Tale of the Troika

PROLOG

The story began like this. One day, at the peak of my work rush, as I was sweating over a lost shipment intended for the Kitezhgrad Magicotechnical Plant, my friend Eddie Amperian showed up in my office. Being a polite and well-brought-up person, he did not materialize unceremoniously right in the rickety visitor’s chair, or barge in obnoxiously through the wall, or hurtle through the open transom like a catapulted cobblestone. Most of my friends are always in a hurry, late for something, or behind schedule, and they always materialize, or barge in, or hurtle through shamelessly whenever they feel like it, eschewing normal communications. Eddie was not like them: he modestly entered through the door. He even knocked, but came in before I had time to answer.

He stopped in front of me, said hello, and asked:

“Do you still need the Black Box?”

“Box?” I muttered, my mind still on the lost goods. “What can I tell you? What box do you mean?”

“I’m disturbing you, aren’t I?” polite Eddie said carefully. “I’m sorry, but the boss sent me over. You see, approximately an hour from now the new elevator system will be launched for its first run beyond the thirteenth floor. We’ve been offered a ride.”

My mind was still saturated with the noxious fumes of inventory jargon, and all I could say was:

“We were supposed to have lost an elevator at the thirteenth floor of this year?”

But then the first few bits of Eddie’s information penetrated my gray matter. I laid down my pen and asked him to repeat what he had said. Eddie did so, patiently.

“Really?” I asked in a faint whisper.

“Absolutely,” Eddie said.

“Let’s go,” I said, getting the folder with the requisitions out of my desk.

“Where?”

“What do you mean where? To the seventy-sixth floor.”

“Not just like that,” Eddie said, shaking his head. “First we have to drop in to see the boss.”

“What for?”

“He asked us to. There’s some problem involved with the seventy-sixth floor. The boss wants to brief us.”

I shrugged without arguing. I put on my jacket, pulled out the requisition for the Black Box from the folder, and we set off to see Eddie’s boss, Fedor Simeonovich Kivrin, head of the Department of Linear Happiness.

An unbelievable hubbub reigned on the platform of the first floor in front of the elevator cage. The door of the shaft was open, as was the door into the elevator itself. Many lights were burning, the mirrors were sparkling, and the polished surfaces gleamed. Under the old, peeling banner that proclaimed “Let’s Get the Elevator Up by the Holiday!” huddled a crowd of curiosity seekers and people wanting rides. They were all listening politely to Modest Matveevich Kamnoedov, the deputy director, who was giving a speech before some electricians from the Solovetsk Boiler Supervisor’s Department.

“This must be stopped,” Modest Matveevich exhorted. “This is an elevator, not some spectroscope or microscope. The elevator is a powerful means of locomotion—that’s primary. It is also a means of transportation. The elevator must be like a dump truck: it gets you there, dumps you out, and comes back. That’s point one. The administration has long been aware that many of our fellow scientists, and that includes some academicians, do not know how to use an elevator. We are combating this, and we will put an end to it. There will be examinations for licenses for operating an elevator, and past services to us will not be taken into consideration … the establishment of the title of Senior Elevator Operator … and so on. That’s my second point. And on their part the electricians must guarantee uninterrupted service. There’s no use in falling back on objective conditions as an excuse. Our slogan is ‘elevators for everyone.’ No matter who. The elevator must be able to withstand the entrance of the least-educated academician.”

We made our way through the crowd and moved on. The pomp of that improvised meeting impressed me greatly. I had the feeling that today the elevator would actually, finally, be running and would continue running maybe for as much as twenty-four hours. That was impressive. The elevator had always been the Achilles’ heel of the institute and of Modest Matveevich, personally. Actually, there was nothing special about it. It was an elevator like any other, with its good points and its bad points. As befits a proper elevator, it constantly strove to get stuck between floors, was always occupied, burned out the bulbs that were screwed into it, and demanded irreproachable behavior and a deft touch with the gate. Getting into the elevator, one could never say with any certainty where and when one would be getting out.

But our elevator did have one unique trait. It could not stand going above the thirteenth floor. I mean, of course, that there are recorded instances in the history of the institute of individual skilled craftsmen who managed to overcome the contrariness of the mechanism and, giving it its head, went up to absolutely fantastic heights. But for the average man, the endless territory of the institute looming above the thirteenth floor was just a blank. There were all kinds of rumors, some contradictory, about those territories, almost completely cut off from the world and the influence of the administration. It was maintained, for example, that the one hundred twenty-fourth floor had an exit into an adjoining space with different physical properties, that on the two hundred thirtieth floor lived a mysterious race of alchemists—the spiritual descendants of the famous Union of the Nine established by the enlightened Indian king Asoka, and that on the one thousand seventeenth floor, the old man, his wife, and the Golden Fish still lived on the shore of the Blue Sea.

The floor that interested me the most, and Eddie too, was seventy-six. It was there, according to Inventory Control, that the Ideal Black Box was kept, indispensable to a computer lab. A talking bedbug lived there too, and the Department of Linear Happiness had long needed it. As far as we could tell, the seventy-sixth floor was a sort of storehouse for the anomalies of nature and society, and many of our employees were eager to dig their claws into that treasure trove. Fedor Simeonovich Kivrin, for example, dreamed of the granulated Grounds for Optimism that were supposed to be there. The guys from the Department of Social Meteorology were desperate for at least one qualified Cold Shoulder—three were indicated as being there, and all three had an effective temperature close to absolute zero. Old Christobal Joséevich Junta, director of the Department of the Meaning of Life and doctor of the most unexpected sciences, was champing at the bit to catch the sole remaining specimen of the Wingless Earthbound Dream and stuff it. Over the past twenty-five years he had tried no less than six times to break through all the barriers to the seventy-sixth floor, using his formidable powers of vertical translocation. But even he was unsuccessful: all the floors above thirteen, according to the clever plans of the ancient architects, were solidly blocked against any type of translocation. Thus a successful launching of the elevator would have signified a new epoch in the life of our collective.

We stopped outside Fedor Simeonovich’s ofEce, and the old house spirit Tikhon, clean and presentable, cheerily opened the door for us. We went in.

Fedor Simeonovich Kivrin was not alone. Olive-hued Christobal Joséevich Junta was casually draped in the soft armchair behind his large work table, sucking on a smelly Havana cigar. Fedor Simeonovich himself, his large fingers tucked in his colorful suspenders, was walking up and down the office with his head bowed. He was trying to step along the very edge of the Persian carpet. Crystal vases on the table held the Fruits of Paradise: the large, rosy apples of the Knowledge of Evil and the completely inedible-looking, but nevertheless worm-eaten, apples of the Knowledge of Good. The porcelain dish at Christobal Joséevich’s elbow was full of cores and butts.

Detecting our presence, Fedor Simeonovich stopped in his tracks.

“And here they are in person,” he said without his customary smile. “P-p-please sit down. T-t-time is short. K-K-Kamnoedov is a blowhard, but he’ll be through soon. Ch-Christo, why don’t you ex-ex-explain the circumstances, it always comes out badly when I try.”

We sat down. Christobal Joséevich, his right eye squinting from the smoke, looked at us critically.

“I’ll explain, if you wish,” he said to Fedor Simeonovich. “The circumstances are such, young men, that the first people to reach the seventy-sixth floor should be those of us who are experienced and wise. Unfortunately, the administration feels that we are too old and too venerable to go on the first experimental launch. Therefore, you are going, and I warn you right now that this will not be a simple trip, but reconnaissance, and perhaps reconnaissance under fire. You’ll need stamina, courage, and the utmost discretion. Personally, I do not observe any of these qualities in you, but I defer to the recommendation of Fedor Simeonovich. And in any case, you must know that you will most likely be in enemy territory—a merciless, cruel enemy who will stop at nothing.”

That preface made me start sweating, but then Christobal Joséevich began explaining how things stood.

It turned out that on the seventy-sixth floor lay the ancient city of Tmuskorpion, seized as a trophy of war, way back when, by the vengeful Prince Oleg the Prophetic. From time immemorial Tmuskorpion was the center of strange phenomena and the site of strange events. Why this was so, no one knew, but everything that could not be rationally explained at any stage of scientific and technological progress was sent there to be preserved for better times.

Back in the days of Peter the Great, at the same time that his famous museum, the Kunstkamera, was being founded in St. Petersburg, the local Solovetsk authorities, in the person of Lieutenant Bombadier Ptakha and his company of grenadiers, established “His Imperial Majesty’s Kamera of Marvelous and Amazing Kunsts with a Prison and Two Steambaths” in Tmuskorpion. In those days, the seventy-sixth floor was the second floor, and it was a lot easier to get into His Imperial Majesty’s Kamera of Kunsts than into the baths. But later, as the Edifice of Knowledge grew, access to it became increasingly difficult, and ceased completely with the appearance of the elevator. Meanwhile the Kamera of Kunsts kept growing, enriched by new exhibits, and became the Imperial Museum of Zoological and Other Natural Wonders under Catherine the Great, the Russian Imperial Preserve of Magical, Spiritual, and Occult Phenomena under Alexander II, and finally, the State Colony of Unexplained Phenomena under the Research Institute for Magic and Wizardry of the Academy of Sciences.

The destructive consequences of the invention of the elevator impeded the exploitation of the treasure trove for scientific research. Business correspondence with the administration was extremely difficult and inevitably drawn-out: cables lowered with correspondence snapped under their own weight; carrier pigeons refused to fly that high; radio communications were shaky because of the backwardness of Tmuskorpion’s technology; and the use of lighter-than-air craft merely led to needless expenditure of the limited supplies of helium. But all that is history now.

Some twenty years ago the berserk elevator dropped off the Inspection Commission of the Solovetsk Committee on Municipal Economy on the seventy-sixth floor. They had come simply to discuss the stopped-up plumbing in the labs of Professor Vybegallo on the fourth floor. What precisely went on remains unknown. Vybegallo, who was waiting for the commission on the fourth floor, recounts that the elevator rushed up past him with a terrifying roar, the glass door showing a glimpse of distorted faces, and then the horrifying vision passed. Exactly an hour later the elevator car was discovered on the thirteenth floor in a lather, snorting, and still trembling from excitement. The commission was not in the car. A note was glued to the wall, written on the back of a form for reporting unsatisfactory conditions. It said: “Am going out to examine. I see a strange rock. Comrade Farfurkis has been reprimanded for going into the bushes. Chairman of the Commission, L. Vuniukov.”

For a long time, no one knew on what floor L. Vuniukov and his subordinates had disembarked from the elevator. The police came, and there were many awkward questions. A month later, two sealed packages addressed to the head of the Municipal Economic Committee were found on the roof of the car. One package contained a packet of decrees on cigarette paper that recorded reprimands of Comrade Farfurkis or Comrade Khlebovvodov, for the most part for displaying individualism and some inexplicable “Zuboism.” The second package contained the materials for a report on the plumbing in Tmuskorpion (the conditions were acknowledged to be unsatisfactory) and an application to Accounting for extra pay for high-altitude duty.

After this, correspondence from above became rather regular. First came the minutes of the meetings of the Inspection Commission of the Municipal Economic Committee, then of the Special Commission on Examining the Situation, then suddenly the Temporary Troika on Examining the Activity of Commandant Zubo of the Colony of Unexplained Phenomena, and finally, after three reports in a row on “criminal negligence,” L. Vuniukov signed in as Chairman of the Troika on the Rationalization and Utilization of Unexplained Phenomena. The newly formed triumvirate stopped sending down minutes and began sending instructions and decrees. These documents were terrifying in form and content. They gave incontrovertible evidence that the former commission of the Committee on Municipal Economy had usurped power in Tmuskorpion and that it was incapable of wielding such power rationally.

“The greatest danger,” Christobal Joséevich continued in his even voice, sucking on the extinguished cigar, “is the fact that these rascals have the well-known Great Round Seal in their hands. I hope that you realize what this means.”

“I understand,” Eddie said quietly. “You can’t hack it out even with an ax.” His clear face clouded over. “What if we use the humanizer?”

Christobal Joséevich looked at Fedor Simeonovich.

“You can try, of course,” he said, shrugging. “However, I’m afraid that things have gone too far.”

“N-n-no, why do you say that?” Fedor Simeonovich countered. “T-try it, t-try it, Eddie. They’re not automatons up there. B-by the way, V-V-Vybegallo is up there, too.”

“How come?”

It seemed that three months ago a demand had been sent down for a scientific consultant at a fantastic salary. Nobody believed the salary offer, least of all Professor Vybegallo, who at that time was just finishing up a major project on developing, through reeducation, a worm that would bait itself on a hook. Vybegallo announced to all ears at the academic council his distrust of the offer and ran away that same evening, leaving everything behind. Many saw him, briefcase in his teeth, clambering up the inner wall of the elevator shaft, getting out on floors divisible by five to replenish his strength at the snack bars. A week later a decree was lowered, stating that Professor A. A. Vybegallo had been appointed scientific consultant to the Troika at the promised salary, with bonuses for his knowledge of foreign languages.

“Thanks,” said polite Eddie. “That’s valuable information. Shall we go?”

“Go, go, my dear friends,” Fedor Simeonovich said, touched to the quick. He peered into the magic crystal. “Yes, it’s time. Kamnoedov is g-getting to the end of his s-s-speech. B-be careful up there. It’s a c-creepy, terrifying place.”

“And no emotions!” Christobal Joséevich insisted. “If they don’t give you your bedbugs and boxes—it doesn’t matter. You are scouts. We will maintain one-way telepathic communications with you. We will follow your every move. Gathering information is your primary goal.”

“We understand,” said Eddie.

Christobal looked us over one more time.

“They should take Modest with them,” he muttered. “Fight fire with fire.” He gave a hopeless wave of the hand. “All right, go. Good luck.”

We left, and Eddie said that now we had to drop into his lab and pick up the humanizer. He had been quite active in practical humanization lately. Six cabinets in his lab housed an experimental apparatus whose functional principle boiled down to the fact that it repressed primitive urges in the person subjected to its rays and brought to the surface and directed outward all that was rational, good, and eternal. With the aid of this experimental humanizer, Eddie managed to cure a philatelist, return two out-of-control hockey fans to the bosoms of their families, and bring a chronic slanderer under control. Now he was trying to cure our close friend Vitya Korneev of insolence, unsuccessfully thus far.

“How are we going to lug all this?” I asked, looking at the cabinets in horror.

But Eddie calmed me down. It seemed that his portable version was almost ready. It was less powerful, but adequate, Eddie hoped, for our needs. “I’ll finish soldering it there,” he said, putting the flat metal box in his pocket.

When we got back to the landing, Modest Matveevich was winding up his speech.

“We’ll put an end to this, too,” he maintained in a slightly hoarse voice. “Because, first of all, the elevator safeguards our lives. That’s point one. And it saves work time. The elevator costs money, and we categorically forbid smoking in it. Which of you are the volunteers?” he asked, turning to the crowd unexpectedly.

Several voices responded, but Modest Matveevich turned down the candidates. “You’re too young to ride around in elevators,” he announced. “This is no spectroscope, you know.” Eddie and I silently made our way to the front of the crowd.

“We want to go to seventy-six,” Eddie said quietly.

There was a respectful silence. Modest Matveevich looked us over from head to toe with great doubt.

“You look weak to me. Too green. Do you smoke?”

“No,” said Eddie.

“Occasionally,” said I.

Tikhon the house spirit ran out of the crowd and whispered in Modest Matveevich’s ear. Modest Matveevich pursed his lips.

“We’ll have to check that,” he said and took out his notebook. “What’s your business up there, Amperian?” he asked grumpily.

“The Talking Bedbug.”

“And you, Privalov?”

“The Black Box.”

“Hmm.” Modest Matveevich flipped through his book. “Correct, they are located there—The Colony of Unexplained Phenomena. Let’s see your requisitions.”

We showed him.

“Well, all right, go on up. You won’t be the first, and you won’t be the last.”

He saluted us. Sad music began playing. The crowd hushed. We entered the elevator cab. I was sad and scared and I remembered that I had not said good-bye to Stella. “They’ll wipe them out up there,” Modest Matveevich was explaining to someone. “Too bad, they’re nice guys. Amperian doesn’t even smoke; cigarettes don’t touch his lips.” The metal gate clanged shut. Eddie pushed the button for seventy-six without looking at me. The door closed automatically, a sign flashed saying “No smoking! Fasten your seatbelts!”—and off we went.

At first it moved slowly and lazily, at a half-hearted trot. You could tell that it did not like going anywhere. Familiar corridors, the sad faces of our friends, and the homemade posters saying “Heroes!” and “You won’t be forgotten!” floated down past us. On the thirteenth floor they waved to us for the last time, and the elevator headed for uncharted territories.

Seemingly uninhabited rooms appeared and disappeared, the jolts became less frequent and weaker, and it felt as though the elevator was falling asleep en route. It came to a complete halt on the sixteenth floor. We had barely exchanged a few words with some armed guards, who turned out to work in the Department of Enchanted Treasure, when the elevator reared up on its hind legs and galloped off wildly toward the zenith with a metallic whinny.

Lights lit up and relays clicked. The acceleration was pushing us into the floor. Eddie and I clung to each other to stay on our feet. The mirrors reflected our sweaty, tense faces, and we had prepared for the worst when the gallop changed to a canter and the force fell to one and a half g’s. We cheered up. Making our hearts skip, the elevator parked itself at the fifty-seventh floor. The door opened and a heavy-set middle-aged man came in, carrying an open accordion. He casually extended “Greetings to one and all!” and pushed sixty-three. When the elevator started moving, he leaned against the wall and, rolling his eyes, started playing “Little Bricks” softly.

“From below?” he inquired indolently, without turning to us.

“From below,” we replied.

“Kamnoedov still there?”

“Yes.”

“Well, say hello,” the stranger said and paid no more attention to us. The elevator rose slowly, trembling in time with the song.

Eddie and I were so embarrassed that we set ourselves to learning the “Rules of Operation” etched on a brass plate. We learned that it was against the rules: for bats, vampires, and flying squirrels to settle in the car; to exit through the walls in case of an emergency stop between floors; to transport flammable and explosive materials as well as vessels containing genies or dragons without fireproof muzzles; and for house spirits to use the elevator without accompanying humans. Also everyone without exception was forbidden to create mischief, be involved in sleeping, or to hop.

We did not have the chance to read all the rules. The car stopped, the stranger got out, and Eddie pressed seventy-six one more time. At that very second the elevator rushed up with a ferocity that made us blank out. When we came to, the elevator was motionless and the door was open. We were on the seventy-sixth floor. We looked at each other and went out bearing our requisitions over our heads like white flags. I do not know for sure what it was we expected, but it was bound to be bad.

However, nothing terrible happened. We found ourselves in a round, empty, and very dusty room with a low gray ceiling. A white boulder, looking like an antitank stake placement, grew out of the parquet floor. Old yellowed bones were scattered around the boulder. There was the smell of mice, and it was murky. Suddenly the elevator gate clanged shut. We shuddered and turned around, but all we saw was the roof of the descending car. An evil roar filled the room and died down. We were trapped. I desperately wanted to get back downstairs immediately, but the lost look that crossed Eddie’s face gave me strength. I stuck out my jaw, folded my hands behind my back, and headed for the boulder, maintaining an independent and skeptical air. Just as I had expected, the boulder was a road marker, often encountered in fairy tales. The sign over it looked something like this:

“They’ve scraped off the last part,” Eddie explained. “Aha. There’s something else written in pencil: ‘We are here … we consulted the people … and the opinion is … that we should go … straight. Signed: L. Vuniukov.’ ”

We looked straight ahead. Our eyes had adjusted to the diffused light, and we saw the doors. There were three of them. The doors leading to what might be considered the right and the left were boarded shut, and there was a path going around the boulder through the dust from the elevator to the middle door.

“I don’t like any of this,” I said with courageous forthrightness. “These bones …”

“I think they’re ivory,” Eddie said. “But that’s not important. We can’t go back, can we?”

“Maybe we could write a note and throw it down the shaft? Otherwise we’ll disappear without a trace.”

“Alex, don’t forget that we are in telepathic communication. It’s embarrassing. Get yourself together.”

I got myself together. I stuck out my jaw again and resolutely strode toward the middle door. Eddie walked next to me.

“The Rubicon is crossed!” I announced and kicked the door.

The effect was wasted. There was a barely noticeable sign on the door that said “Pull,” and the Rubicon had to be crossed a second time, without the grand gestures and with the humiliating application of force to the powerful springs.

There was a park bathed in sunlight on the other side of the door. We saw sandy paths, trimmed hedges, and warning signs: “Do not walk on the lawn and do not eat the grass.” There was a cast-iron park bench with a broken back, and a strange man wearing a pince-nez was sitting on it, reading a newspaper and wriggling his bare toes. Seeing us, he became embarrassed for some reason, and without lowering the paper, removed the pince-nez agilely with his toes, wiped the lenses on his trousers, and put it back. Then he set aside the paper and rose. He was tall, very hairy, and wore a clean white vest and blue linen pants with suspenders. The gold-rimmed pince-nez squeezed the broad bridge of his nose and gave him a foreign look. He resembled something out of a political cartoon in the central newspapers. His big pointy ears twitched, and he took several steps toward us and spoke in a hoarse but pleasant voice:

“Welcome to Tmuskorpion, and allow me to present myself. I am Fedya the Abominable Snowman.”

We bowed silently.

“You’re from below, no? Thank God. I’ve been waiting for you for over a year—ever since I was rationalized. Let’s sit down. There’s still an hour until the evening session of the Troika. I would very much like, with your permission, for you to appear at the meeting with some preparation. Of course, I do not know that much, but permit me to tell you all that I do.”