Self-discovery

Chapter 4

The next morning the officer on duty in the city department handed Investigator Onisimov the report of the policeman on guard at the sealed laboratory. It stated that during the night, approximately between 1:00 and 2:00 A.M., an unknown man in a white shirt attempted to enter the lab through a window. The policeman’s shout scared him off into the park.

“I see!” Matvei Apollonovich rubbed his hands in satisfaction. “Returning to the scene of the crime….”

Yesterday he had sent notice to citizen Azarov and to citizen Kolomiets. Matvei Apollonovich wasn’t really counting on the academician’s showing up in his office — but the stub of the notice would be handy to have around. Elena Ivanovna Kolomiets, an engineer at a construction design bureau near the Systemology Institute, showed up promptly at ten.

When she entered his office, Hilobok’s wavy hand gestures came to mind; she was a beautiful woman. “Isn’t she just fine?” thought Onisimov. Any single feature of Elena Ivanovna’s, taken out of context, was ordinary — her dark hair was like any hair, and her nose was only a nose (perhaps even too upturned), and the oval of her face was just an oval — but together they created such a harmonious picture, a picture that needed no analysis but simply called to be enjoyed and remarked upon as an example of nature’s great sense of proportion.

Matvei Apollonovich remembered what the late Krivoshein had looked like and he experienced typical male envy. “Hilobok was right; he’s no match for her. What did she see in him? Was she looking for security? A husband with a good income?” Like most men whose looks and age left little hope of romantic conquest, Onisimov had a low opinion of beautiful women.

“Please be seated. You are familiar with the name Valentin Vasilyevich Krivoshein?”

“Yes.” She had a throaty, mellifluous voice.

“How about Victor Vitalyevich Kravets?”

“Vitya? Yes.” Elena Ivanovna smiled, showing her even teeth. “I didn’t know his father’s name was Vitaly, though. What’s the matter?”

“What can you tell me about the relationship between Krivoshein and Kravets?”

“Well… they worked together. Victor, I think, is a distant relative of Valya… I mean, Krivoshein. I think they were good friends. What’s happened?”

“Elena Ivanovna, I’ll ask the questions.” Onisimov figured that she would reveal more if she were emotionally off balance, and he was in no hurry to clear up the situation. “Is it true that you and Krivoshein were close?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you stop seeing him?”

Elena Ivanovna’s eyes became cold, and a blush came and went from her cheeks.

“That has nothing to do with this!”

“And how would you know what does and what doesn’t have to do with this?” Matvei Apollonovich perked up.

“Because… because this can’t have anything to do with anything. We broke up and that’s all.”

“I see… all right. We’ll come back to that later. Tell me, where did Kravets live?”

“In a dormitory for young specialists in Academic Town, like all the probation workers.”

“Why didn’t he live with Krivoshein?”

“I don’t know. Apparently they both preferred it that way.”

“Despite the fact that they were friends and relatives? I see. And how did Kravets behave with you? Did he court you?” Matvei Apollonovich was milking his version for all it was worth.

“He did….” Elena Ivanovna bit her lip. But she couldn’t control her tongue. “I think you’d do the same if I let you.”

“Aha, so you let him, eh? Tell me, was Krivoshein jealous of Kravets and you?”

“Perhaps, he was… but I don’t understand what all this is about.” The woman looked at the investigator with great hostility. “All these innuendos! What happened, will you please tell me?”

“Calm yourself, citizen!”

Maybe I should tell her? Should I? Is she involved? She is beautiful, and a man could really fall for her, but… it’s the wrong milieu for serious sexual crimes. The statistics are against it. A scientist wouldn’t lose his head over a woman… but Kravets….

The telephone interrupted Onisimov’s ruminations. He picked it up.

“Onisimov here.”

“We’ve found him, comrade captain!” the operative announced. “Do you want to participate?”

“Of course!”

“We’ll wait for you at the airport, car license plate 57–28 DNA.”

“I see!” The investigator stood and looked merrily at Kolomiets. “We’ll finish this little talk another time, Elena Ivanovna. Let me sign your pass. Don’t be upset, and don’t be mad: it’s nerves — we’re all like that, you and I, included….” “But what happened?”

“We’re investigating. I can say no more for now. Good day!” Onisimov walked her out, then got his gun from the desk drawer, locked the room, and hurried, almost at a run, to the parking lot.

The snow white IL jet taxied up to the terminal exactly at 13:00. A light blue, elevated companion stairway pulled up at its door. A heavyset, short man in tight green pants and bright shirt was the first to run down the stairs, and, swinging his colorful traveling bag, he marched down the concrete hexagonal paving stones to the barrier. He kept looking around, seeking someone in the crowd of people greeting the arrivals, found him, and rushed toward him.

“You look great! What’s all the rush, the ‘fly out immediately’ during vacation? Let me get a look at you! You’re better looking than ever, even taller! That’s what a year away does for your looks! Your face seems noble and I can even look upon your jaw without irritation.”

“And you, I see, have gotten fat off the graduate land.” The greeter looked him over with a critical eye. “Have you furnished yourself with socialist accumulations?”

“Val, it’s not simple accumulation — it’s an informational material reserve. I’ll tell you all about it later, even give you a demonstration. It’s a complete turnaround, Val… but let’s talk about you first. Why did you summon me before it was time? No, wait!” The recent passenger pulled out a notebook from his pocket and withdrew several ten — ruble notes, “Here’s the money I owe you.” “What money?”

“Please, spare me the act!” The passenger raised his hand to forestall further protests. “We know; we’re touched: the absent — minded scientist who can’t be bothered with prosaic minutiae. Drop it. I know you better than that: you remember debts of fifty kopecks. Take the money and cut the bull!”

“No,” he replied, smiling gently, “you don’t owe me a thing. You see — “He stumbled under the direct piercing stare of his companion.

“Goddamn it! So you’ve started dyeing your hair? And the scar?

Where’s the scar over the eyebrow?” His voice dropped to a whisper.

“Who are you?”

Meanwhile the crowd of arrivals and welcoming friends and relatives had thinned out. Five men who had met no one and were in no hurry discarded their cigarettes and quickly surrounded the two men.

“Keep quiet!” Onisimov hissed, squeezing in between the lab assistant and the passenger who was staring at him in disbelief; the second man had money in his fist. “We’ll shoot if you resist.”

“Oh, boy!” the astonished passenger said, stepping back a pace; he was immediately grabbed by the elbows.

“Not ‘oh, boy! but the police, citizen… Krivoshein, I believe?” The investigator smiled with maximum pleasantness. “We’ll have to hold you for a while, too. Take them to the cars.”

Victor Kravets, seating himself in the back seat of a Volga between Onisimov and Gayevoy, had a tired and calm smile on his face.

“By the way, if I were you, I’d drop the smile,” Matvei Apollonovich noted. “You serve time for jokes like this.”

“Ah, what’s time!” Kravets waved his arm. “The important thing is that I think I’ve made the right move.”

“I never thought that my return would begin with an episode from a detective story!” said the passenger as he entered the investigator’s office. “Well, once in a lifetime this could prove to be interesting.” Without waiting for an invitation, he sat down and looked around. Onisimov sat down opposite him in silence. Two feelings were battling within him: self — congratulation (What an operation! What success!! Caught two at once — red — handed, it looks like!) and worry. Up until now the case had been built on the fact that Krivoshein died or was killed in the laboratory. But…. Matvei Apollonovich took a hard look at the man sitting before him: a slanted brow with a widow’s peak, ridges over the eyebrows, a purplish scar over the right brow, a freckled face with full cheeks, a fat nose with a high bridge, and short red hair. There was no doubt about it; Krivoshein was sitting in his chair! “Boy, was I off. So who was bumped off in there? I’m getting to the bottom of this right now!”

“Is that a hint?” Krivoshein pointed at the barred windows. “To make even the innocent confess?”

“No, this used to be a wholesale warehouse,” the investigator explained, and remembering that the lab assistant had begun yesterday’s interview the same way, chuckled at the coincidence. “It’s a leftover… Well, how do you feel, Valentin Vasilyevich?”

“Thank you — I’m sorry, I don’t know your name and patronymic — I can’t complain. How about you?”

“Ditto. Though my condition has no direct bearing on the case.”

They smiled at each other broadly and tensely, like boxers before beating each other’s faces in.

“And mine, it would appear, does? I just thought it was standard procedure to enquire about the health of passengers that you grab for no good reason at the airport. So what does my condition have to do with your case?”

“We don’t grab, citizen Krivoshein. We detain,” Onisimov corrected him. “And your health interests me in a completely legal way, since I have a doctor’s certificate and several witnesses who say that you are a corpse.”

“A corpse?” Krivoshein examined himself with exaggerated playfulness. “Well, if that’s your information, you might as well haul me off to the autopsy room.” Suddenly he understood and his smile disappeared. He looked at Onisimov angrily and anxiously. “Listen, comrade investigator, if this is a joke, it’s a lousy one! What corpse?”

“Please, who’s joking?” Onisimov gestured broadly with his hands. “The day before yesterday your body was found in a laboratory — I saw it with my own eyes — I mean not your body, since you are in good health, but someone who looked very much like you. It was identified as being you.” “Damn it!” Krivoshein hunched over and rubbed his cheeks. “Can you let me see the body?”

“Well, you know that we can’t, Valentin Vasilyevich. It turned into a skeleton, you know. This mischief isn’t a very good idea. It could be misinterpreted.”

“Into a skeleton?!” Krivoshein looked up and confusion showed in his brown — flecked green eyes. “How? Where?”

“It happened there, at the scene, as if you needed any information on the matter from me,” Onisimov stressed. “Maybe you’d like to explain?”

“There was a body which became a skeleton,” Krivoshein muttered, frowning. “Then… oh, then it’s not so bad. He wasn’t wasting time; it looks as if something went wrong. Damn it, look at me!” He cheered up and carefully looked at the detective. “You’re mixing me up, comrade, and I don’t know why. Bodies just don’t turn into skeletons like that. I know a little about it. And then, how can you prove that it’s my… I mean, the body of a man who looks like me, if you have no body? Something’s wrong here.”

“Perhaps. That’s why I want you to shed light on this yourself. Since all this happened in the laboratory you run.”

“That I run? Hm….” Krivoshein laughed, and shook his head. “I’m afraid nothing will come of this light shedding. I need someone to explain it all to me.”

“And this one is going to go mum, too!” Matvei Apollonovich sighed glumly, took a sheet of paper, and unscrewed his pen.

“Let’s do this in order. Your name is Valentin Vasilyevich Krivoshein?”

“Yes.”

“Age thirty — five? Russian? Bachelor?”

“Exactly.”

“You live in Dneprovsk and head the New Systems Laboratory at the Systemology Institute?”

“No, that’s the part that’s wrong. I live in Moscow, and study in the graduate biology department at Moscow State University. Here!” Krivoshein handed him his passport and documents across the desk.

The papers had a realistically weather — beaten look. Everything in them — including the three — year residence permit for Moscow — corresponded with his story.

“I see.” Onisimov put them in his desk. “These things are done quickly in Moscow, in one day!”

“What are you trying to say?!” Krivoshein stared at him, one eyebrow arched aggressively.

“Your documents are phony, that’s what. Just as phony as your confederate’s, to whom you were trying to pass money at the airport. Were you trying to guarantee an alibi? You needn’t have bothered. We’ll check it, and then what?”

“Go ahead and check!”

“We will. Whom do you work under at MSU? Who’s your advisor?”

“Professor Vano Aleksandrovich Androsiashvili, department chairman in general physiology, corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences.”

“I see.” The investigator dialed the phone. “Operator? This is Onisimov. Quickly connect me with Moscow. I want this man on the videophone as soon as possible. Write it down, Vano Aleksandrovich Androsiashvili, professor, head of the physiology department at the university. Hurry!” He stared at Krivoshein triumphantly.

“The videophone! Marvelous!” he chuckled. “I see that detective work is approaching science fiction. Will this be soon?”

“It’ll happen when it happens. We have things to discuss, you and I.” Krivoshein’s confidence, however, made an impression on Onisimov. He thought: “And what if this is some kind of crazy coincidence? Let me check.”

“Tell me, do you know Elena Ivanovna Kolomiets?”

Krivoshein’s face lost its calm expression. He sat up and looked at Onisimov angrily and questioningly.

“Yes. So what?”

“Very well?”

“So?”

“Why did you break up?”

“This, my dear investigator, if you will excuse me, is absolutely none of your business!” Krivoshein was getting very angry. “I do not permit anyone to meddle in my private life — not God, not the devil, not the police!”

“I see,” Onisimov said calmly. And the thought: “It’s him! No way out of it — it’s him. Why is he covering up? What could he possibly be hoping for?” He continued the questioning. “All right, here’s an easier question: who’s Adam?”

“Adam? The first man on earth. Why?”

“He called the institute… the first man. He wanted to know how you were, wanted to see you.”

Krivoshein shrugged.

“And who is that man who met you at the airport?”

“Whom you so cleverly branded as my confederate? That man….” Krivoshein raised and dropped his eyebrows meditatively.

“I’m afraid he’s not the person I took him for.”

“I don’t think he is, either. Not at all.” Onisimov perked up. “But then who is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“The same nonsense all over again!” Onisimov wailed, throwing down his pen. “Enough of this baloney, citizen Krivoshein. It’s unbecoming! You were giving him money, forty rubles in tens. You mean you didn’t know to whom you were giving money?”

At that moment a young man in a white lab coat came in to the office, put a form on the table, and left, after giving Krivoshein a sharp, curious look. Onisimov looked at the form — it was a report on the analysis of the suspect’s fingerprints. When he looked up at Krivoshein, his eyes had a sympathetically triumphant smile.

“Well, that’s it. We don’t have to wait for the Moscow professor to give a visual ID — and he probably wouldn’t anyway. Your fingerprints, citizen Krivoshein, correspond completely to the prints that I took at the scene of the crime. Here, see for yourself!” He handed the form and a magnifying glass to Krivoshein. “So let’s drop the game. And remember that your flight to Moscow and the fake papers only make things worse. The court adds three to eight years to a sentence for premeditation and the attempt to confound the police.”

Krivoshein, his lip extended, was studying the form.

“Tell me,” he said, raising his eyes to the detective, “why can’t you allow for the fact that there are two men with the same fingerprints?”

“Why?! Because in a hundred years of using this method in criminology, such a thing has never happened once.”

“Lots of things have never happened before, like Sputnik, hydrogen bombs, and computers, but they exist now.”

“What do sputniks have to do with this?” Matvei Apollonovich shrugged. “Sputniks are sputniks, and fingerprints are fingerprints, incontestable evidence. So are you going to talk?”

Krivoshein gazed deeply and thoughtfully at the detective and smiled gently.

“What’s your name, comrade investigator?”

“Matvei Apollonovich Onisimov, why?”

“You know what, Matvei Apollonovich? Drop this case.”

“What do you mean, drop it?”

“Just like that, the usual way, cover it up. How do you phrase it: ‘for insufficient evidence’ or ‘lack of proof of a crime. You know, ‘turned over to the archives on such and such a date…. “

Matvei Apollonovich was speechless. He had never encountered such brass in all his years on the force.

“You see, Matvei Apollonovich, you’ll continue with the varied and, in usual cases, certainly useful activity of questioning, detaining, interrogating, comparing fingerprints, bothering busy people with your videophone.” Krivoshein developed his thought gesturing with his right hand. “And all the time you’ll keep thinking that any second now you’ll have the truth by the tail. Contradictions will smooth out into facts, the facts into evidence; good will triumph, and evil will get a sentence plus time for premeditation.” He sighed sympathetically. “The hell these contradictions will smooth out! Not in this case. And you will never hit on the truth for the simple reason that you are not ready to accept it at your level of reasoning.”

Onisimov frowned and his lips compressed into a huffy pout.

“No, no!” Krivoshein waved his hands. “Please don’t think that I’m trying to put you down, that I want to demean you, or cast aspersions on your qualities as a detective. I can see that you are a tenacious and hard — working man. But — how can I explain this to you?” He squinted at the sunny yellow window. “Oh, here’s a good example. About sixty years ago, as you undoubtedly know, the machinery in factories and plants was powered by steam or diesels. A transmission shaft went through the workshops with driving belts running from it to the machine pulleys. All this spun, buzzed, and hummed, its wild noise bringing joy to the director or owner. Then electricity came on the scene — and now all that has been replaced by electric motors, built into the machines.”

Once again, like last night, when he had interrogated the lab assistant, Matvei Apollonovich was seized by doubts: something was wrong here! Quite a few people had been in his office, polishing the chair with their squirming: taciturn teenagers who had gotten into trouble through stupidity; weepy speculators; overly — casual accountants caught through a routine check of the books; and repeat offenders who knew all the laws. But all of them realized sooner or later that the game was over, that the moment had come for them to confess and hope that the record reflected their clean — breasted repentance. But this one. just sat there as though nothing had happened, waving his arms and explaining at a simple level why the case should be closed. “This lack of game playing is throwing me off again! But no, I’m not going to slip twice in the same place!” he thought.

Matvei Apollonovich was an experienced investigator and knew well that doubts and impressions did not build a case — facts did. And the facts were against Krivoshein and Kravets.

“Now imagine that in some ancient factory the changeover from mechanical power to electricity took place overnight instead of taking years,” Krivoshein went on. “What would the owner of the factory think when he got there in the morning? Naturally, that someone had swiped the steam engine, the transmission shaft, the belts and pulleys. For him to understand that it was a technological revolution and not a theft he would have to know physics, electronics, and electrodynamics. And you, Matvei Apollonovich, figuratively speaking, are in the position of such an owner.”

“Physics, electronics, electrodynamics.” Onisimov repeated distractedly, looking at his watch. Where was that call to Moscow? “And information theory, and the theory of modeling random processes, too?”

“Aha!” Krivoshein leaned back in his chair and looked at the detective with undisguised pleasure. “You know about those sciences as well?”

“We know everything, Valentin Vasilyevich.”

“I see there’s no tricking you.”

“And I don’t suggest you try. So, are we going to count on an illegal closing of the case or are we going to tell the truth?”

“Hah.” Krivoshein wiped his forehead and cheeks with a handkerchief. “It’s hot in here. All right. Let’s agree on this, Matvei Apollonovich. I’ll find out what’s going on, and then I’ll tell you.”

“No,” Onisimov shook his head. “We won’t agree on that. It won’t do, you know, to have the suspect conduct the investigation of the case. No crime would ever be solved that way.”

“Goddamn it!” Krivoshein began, but the door opened and a young lieutenant announced:

“Moscow, Matvei Apollonovich!”

Onisimov and Krivoshein went up to the second floor to the communications room.

Vano Aleksandrovich Androsiashvili brought his face so close to the videophone screen that it seemed he wanted to peck through the tube with his hawklike, predatory nose. Yes, he recognized his graduate student Valentin Vasilyevich Krivoshein. Yes, he had seen the student daily for the last few weeks, but he couldn’t give them dates of their meetings further back than that by heart. Yes, student Krivoshein had left the university for five days with his personal permission. His growling Georgian r’s reverberated in the phone’s speaker. He was very upset that he had been dragged away from examinations to take part in this strange proceeding. If the police — here Vano Aleksandrovich fixed his hot blue black eyes on Onisimov — stop believing the very passports that they themselves hand out, then, apparently he will have to change his profession from biologist to verifier of identity for all his graduate students, undergraduates, and relatives, as well as for all the members and corresponding members of the Academy of Sciences whom he has the honor of knowing personally! But in that case, the very natural question of his identity might come up. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to have the university rector, or better yet, the president of the academy, come on the videophone to identify this suspicious professor?

Having delivered this lecture in one long breath, Vano Aleksandrovich shook his head in farewell and added, “That’s not good! You have to trust people!” and disappeared from the screen. The microphones carried the sound of a slamming door all the way to Dneprovsk. The screen showed a fat man with major’s bars on his blue shirt; he made a face.

“What’s the matter, comrades? Couldn’t get to the bottom of this yourselves? The end!”

The screen went black.

“Vano Aleksandrovich is still mad at me,” thought Krivoshein as he went down the stairs behind the angrily puffing Onisimov. “It’s understandable: he feels sorry for me, and I keep my back to him, hide things. If he hadn’t accepted me, none of this would have happened. I barely made it in the exams, like a first — year student. I was okay in philosophy and foreign languages, but in my specialty…. But how could a quick reading of textbooks hide the absence of systematic knowledge?”

That had been a year ago. After the entrance exams in biology, Androsiashvili invited him into his office, sat him down in a leather chair, stood by the window and looked at him, his large, balding head tilted to the right. “How old are you?” “Thirty — four.”

“On the edge. Next year you’ll celebrate your thirty — fifth birthday among friends and kiss full — time schooling good — bye. Of course, there’s correspondence graduate school. And of course, that exists not for learning, but to have a paid vacation. We won’t even talk about it. I read your thesis synopsis. It’s a good one, mature, with interesting parallels between the work of the nervous centers and electronic circuits. I gave it an ‘excellent. But…” the professor picked up a report and glanced at it,”… you did not pass the exams, my boy! I mean, you got a ‘satisfactory’ but we do not take students with a ‘C in their major.”

Krivoshein’s expression must have changed drastically, because Vano Aleksandrovich’s voice became sympathetic:

“Listen, why do you need this? Moving into graduate study? I’ve familiarized myself with your background — you work in an interesting institute, with a good position. You’re a cyberneticist?”

“A systemology technologist.”

“It’s all the same to me. Then why?”

Krivoshein was prepared for that question.

“Precisely because I am a systemologist and a systemology technologist. Man is the most complex and most highly organized system known. I want to figure it out completely — how things are constructed in the human organism, what influences it. To understand the interrelationship of the parts, to put it roughly.”

“To use these principles to create new electronic circuits?” Androsiashvili screwed up his mouth ironically.

“Not only that… and not even so much that. You see… it wasn’t always like this. Once man was up against heat and frost; exertion from a hunt or from running away from danger, hunger or rough, unsanitary food like raw meat; heavy mechanical overloads in work; fights which tested the durability of the skull with an oak staff — in a word, once upon a time the physical environment made the same demands on man that… well, that today’s military customers make on rockets. (Vano Aleksandrovich harrumphed, but said nothing.) That environment over the millennia formed homo sapiens — the reasoning vertebrate mammal. But in the last two hundred years, if you start from the invention of the steam engine, everything changed. We created an artificial environment out of electric motors, explosives, pharmaceuticals, conveyors, communal service systems, computers, immunization, transport, increased radiation in the atmosphere, paved roads, carbon monoxide, narrow specialization in work — you know, contemporary life. As an engineer, I with others am furthering this artificial environment that determines ninety percent of the life of homo sapiens and soon will determine it one hundred percent. Nature will exist only for Sunday outings. But as a human being, I am somewhat uneasy.” He took a breath and continued.

“This artificial environment frees man of many of the qualities and functions he developed in ancient evolution. Strength, agility, and endurance are now cultivated only in sports, while logical thought, the pride of the Greeks, has been taken over by machines. But man is not developing any new qualities — the environment is changing too fast and biological organisms can’t keep up. Technological progress is accompanied by soothing, but poorly substantiated babble that man will always be on top. Nevertheless — if you talk not about man, but about people, the many and the varied — then that is not true even now, and it will only get worse. Many, many do not have the inherent capabilities to be masters of contemporary life: to know a lot, know how to do a lot, learn new things quickly, to work creatively, and structure one’s behavior optimally.”

“And how do you want to help?”

“Help — I don’t know if I can, but I would like to study the question of the untapped resources of man’s organism. For example, the obsolescent functions, like our common ancestor’s ability to leap from tree to tree or to sleep in the branches. Now that is no longer necessary, but the cells are still there. Or take the ‘goose bump’ phenomenon — it happens on skin that has almost no hair now. It is created by a vast nervous network. Perhaps these old reflexes can be restructured, reprogrammed to meet new needs?”

“So! You dream of modernizing and rationalizing man?” Androsiashvili stretched out his neck. “Instead of homo sapiens we’ll have homo modernus rationalis, hm? Don’t you think, my dear systemology technologist, that a rational path might lead to a man who is no more than a suitcase with a single appendage to push buttons? You could probably manage without that appended arm, if you use brain waves.

“If you want to be truly rational, you can manage without the suitcase,” Krivoshein noted.

“That’s true!” Vano Aleksandrovich tilted his head to the other shoulder and looked at Krivoshein curiously.

They obviously liked each other.

“Not rationalizing, but enriching — that’s what I’m thinking about.”

“Finally!” The professor paced his office. “Finally that broad mass of technological workers, conquerors of inorganic matter, creators of an artificial environment are beginning to see that they too are people! Not supermen who can overcome anything with their intellect, but simply people. Just think of what we’re trying to study and comprehend: elemental particles, the vacuum, cosmic rays, antiworlds, the secrets of Atlantis…. The only things we don’t study and wish to comprehend are ourselves! It’s, you see, too hard, uninteresting, not easy to handle. Hah, the world could perish if people only worked on things that were easy to handle.” His voice was even more guttural than usual. “Man feels a biological interest in himself only when he has to go to the hospital… and you’re right, if things go on this way, we’ll be able to manage without the suitcase. As the students say: ‘Machines will lick us before we can say boo! “ He stopped in front of Krivoshein, bent his head, and snorted. “But you’re still a dilettante, my systemology technologist. You make it sound so easy: reprogram old reflexes. If it were as easy as reprogramming a computer! Hm, but on the other hand, you are a research engineer, with ideas, with a fresh viewpoint that differs from our purely biological one. What am I saying! Why am I building up hope, as though something will come of you?” He walked over to the window. “You’re not going to write and defend a dissertation, are you? You have different goals, right?”

“Right,” Krivoshein admitted.

“There you see. You’ll return to your systemology and I’ll hear from the rector about not training scientific personnel. Heh, I’ll take you!” Androsiashvili concluded without any change in tone. He approached Krivoshein. “But you’ll have to study, go through the whole course of biological studies. Otherwise you’ll not find any potentials in man, understand?”

“Of course!” he nodded joyously. “That’s why I’m here.”

The professor sized him up and pulled him over by the shoulder:

“I’ll tell you a secret. I’m studying myself. In the evening classes of electronic technology at Moscow Engineering Institute, in my third year. I go to lectures, and do lab work, and I even have two incompletes — in industrial electronics and quantum physics. I, too, want to figure out what goes where. You can help me… only shhhhh!”

They were back in Onisimov’s office. Matvei Apollonovich paced from wall to wall. Krivoshein looked at his watch: it was after five. He frowned, regretting the wasted time.

“So, Matvei Apollonovich, I have my alibi. Please return my documents, and let’s say good — bye.”

“No, wait!” Onisimov paced, beside himself with anger and confusion.

Matvei Apollonovich, as has been noted, was an experienced investigator, and he clearly saw that all the facts in this damn case were neatly turned against him. Krivoshein was very obviously alive, and therefore the certified and reported death of Krivoshein was a mistake. He did not ascertain the identity of the man who died or was killed in the laboratory and he didn’t even know how to begin to establish the cause of death or means of murder. He did not know the motive for the crime — his version was shot to hell — and there was no body! The facts made it appear that the investigation conducted by Onisimov was just garbage.

Matvei Apollonovich tried to collect his thoughts. “Academician Azarov identified Krivoshein’s body. Professor Androsiashvili identified the live Krivoshein and confirmed his alibi. That means that either one or the other made a false statement. Which one is not clear. That means I’ll have to see both of them. No… to check up on such people, to put them under suspicion, and then to find out that I’m barking up the wrong tree again! I’ll be destroyed….”

In a word, Onisimov understood one thing: under no circumstances could he let Krivoshein out of his hands.

“No, wait! You won’t be able to return to your dirty work, citizen Krivoshein! You think that by… putting makeup on the deceased and then destroying the body, you can get off the hook? We’ll still check up on who this Androsiashvili really is and why he’s covering up for you! The evidence against you is still there: fingerprints, contact with the escaped suspect, the attempt to give him money….”

Krivoshein, disguising his irritation, scratched his chin.

“I just don’t understand what you’re trying to incriminate me with: being killed or being a killer?”

“We’ll clear it up, citizen!” Onisimov yelled, losing the last remnants of his self — control. “We’ll clear it up. But one thing is sure: no way could you not be involved in this case. That’s impossible!”

“Ah, impossible!?” Krivoshein came up to the detective, his face flushed. “You think that since you work for the police you know what’s possible and what isn’t?”

And suddenly his face changed rapidly: his nose grew longer and fatter, turning purple and drooping; his eyes grew wider and their green turned to black; his hair fell back from his forehead, creating a bald spot; a mustache sprouted on his upper lip, and his jaw grew shorter. In the space of a minute, Onisimov was facing none other than the Georgian physiognomy of Professor Androsiashvili — with bloodshot eyes, a mighty nose with flaring nostrils and blue, shadowed cheeks.

“You think, katso, that because you work for the police you know what is possible and what isn’t?”

“Stop it!” Onisimov backed up to the wall.

“Impossible!” Krivoshein howled. “I’ll show you impossible!”

He finished the sentence in a mellifluous, throaty woman’s voice, and his face began turning into Elena Ivanovna Kolomiets’s face: the cute nose turned up; the cheeks grew pink and round; the dark eyebrows arched delicately, and the eyes glowed with gray light.

“If anyone should come in now….” thought Onisimov feverishly and rushed to lock the door.

“Uh — huh, drop it!” Krivoshein, himself again, stood in the middle of the room in a boxer’s stance.

“No, you misunderstood, ” muttered Matvei Apollonovich, coming back to his desk. “Why get upset?”

“Phew!. and don’t even think about calling.” Krivoshein sat down, puffing, his face glistening with sweat. “Or I can turn into you. Would you like that?”

Onisimov’s nerves gave out completely. He opened his drawer.

“Don’t… please relax… stop… don’t! Here, take your papers.”

“That’s better.” Krivoshein took his papers and picked up his travel bag from the floor. “I explained to you nicely that you should drop your interest in this case — but no, you didn’t believe me. I hope that I’ve convinced you now. Bye!”

He left. Matvei Apollonovich stood still listening to some sound reverberating in the room’s stillness. A minute later he realized that it was his teeth chattering. His hands were also shaking. “What’s the matter with me?” He grabbed the phone… and dropped it, sank into his chair and impotently laid his head on the cool surface of the desk. “The hell with this job.”

The door opened wide and the medical expert Zubato appeared on his doorstep with a plywood crate in his hands.

“Listen, Matvei, this really is the crime of the century. Congratulations,” he shouted. “Lookee here!” He noisily set the box on the table, opened it, and tossed out the straw packing. “I just got this from the sculpture studio. Look!”

Matvei Apollonovich looked up. He was staring at the plaster cast of Krivoshein’s face — with a sloping forehead, a fat upturned nose, and wide cheeks….