Self-discovery

Chapter 3

The plump, blonde, middle — aged passenger in the express train between Novosibirsk and Dneprovsk was agitated by the fellow in the upper berth. He had rough — hewn but handsome features, a windblown face, dark curly hair with a lot of gray in it, strong, tanned hands with thick fingers and old calluses on the palms — and yet he had a gentle smile, charm (he had offered her the lower berth when she got on at Kharkov), and an intelligent manner of speaking. The fellow lay with his square chin on his hands, greedily looking at the trees, houses, streams, and road signs flashing by. And he smiled. “Handsome!” she thought.

“Probably familiar territory?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“You’ve been away a long time?”

“A year.”

He was recognizing things: they went under the highway where he used to ride his motorcycle with Lena. There was the oak grove where the locals went picnicking. There was Staroe Ruslo, a place of secluded beaches, clean sand, and calm water. There was the Vytrebenki farm — and hey! new construction! Probably a chemical plant…. He smiled and frowned as the memories came back.

Actually, he had never ridden a motorcycle anywhere with any Lena, nor had he ever been in the grove or on those beaches — it had all been done without him. It was simply that once there had been a conversation, and to be accurate, even that took place without his active participation.

“Here’s an application. (The variants of human life!) Look: ‘A Vladivostok shipbuilding concern is looking for an electrical engineer to do fitting work on location. Apartment supplied. Aren’t I an electrical engineer? Fitting on location — what could be better? A Pacific wave lapping up against the fittings! You pay out the cable, lick the salt from your lips — you against the elements!”

“Yes, but.”

“No, I can understand. Before it was impossible. Before! You and I are men of duty — how can you just quit a job and go off to satisfy your wanderlust? So we all stay where we are — and the longing for places we’ve never seen and never will stays with us too, and for people we’ll never meet, and for events and occasions that we’ll never participate in. We drown this longing in books, movies, and dreams — it’s impossible for a man to lead several parallel lives. But now — “

“But now it’s the same thing. You’ll go off to Vladivostok to lick your sea spray, and I’ll remain behind with my dissatisfaction.”

“But… we can trade. Once every six months. No one would notice. no, that’s nonsense. We’d be distinguished by six months of practical work experience.”

“That’s just it! By heading down one of life’s paths, a person becomes different from the person he would have been had he taken another path.”

But he headed for Vladivostok anyway. He didn’t leave to still his longings — he ran away from the horrors of memory. He would have gone even farther, but farther there was only ocean. Of course, the job opening as a fitter in the ports had been filled, but he found work excavating underwater cliffs, to clear space for ship berths — that wasn’t bad work either. There was enough romance: he dove into the blue green depths with his scuba gear, saw his quivering shadow on the bottom rocks, dug out holes in the cliffs, set the dynamite, lit the fuse, and scattering the fish that would be floating belly up in a minute, swam at breakneck speeds for the power boat. And then, missing engineering work, he introduced an electrohydraulic charge, which was safer than dynamite and more effective. He left behind all memories of himself.

“Are you coming from far?” the woman insisted, interrupting his reverie.

“From the Far East.”

“Were you recruited to work there or did you just go?”

The man stared at her and laughed curtly.

“I went for a cure.”

His traveling companion nodded warily. She had lost all desire for conversation. She pulled out a book and buried herself in it.

Yes, the healing began there. The guys on the team were amazed by his fearlessness. He really had no fear: strength, agility, exact calculation — and no deep wave could touch him. He literally held his own life in his hands — what was there to be afraid of? The most terrifying times he had lived through had been here, in Dneprovsk, when Krivoshein played God with his life and death. With many deaths. You see, Krivoshein did not understand that what he was doing was much worse than torturing a helpless person.

The man’s body tensed automatically. A chill of anger puckered his skin into goose bumps. The monsoons had blown a lot out of his system in a year: depression, panicky fear, even his tender feelings for Lena. But this remained.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have come back? I had the ocean that made me feel small and simple, good pals, and hard and interesting work. Everyone respected me. I became myself out there. But here… who knows how things will go for him?”

But he could no more not return than forget the past. At first, it would creep up on him, after work, on days off, when the whole team took a speedboat into Vladivostok. The thought would pound through his head: “Krivoshein is working. He’s alone there.” Then the idea came to him.

Once when they were clearing the bottom in a nameless cove near Khabarovsk, where there were warm mineral springs along the shore, he jumped from the boat and fell into a stream. He almost screamed from the horrible memories in his body! The water tasted just like that liquid, and the sensationless, warm gentleness seemed to conceal that ancient threat to dissolve, destroy, and extinguish consciousness. He moved ahead, and the cold ocean water sobered and calmed him. But the impression remained. By evening it had turned into a thought: “The experiment could be run in reverse.”

And, while healing from his former memories, he “caught” this one. His researcher’s imagination was aflame. How enticing it would be to plan an experiment, to try to predict the enormous results that would bring great benefit! The underwater explosions seemed like a dull, gray waste. Now without fear, he played back everything that had happened to him, projected the variations of the experiment. And he could not remain there with the idea that Krivoshein had probably not thought of it yet. You couldn’t come up with it by pure reason alone. You had to have lived through everything that he had.

But — the implacable logic of their work brought another idea forward in his mind: all right, so they would find a new way of processing a man with information. What would it give them? This thought was harder than the first. On the way from Vladivostok to Dneprovsk he turned to it often, and he still had not thought it all the way through.

Outside the window, the girders of a bridge reflected the clattering wheels of the train: they were crossing the Dnieper River. The man was distracted for a moment, watching a powerboat skim the water’s surface down the river’s current, and looking at the green slope of the right bank. The bridge ended and little houses, gardens, and hedges flashed by the window.

“It all boils down to the problem of how and with what information can man be perfected. All the other problems rest on this one. The system is a given: the human brain and the mechanisms for introducing information — the eyes, ears, nose, etc. Three streams of information feed the brain: daily life, science, and art. We must distinguish the most effective one in its action on man — and the most directed one. So that it would perfect him, ennoble him. The most effective is naturally the daily information: it is concrete and real, forming man’s life experience. It’s life itself; nothing else to it. I suppose that in reality it has a mutual relationship with man according to the laws of feedback: life affects man, but by his actions he affects life. But the action of daily life can be most varied: it can change man for the better or the worse. So, that can’t be it.

“Let’s look at scientific information. It is also real, and objective — but it’s abstract. In essence, it’s the universalized experience of the activity of humanity. That’s why it’s applicable in many life situations, and that’s also why its effect on life is so great. And a reverse connection exists here with life, too, even though it is not an individual one for each and every person, but a general one: science solves life’s problems, thus changing life — and a changed life sets new problems for science. But still, the action of science on life in general and on man in particular can be either positive or negative. There are many examples to support this. And there is another problem: science is hard for the average man to comprehend. Yes, it’s hard. All right, if you think about the same thing all the time, sooner or later, you’ll come up with the answer. The important thing is to think systematically.”

He was distracted by sobbing from below. He looked down: his companion, never taking her eyes from the book, was dabbing her wet eyes with a handkerchief. “What are you reading?”

She looked up angrily and showed him the cover: Remarque’s Three Comrades.

“The hell with them,” she said and lost herself in the book again. “Hm… a tubercular girl, loving and sensitive, is dying. And my well — fed, healthy neighbor feels for her, empathizes. I guess there’s no point beating around the bush. The information of art is it! Anyway, its general direction is intended for the best that is in man. Over the millennia, art has developed the highest quality information about people: thoughts, descriptions of refined spiritual actions, strong and noble feelings, colorful personalities, beautiful and wise actions…. All this has been working from the beginning of time to develop in people an understanding of each other and of life, to correct their morals, to awaken thoughts and feelings, and to eradicate the animal baseness of the spirit. And this information gets through — to be precise, it is marvelously encoded, couldn’t be better, to function in the computer called Man. In this sense, neither daily information nor scientific information can come close to artistic information.”

The train, passing through Dneprovsk’s suburbs, slowed down. His companion set aside her book and started pulling out her suitcases from under the seats. The man still lay on his berth, lost in thought:

“Yes, but how about effectiveness? People have been trying for millennia — of course, until the middle of the last century, art was only accessible to the few. But then technology took over: mass printing, lithography, expositions, records, movies, radio, television — art information is available to everyone. For a contemporary man the volume of information that he obtains from books, movies, radio, magazines, and TV is comparable to life information and certainly much greater than science information. And so? Hm… the effect of art is not measured technically and is not determined through experiments. All that we have to do is compare the actions, say, of science and the arts during the last fifty years. God, there can be no comparison!”

The train pulled into the station, into the crowd of waiting friends and relatives, porters and ice cream vendors. The man jumped down from the berth, pulled down his backpack, and folded his blue raincoat over his arm. His companion was still struggling with her heavy suitcases.

“My, how much luggage you have! Let me help,” he offered, picking up the largest one.

“No, thanks.” The woman quickly sat on one suitcase, flinging a plump leg over another, and clutched a third with both hands. “Oh, no, thank you! No, thanks!”

She looked up at him with a face that no longer had any pleasantness about it. Her cheeks were not plump but blowsy, and her eyes, now watery instead of blue, were hostile. There were no eyebrows, just two thin stripes of pencil marks. He could tell that one move from him and she would start screaming.

“Excuse me!” He let go and left. He was disgusted.

“There you go: an illustration of the comparative effects of daily information and art information!” he thought, angrily striding through the station square. “Lots of people could have come from distant parts: salesman, Party worker, athlete, fisherman… but no, she thought the worst, suspected me of vile intentions! It’s the principle of getting by: better not trust them than be mistaken. And don’t we make a much greater mistake by adhering to this principle?” In the train he had been thinking because there was nothing else to do. Now he was thinking to calm down, and still about the same thing. “Of course, if you tell about a man in a book or on screen — people will understand him, believe in him, forgive his drawbacks and love him for his good points. But it’s much more complicated and prosaic in real life. Why blame the little lady — I’m just as bad myself. For a time, I didn’t believe my own father. I loved him, but I didn’t believe him. I didn’t believe that he had fought in revolutions, in the Civil War, that he served under Chapayev, that he had met Lenin. It all began with the movie Chapayev: my father wasn’t in it! There was Chapayev and all the other certified heroes — they declaimed colorful, curt slogans with powerful voices — and Dad wasn’t there! And anyway, how could my Dad be a Chapayev man? He didn’t get along with mother. He spoke in a wavering voice, caused by his ill — fitting dentures, which he kept in a glass overnight. He mispronounced words (not like in the movies). And he had been arrested in 1937. He used to tell the neighbor women over the back fence how during Kerensky’s time he was forced, because of Bolshevik agitation, to stand two hours at attention in full battle gear on the breastwork of a trench. He said that he brought silver coins from the soldiers at the front to Lenin in the Smolny Institute for the revolution’s coffers. He talked about how, condemned to death by the cossacks, he sat in a cellar… and the local women oohed and aahed, clasping their hands: ‘Our Karpych is a hero — ah! ah! And I would laugh at him and not believe him. I knew exactly what heroes were like — because I watched movies and listened to the radio.”

He frowned at these memories.

“It wasn’t really me. But the important point is that it was — but it looks like there is a hitch in the great method of transferring information via art. People watch a movie or a play, read a book and say: ‘I like it… and go on living just as before. Some live well, some not badly, and the rest awfully. Art historians and critics often find a flaw in the consumers of the information: the public is foolish, the readers aren’t ready, and so on. To accept that I would have to admit that I’m a fool and that I’m not ready either. No, I don’t agree! And anyway, blaming things on the people’s dullness and ignorance — that’s not a constructive approach. People are capable of understanding and realization. Most of them are not dullards or ignoramuses. So it would be better to seek the flaw in the method — especially since I need that method for my experimental work.”

He saw a telephone booth and he stared at it dully: was he supposed to do something in that object? He remembered. He sighed, entered the booth, dialed the number of the New Systems Laboratory — Waiting for an answer, his heart began beating harder and his throat went dry. “I’m nervous and that’s bad.” There was nothing but long ringing. Then, with second thoughts, he called the evening duty phone at the institute.

“Could you help me reach Krivoshein? Is he on vacation?” “Krivoshein? He’s… no, he’s not on vacation. Who’s calling?” “If he should show up at the institute today, please tell him that… Adam is here.” “Adam? No last name?” “He knows. Please don’t forget.” “All right. I won’t.”

The man left the phone booth with a sense of relief: he had suddenly realized that he was not prepared to see him. “Well, I’m here. I might as well try. Maybe he’s at home?”

He got on a bus. He was not interested in the city streets swathed in blue twilight: he had left in summer and he came back in summer. Everything was green, and it seemed that nothing had changed.

“Now, really, how can we use art information in our work? And can it be used? The whole problem is that this information doesn’t become part of a man’s life experience, or his exact knowledge, and it is on experience and knowledge that people base their actions. It really should go something like this: a man reads a book, begins to understand himself and his friends; a louse sees a play, becomes horrified and turns into a decent man; a coward goes down to the movies and comes out a hero. And it should last a lifetime, not just five minutes. That’s probably what writers and painters hope for when they create. Why doesn’t it happen? Let’s think. Art information is constructed along the lines of everyday information. It is concrete, contains subtle and flexible generalizations, but it is not real. It’s only realistic, probable. That must be its weakness. It cannot be applied like scientific information: a man cannot plan out his life based on it. It is not universal and objective enough for that. And you can’t use it for a guideline the way daily information can be used because its concreteness never coincides with the concrete life of the given reader. “And even if it did coincide, who wants to lead a copycat life? You can copy a hairdo, that’s all right, but to copy a life recommended by a large printing. Apparently, the idea of ‘rearing along literary examples’ springs from the idea that man comes from the apes and that imitation comes naturally to him. But man has been man for a long time, millions of years. Now he is characterized by self — determination and original behavior which he knows to be the better course.” “Academic Town!” the driver announced.

The man got off the trolley and saw immediately that his trip had been in vain. Two rows of standardized five — story houses, joining at the horizon, gazed upon one another with lighted windows. But there were no lights in the corner apartment on the fifth floor of house No. 33.

A feeling of relief that the unpleasant meeting with Krivoshein was put off, once again mingled with regret: he had no place to sleep. He took a trolley back downtown and started checking out the hotels. Naturally, they were all full.

And he started thinking again, his thoughts coloring his glum attempts to find a place for the night.

“The longer we live, the more we see that there are many life situations in which the decisions described in books or shown in movies are inapplicable. And we begin to see the information from art as a quasi — life, in which things are not really like that. It’s a good place to live through a dangerous adventure (even with a fatal ending) or to test one’s principles without jeopardizing one’s job — in a word, to feel, if only for a brief moment, that you are someone else: smarter, handsomer, braver than you really are. It’s no secret that people who live humdrum lives adore adventure and mystery novels….” He was on Marx Prospect, with its neon signs and bright lights. “And we use this marvelous information for trifles, for amusement to pass some time. Or to charm a girl with the right poem. That information does not belong to us. We didn’t reach the conclusions and truths about ourselves. We can just sit back, watch or read, as an invented life goes beyond a glass screen — we are merely ‘information receptors! Of course, there have been instances when the ‘receptors’ couldn’t stand it and tried to influence it: Dad used to tell about the Red Army soldier in Samara who once shot at an actor who played Admiral Kolchak in a play for the troops, and earlier in Nizhny Novgorod, the audience beat up the actor who was portraying lago — for his good acting. The idea of breaking down the glass barrier and acting on art is a good one. There’s something to it….”

A thought, still unverbalized, unclear, more a hunch, ripened in his mind. But someone tapped him on the shoulder just then. He looked around: there were three men in civilian clothes. One of them casually waved a red book under his nose.

“Show your documents, citizen.”

The man shrugged, put down his backpack, and took his passport from his pocket. The operative read the first page, looked at the photograph and his face and the photograph again, and returned the passport.

“Everything is in order. Excuse us, please.”

“Ooofff!” The man picked up his pack, and trying not to walk any faster, moved on toward the Theater Hotel. His mood was worse. “I don’t think I should have come.”

The three men walked over to a tobacco kiosk. Officer Gayevoy, also dressed as a plainclothesman, was waiting for them.

“I told you,” he said triumphantly.

“Not the one….” sighed the operative. “Some guy called Valentin Vasilyevich Krivoshein. But if you go by the photo and the description, he’s definitely Kravets.”

“Description, description… what’s a description?” Gayevoy was angry. “I saw him, you know: he had no gray hair, was about ten years younger, and a lot thinner.”

“Let’s go over to the railroad station, fellows,” the second operative suggested. “After all, he’s no fool. He’s not going to stroll down the avenue!”

Victor Kravets was at that moment making his way down a dark, deserted side street.

After he jumped out of the moving police car, he went through the park to the banks of the Dnieper and lay in the bushes, waiting for dark. He wanted to smoke and to eat. The low sun gilded the sand of Beach Island, dotted with bright mushrooms; there were still bathers there. A small tug, spreading watery whiskers from shore to shore, was hurrying upriver to the freight yards to get a new barge. Cars and buses moved noisily below the cliff.

“We finally got there. We thought everything through: the method of the experiments, the variants in using the method, even its influence on the world situation. This was the only variant we didn’t foresee. What a fall from great heights face down into the mud! From researcher to criminal. My God, what kind of work is this — one failed experiment and everything flies out the window. I’m not prepared for this game with investigators and medical experts, so unprepared that I might as well go down to the library and start reading up on the criminal code and the — what else is there? — the judicial code. I don’t know the rules of the game, and I might lose. I guess, I already have lost. The library… how could I have time for the library now?”

The cooling towers of the electrostation on the other side of the Dnieper exhaled fat columns of steam as though they were trying to make clouds. The low edge of the sun touched them.

“What should I do now? Go back to the police, tell them everything, make a clean breast of it’ and give away (despicably) the secret we tried to keep from evil eyes? And give it away not to save the project, but to save myself? This won’t save the work: in two or three days everything will start rotting in the laboratory, and I won’t be able to prove a thing, and no one will believe me, and no one will know what happened there. I won’t save myself that way either: Krivoshein died. The weight of his death is on me, as they say. Should I go to Azarov and explain things to him? There’s no way I could explain anything to him now. I’m less than a student on probation to him — I’m a shady character with forged papers. If he’s been informed of my escape, then as a loyal administrator, he must cooperate with the police. There it is, man’s problem, in full view. The source of all our troubles. We simply can’t solve it through the laboratory method. We! That’s a laugh. We who have achieved such greatness. We in whose hands lie the unheard — of possibilities of synthesizing information. What the hell. We can’t handle this problem; time to fess up. And what sense is there in the rest without it?”

The sun was setting. Kravets got up, brushed off his trousers, and went up the path, not knowing where or why. Loose change jangled in his pockets. He counted it: enough for a pack of cigarettes and a very light supper. “And then?” Two young coeds, comfortably studying for exams on a bench in the bushes, looked with interest at the handsome young man, shook their heads to dispel evil thoughts, and went back to their notes. “Mmm… I guess I won’t be completely lost. Should I go see Lena? But she’s probably under surveillance, and they’ll catch me….”

The path led out onto a quiet, uninhabited street. Branches heavy with ripening cherries hung over the fences. At the street’s end, a cloud blazed, underlit with red.

It was getting dark fast. The evening coolness was creeping up under his shirt, onto his bare chest. On the opposite side of the street, a half block away from Victor, two men in caps walked out of the shadows. “Police!” Kravets ducked into an alley. He ran a block and then stopped to calm his heart.

“To think of it! I’ve never run from anyone in twenty years, and now I’m like a boy chased out of somebody’s yard.” His helplessness and degradation made the desire for a cigarette unbearable. “The game is lost. I just have to admit that and leave. Follow my feet. After all, everyone of us has experienced the desire to get away from some situation or other. Now it’s my turn, damn it! What else can I do?”

The alley led out into the glow of blue lights. The sight brought on a wave of animal hunger: he hadn’t eaten in twenty — four hours. “Hm… so there are restaurants still open. I’ll go. Nobody’s going to look for me on Marx Prospect.”

The concrete posts extended their snake — headed street lights over the pavement. In the store windows elegant dummies stood in casual poses; radios, televisions, and pots and pans shone brightly; bottles of Sovetskoe Champagne beckoned, and cans of fish and preserves tumbled in artful disarray. Under the blazing neon sign that read: “Here’s what you can win for thirty kopeks!” glistened a Dniepr refrigerator, and Dniepr — 12 tape recorder, a Dniepr sewing machine, and a Slavutich — 409 automobile. Even the trimmed lindens along the wide sidewalks looked like industrial products.

Victor stepped out onto the most crowded area, the three — block stretch between the Dynamo Restaurant and the Dniepr movie theater. There were plenty of pedestrians. Unkempt young men, trying to pass for bohemian artists, walked stiffly down the street, their eyes glazed. Elderly couples moved at a dignified pace. Dandies, arms around their girl friends, headed for the park. Men with bangs over their shifty eyes darted in and out of the crowd — the kind who don’t work anywhere but have connections. Girls carefully balanced their various hairdos, including such masterpieces of tonsorial art as “cavewoman,” “after a ladies’ free — for — all,” and “let them love me for my mind.” Young singles wandered around, torn between desire and shyness.

Kravets first walked around circumspectly, but then he became angry.

“Look at all of them walking around, to show themselves off and to see others. It’s as though time has stopped for them, and nothing is happening. They used to stroll down this street when it was called Gubernatorskaya, before the Revolution — wearing out the wooden sidewalks, checking out fashions and each other. And they strolled after the war — from the ruins of the Dynamo Restaurant to the ruins of the Dniepr Theater under the lights hanging by a single wire, cracking their sunflower seeds. They’ve paved the avenue, dressed it in high rises made of concrete, aluminum, and glass, lit it up, planted trees and flowers — and they stroll around, sucking caramels, listening to their transistors, proving the indomitability of the consumer spirit! Show themselves off, look at others, look at others, and show themselves off. Take a walk, drop in at the automat, consume a meat pie, walk around, drop in at the well — tended toilet behind the post office, take care of their needs, take a walk, have a drink, meet someone, take a walk… an insect’s life!”

He circumvented the crowd that had collected on the corner of Engels Street near the lottery ticket vending machine. The machine, made to look like a cyborg, played music, hawked customers with a recorded voice, and for two five — kopek pieces, after wildly spinning a wheel made out of glass and chrome, dispensed a “lucky” ticket. Kravets gritted his teeth.

“And we, we idiots, decided to transform people with mere laboratory technology! What can we do with these consumers? What has changed for them is the fact that there are taxis instead of hackney cabs, semitransistorized tape recorders instead of accordions, telephones instead of “face — to — face” gossip, and synthetic raincoats to wear in good weather instead of new rubber galoshes? They used to sit around their samovars and now they spend evenings around the TV.”

He heard snatches of conversation from the crowd: “Just between us, I can tell you frankly: a man is a man, and a woman is a woman.” “So he says ‘Valya? and I say ‘No. He says ‘Lusya? and I say ‘No.

He says ‘Sonya? and I say ‘No. “Abram went oh a business trip, and his wife….” “Learn to be satisfied with the present moment, girls!” “And what will change as a result of progress in science and technology? So the store windows will overflow with polyester clothes, atomic wristwatches that never need winding, and with solid — state refrigerators and microwave ovens. Luminescent plastic moving sidewalks will transport pedestrians from the 3 — D Dniepr Theater to the fully automated Dynamo Restaurant — they won’t even have to use their legs. They’ll take strolls with microelectric walkie — talkies so that they won’t even have to turn to their friends or risk tiring their voices to exchange such brilliant gems as:

‘Just between us, I can tell you frankly: a robot is a robot, and a mezzanine is a mezzanine! ‘Abram went off to an antiworld, and his wife….

Team to be satisfied with the present microsecond! “And a vending machine made to look like a space ship will sell ‘Greetings from Venus! postcards: a view of the Venerian space port framed by kissing doves. And so what?”

Harry Haritonovich Hilobok paraded past Kravets. A girl weak with laughter was hanging from his arm. The assistant professor was busy amusing her and didn’t notice the fugitive student duck into the shadows of the lindens. “Harry has a new one,” thought Kravets, laughing. He bought some cigarettes at a kiosk, lit one, and moved on. He was engulfed in such anger that he lost his appetite, and if he had fallen into the arms of the operatives, there would have been quite a brawl.

There was no room at the Theater Hotel either. The arrival walked along the prospect in the direction of the House of the Collective Farmer, grumpily observing the people around him.

Walk, walk, walk… every city in every country has a street where the populace walks in the evenings, back and forth, the crowd becoming a single entity. Show themselves, look at each other. Walk, walk, walk — and the planet trembles under their feet! It must be some collective instinct that lures them here, like the swallows to Capistrano. And others sit in front of the TV. How many of them are there, people who have relegated themselves to rot away? (‘We know how to do something; we make good money; we have everything we need; we live no worse than others — so leave us alone!) Solitary people, afraid to be alone with themselves, confused by the complexity of life and unwilling to think about it. They remember the one rule of safety: to be happy in life you must be like everybody else. So they walk around and look to see how everybody else is. They expect a revelation.

Overshadowed by the glowing glory of the avenue, the moon wandered behind the translucent clouds. But nobody had time to look at it.

“And when they were young they dreamed about living exciting, interesting, meaningful lives, about discovering new worlds. Who didn’t have that dream? And they probably still dream about it, passionately and impotently. What’s wrong? They didn’t have the spirit to follow their dreams? And what for? Why give free rein to your dreams and deepest feelings — who knows where it might lead! — when you can buy ready — made dreams and feelings, when you can safely party at a feast for invented heroes? And so they partied themselves sick, wasted their spiritual strength on trifles, and what they have left is enough power to muster a walk down the avenue.”

Hilobok walked past him with a young girl. “So Harry has a new one!” the arrival thought.

He watched him walk on. Should he catch up with him and inquire about Krivoshein? “Nah, in any case it’s best to stay away from Hilobok.” The arrival and Kravets stepped onto the same block.

“At one time the humanoid apes diverged: some picked up rocks and sticks and began working, thinking; and others stayed to swing in the trees. And now on earth another transition is beginning, more powerful and driving than the ancient ice age: the world is about to leap into a new qualitative state. But what do they care? They are willing to stay safe in front of the TV — it’s easy to satisfy their simple demands through technology!” the angry Victor Kravets muttered to himself. “What do they care about all the new vistas opened up by science, technology, industry? What’s our work to them? You can increase intelligence, cleverness, and work capabilities — so what? They’ll learn something not for the pleasure of mastery and satisfying intellectual curiosity, but in order to earn more, to have easy work, and to get ahead of others. They will buy and hoard so that people will notice their success, to fill their empty lives with worries about their possessions. And about a rainy day. It might never come but because of it, all their other days are cloudy. boring! I’m going to go to Vladivostok, on my own, before I’m sent there officially. The project will die off naturally. It won’t help them in any way: in order to take advantage of an opportunity like that you have to have high goals, spiritual strength, and a dissatisfaction with yourself. And they are only dissatisfied with their surroundings: the situation, their friends, life, the government — you name it, as long as it’s not themselves. Well, let them walk around. As they say, science is helpless here….” They were separated only by the post office building. The angry thoughts ebbed away. There was only an inexplicable uneasiness before the people who walked past Kravets.

“Someone said: no one despises the crowd more than the mediocrity who manages to climb above it. Who?” he frowned as he thought. “Wait a minute, I said that myself about someone else. Of course, about someone else, I wouldn’t have said it about me….” He was disgusted. “In trampling them, I trample myself. I haven’t come so far; I used to be just like them. Wait up! Does this mean that I simply want to disappear? And to keep from being terribly embarrassed and not to lose my self — respect, I’m trying to give this flight a philosophical basis? I haven’t sold out anyone: everything is true; science is helpless, and that’s how it should be. My God, an intellectual’s mind is wondrously base and self — serving! (By the way, I’ve thought or said that about someone else, too; all of life’s verities are nicer when applied to others.) And that intelligent one is me. All my gears are going full blast, contempt for the crowd, theoretical discursiveness…. Hmmmm!” He blushed and felt hot. “So this is where disaster can lead. Well, all right, let’s see what else there is for me to do.”

Suddenly his legs were rooted to the pavement! Walking toward him with an easy stride was a young man with a backpack and a raincoat over his arm. “Adam!” Kravets felt a chill and his heart sank. It wasn’t a man but a living pang of his conscience coming toward him on that street. Adam’s eyes were thoughtful and angry, and the corners of his mouth drooped forbiddingly. “He’s going to see me, recognize me….” Victor looked away so as not to give himself away, but curiosity won out: he stared at him. No, Adam didn’t look like a “slave” now — that was a confident, strong, and decisive man. A memory floated up of a disheveled head against a background of dusky wallpaper, eyes wide with hatred, and a ten — pound iron dumbbell raised over his face.

The arrival walked on past him. “Of course, how could he recognize me?” Kravets sighed in relief. “But why is he back? What does he want?”

He watched the man disappear into the crowd. “Maybe I should catch up with him and tell him what happened? All the help that… No. Who knows why he’s here.” He was overwhelmed with despair again. “This is where all outwork and experiments have led. Damn it! We’re afraid of each other. Wait… that is the other variant! But will it help?” Victor bit his lip, thinking hard.

Adam had disappeared.

“Well, enough self — torture!” Kravets said, shaking his head. “This isn’t my work alone. And I can’t escape — the work must be saved.”

He pulled out the change from his pocket, counted it, swallowed a hungry gulp, and went into the post office.

He just had enough to pay for a short telegram: MOSCOW, MOSCOW STATE U., BIOLOGY DEPT. TO KRIVOSHEIN. FLY OUT IMMEDIATELY. VALENTIN.

He sent the telegram and went out on the street. He turned down a street that led to the Institute of Systemology. After a few steps he turned to see if anyone was following him. The street was empty, and the only person watching was the pretty woman with the bankbook in the brightly lit ad on the department store that said, “Save your money at the bank” in foot — high letters. Her eyes promised to love anyone who saved.

The sign over the administrator’s window in the House of the Collective Farmer read:

Room for a man — 60 kopeks.

Room for a horse — 1 ruble 20 kopeks.

The man who had arrived from Vladivostok sighed and handed his passport through the window. “Give me a sixty — kopek room, please.”