way!”
“I expressed my opinion.”
“Yes, but where? How? Is it so difficult to comprehend that in another organization you are not simply an engineer trying to even a scholarly score with someone (well, Harry told his side!) but a representative of the Institute of Systemology! Why didn’t you express your opinion at the preliminary defense?”
“I didn’t know about it.”
“Nevertheless you could have told it to my replacement after the defense. It would have been taken into account!”
(He’s talking about Voltampernov — a likely story!)
“It wouldn’t have been taken into account.”
“I see we won’t reach an agreement. What are your plans for the future?”
“I don’t intend to resign.”
“I’m not asking you to. But it seems to me that you’re not ready to head a laboratory. A scientist working in a collective must bear the good of the collective in mind and at any rate, certainly not deal it any death blows by his behavior. I imagine that you will have trouble, at the next qualifying session, passing to lab head. That’s all. I won’t keep you.”
So that’s how it is. The whole institute is abuzz with turkey gobbles: “An engineer against a candidate! Keeping him from his doctorate!” Thanks to Harry everybody thinks that I was trying to settle a score with him. They’re dragging out my old sins: the chewing out, the accident in Ivanov’s lab (Matyushin, the head janitor, is planning to sue me for damages). They realized that I haven’t turned in an annual report on my project, even though topic 154 isn’t over until this year. They say that a commission to check on the lab’s work should be set up.
My enemies shout. My friends whisper carefully, looking over their shoulders: “You really gave it to Hilobok. The jerk deserves it. Well, they’ll get you now.” And they suggest where I should tranfer. “Why don’t you intercede?” “Well, you see….” Even good old Fenya Zagrebnyak just spreads his hands apart. “What can I do? It’s not in my field.”
A narrow specialist has a lousy life. Well — fed, secure, but lousy. All his interests are concentrated on elements of passive memory, say, and not on any old elements but only on cryotron elements, and only on film cryotrons and only on those made of lead — tin films. The worker, the farmer, the technician, the broad — based engineer, the teacher, and even the office worker can apply his knowledge and skills to many activities, enterprises, and companies, but there are only two or three institutes in the whole Soviet Union studying those damned cryotrons. What can poor Fedya do? He has to sit there and not make waves. In effect, a narrow speciality is a means of self — enslavement.
That’s why it’s rare among us specialists to find all for one (unless the one is Azarov). All against one is the more usual picture; that’s easier. That’s why passions flare up at the first sign of insubordination. “Anyone could be failed like that!” yelped Voltampernov — and it went on and on.
All right, I’ll bear it. I can take it. The important thing is that it’s done. I knew what I was getting into. But it’s repulsive. It’s unbelievably disgusting.
Onisimov put out his cigarette and stared at the computer. Something had changed slowly and imperceptibly in the distribution of the hoses. They seemed to be tensed. A shudder of contractions traveled through some of them. And — Onisimov jumped — the first drop fell loudly from the left gray hose into the tank.
Onisimov moved the stairs over to the tank and climbed up. He put his hand under the hose. In a minute it was full of the golden liquid. The lines in his skin were visible through it, as if under a magnifying glass. He concentrated, and the skin disappeared, revealing the red muscles, the white bones, the tendons…. “Ah, if they had only known how to do this,” he sighed. “The experiment wouldn’t have gone like this. They didn’t know. And it had an effect.”
He let the liquid splash into the tank, got back down to the floor, and washed his hand in the sink. The patter of drops from all the hoses rang merrily and springlike in the lab.
“Work! You’re strong, computer,” Onisimov — Krivoshein said respectfully. “As strong as life.”
He obviously didn’t want to leave the laboratory. But he glanced at his watch, put on his jacket, and hurried.
“Good morning, Matvei Apollonovich!” Hilobok greeted him rapturously. “Working already? I’ve been waiting for you. I wanted to report something,” he whispered, bringing his mustache close to Onisimov’s ear, “Yesterday that. woman of his, Elena Ivanovna Kolomiets, came to his apartment, took something, and left. And there was someone else in there, too. The light was on all night.”
“I see. You did the right thing in telling me. As they say, jurisprudence will not forget you.”
“Oh, any time, it’s my duty!”
“Duty aside,” Onisimov said in a stern voice, “aren’t you motivated by other, stronger motives, comrade Hilobok?”
“What motives?”
“For instance the fact that Krivoshein ruined your doctoral dissertation defense.”
Harry Haritonovich’s face sagged for a moment and then quickly took on a look of injury at the hands of humanity.
“Some people! Someone already had time to report that to you. What kind of people work here, I ask you, tsk, tsk? Don’t be silly, Matvei Apollonovich. How could you doubt the sincerity of my motives! Krivoshein didn’t have as tremendous an influence at the defense as you might have been told. There were more serious experts there than him, and many approved of it, but he, obviously, was jealous, and well, they suggested I make some changes, nothing terrible. I’ll be up for it again soon. But, of course, if you suspect me, that’s up to you. Then check things out for yourself. It was my duty to tell you, but now… good day!”
“Good day.”
Harry Haritonovich left furious: Krivoshein was getting him from the other world, too!
“You really let him have it, comrade captain!” the guard said approvingly.
Onisimov didn’t hear. He was watching Hilobok leave.
It leads to one thing. But the question that comes up willy — nilly is “Is it worth it?”
Be straight, Krivoshein: you can kick the bucket in this experiment. It’s that simple, based on your own statistics of success and failure in your experiments. Science and methodology aside, things never work the way they should the first time — that’s the old law. And a mistake in this experiment is more than a spoiled sample.
I mean basically I’m climbing into the tank as a narrow specialist in this work. That’s my speciality, like cryotron film is for Fenya Zagrebnyak. But I don’t have to get in there — nobody’s forcing me. Funny, I have to get into a medium that easily dissolves live organisms simply because my specialty worked out badly!
For people? The hell with them! Do I need more than the rest? I’ll just live quietly for myself. And it’ll be good.
And everything will be clear — with the lowest, coldest clarity of a scoundrel. And I’ll have to spend my life justifying my retreat by saying that all people are like that, no better than me, and even worse, everyone lives only for himself. And I’ll have to drop all my hopes and dreams of better things quickly so that they don’t remind me. I sold out! I sold out and I have no right to expect anything better from anyone else.
And then it will get really cold in the world….
Golovorezov was asking him something.
“What?”
“I said, will my replacement be here soon, comrade captain? I came on at twenty — two hundred.”
“Didn’t you get enough sleep?” Onisimov squinted at him merrily. “You’ll have to stand it another hour and a half or so. Then you’ll be relieved, I promise. I’ll take the keys with me. That’s better. Don’t let anyone in here!”