He  splashed on some  after-shave. "Why shouldn't  I feel
all right?  A computer is  an apparatus  without fantasy. I can just picture
what it might have done  if it had an inkling of imagination. But  I'm fine:
I'm not a two-headed monster. I'm young, healthy. I'm  going  to have dinner
and go to Lena's. I've missed her."
     "What?"
     He watched me with interest, sparks dancing in his eyes.
     "Yes, we're  rivals  now!  Listen,  you seem to have  a  very primitive
attitude toward  all  this. Jealousy is old-fashioned and in poor taste. And
who  are  you jealous of, anyway? Think  about it.  If  Lena's  with  me, it
doesn't  mean that she's being unfaithful to you. You can only be unfaithful
with  another man,  someone different, more attractive, for instance. And as
far as she's  concerned,  I'm you.  Even  if  we  have  children, you  can't
consider yourself  cuckolded. You and I are identical-all the same genes and
chromosomes. Easy!"
     He had to hide behind the closet  door. I grabbed a dumbbell and headed
for him.
     "I'll kill  you! Don't try logic  with  me. I'll give  you  logic,  you
homunculus! I gave you life and I'll kill  you, understand? Don't  you  dare
even think about her!"
     My double fearlessly stepped out from the closet door. He was frowning.
     "Listen, Taras Bulba, put down the  dumbbell. If you're  going to  talk
like that, we  might as  well  agree on  some terms  right now. I'm  leaving
'homunculus'  and 'kill'  aside as products of  your  hysteria.  And  as for
locutions like 'I  gave  you life'... well,  you didn't. I exist without any
help  from you, and you might as  well forget any ideas of being my lord and
master."
     "What do you mean?"
     "Just that. Put down the dumbbell. I'm serious. If  you want precision,
I  was  created  despite your plans  simply  because  you  didn't  stop  the
experiment in  time, and when  you wanted  to, it  was too  late.  In  other
words," he snorted, "it's quite analagous to the situation when you appeared
in this world because of your parents' carelessness."
     (Look, he knows  everything! It's true. My mother once said, after some
prank of mine, to make me obey:
     "I was going to have an abortion, but changed my mind. And you...."
     She shouldn't  have  said that.  I  was  unwanted.  I might  never have
existed.)
     "But  as  distinguished  from your  mother, you  didn't bear me, didn't
suffer labor pains,  didn't nurse and clothe me,"  he continued. "You didn't
even  save  me  from  death  because,  after  all,  I  existed  before  this
experiment. I was  you. I don't owe  you my  life, my health, my engineering
degree-nothing! So let's start even."
     "And even with Lena?"
     "With Lena...  I  don't  know.  But  you  ...  you...."  Judging by his
expression  he  wanted  to  add something,  but held  his  tongue,  exhaling
sharply. "You have to respect my feelings  as I do yours, understand? I love
Lena too, you know. And I know that she's mine-my  woman, understand? I know
her body, the smell of her  skin  and hair, her breath...  and how she says,
'Really, Val, you're just like a bear!' and how she wrinkles her nose."
     He suddenly stopped. We  looked at  each other, overwhelmed by the same
thought. "Let's get to the lab!" I ran for my coat first.



        Chapter 9


     If you want a cab and fate offers a bus, take the bus; at least it runs
on a schedule.
     -K. Prutkov-enzhener, Thought 90

     We  made a beeline through the park:  the wind whistled in the branches
and in our ears. Asphalt-colored clouds blanketed the sky.
     The  lab  smelled  like  a  warm swamp. The ceiling  bulbs glowed  like
lighthouses in a  fog.  I stepped on a hose near my desk that had  not  been
there before, and pulled my foot away. The hose was moving!
     The flasks and bottles were covered with thick gray  dust; there was no
way to tell what was going on inside them. Streams of water bubbled from the
distillers and the relays clicked in the thermostats. In a far corner, which
could not  be reached  through the  jumble of  wires, tubes, and hoses,  the
lights on the TsVM-12's control panel blinked at me.
     There were many  more hoses than before. We made our way through  them,
as if through a jungle of lianas. Some hoses were contracting, pushing lumps
through  themselves. The  walls of the tank were covered with  some  kind of
mold. I wiped it off with my sleeve.
     In  the golden, murky  medium there was a silhouette of a man. "Another
double? No...." I looked closely. The contours were a woman's, contours that
I could never confuse with anyone else's. A hairless head fluttered in front
of my face.
     There was some mad logic in the fact that precisely now when the double
and I were fighting over Lena, the computer was struggling with our problem.
I was scared.
     "But the computer doesn't know her!"
     "You  do. The  computer is re-creating  her from your memory."  We were
whispering for some reason. "Look!"
     A skeleton was beginning  to form beyond Lena's  ghostly  outline.  Her
feet solidified into white cartilage and toes; her ankle and shin bones took
shape. Her spine formed into  a long white form and  ribs branched off  from
it; her shoulder blades grew. Seams appeared on  her  skull, and the outline
of her  eye sockets  formed. I can't say that it was a pleasant sight-seeing
your girlfriend's skeleton-but  I couldn't  take  my  eyes off  it. We  were
watching something that no one had ever seen-how a machine creates a person!
     "With my memory, my memory..." I  was thinking feverishly.  "But that's
not enough. Or has the  computer mastered the laws  of constructing a  human
body? From where? I certainly don't know them!"  The bones in the tank  were
becoming sheathed with dark  blue strips and  coils of muscle, and they were
covered  by  a yellowish layer of fat,  like  a  chicken's. The  circulatory
system shot red  throughout the  body. All  this  fluctuated in the mixture,
changing  shape  and  form. Even  Lena's face, with its closed  lids, behind
which we could see her watery eyes,  was distorted by horrible grimaces. The
computer seemed to be trying on ways to make a person.
     I know  too  little about  anatomy  in general  and  female  anatomy in
particular  to judge whether  the computer was building Lena correctly.  But
soon I  sensed that something was wrong. The original  contours  of her body
were changing. The shoulders,  which just a  few  minutes ago had been round
and soft, became angular and grew in breadth. What was it?
     "Her feet!" my double shouted. "Look at her feet!"
     I looked  at  her feet  that  took  a size  thirteen  shoe-and  when  I
understood I  broke  out  in  cold  sweat.  The  computer  had  run  out  of
information on Lena and was finishing her off with my body! I  turned to  my
double; his forehead was glistening with sweat too.
     "We have to stop it!"
     "How? Cut off the current?"
     "We can't. That will erase the memory bank in the computer. Turn on the
cooling... ?"
     "To slow down  the  process? It won't work. The computer has large heat
reserves...."
     The  distorted  body  in  the  tank was  taking  on clearer features. A
transparent mantle moved over it, and I  recognized the  style of the simple
dress in which I liked Lena best. The computer with an idiot's diligence was
dressing its creation in it.
     I had to order the computer to stop, convince it... but how?
     "Right!"  My double leaped over to the glass case, took  out Monomakh's
Crown, pushed the "translation"  button on it, and handed it to me.  "Put it
on and start hating Lena; think how you want to destroy her... go ahead."
     I grabbed the shiny  helmet, turned it around in my  hands, and gave it
back.
     "I can't...."
     "Jerk! What  else  is there? That thing will be  opening its eyes  soon
and...."
     He pulled on the helmet and started screaming and waving his arms:
     "Stop, computer!  Stop immediately, do you hear me? You're not creating
a good copy of a human! Stop, you idiot! Stop right now!"
     "Stop, machine, do you hear me?" I turned to the microphones. "Stop, or
we'll destroy you!"
     It's  disgusting  to  remember  that scene.  We, men who  were  used to
pushing buttons to stop and direct any process, shouting and explaining  ...
and to what? A  collection  of test  tubes,  electric circuits,  and  hoses.
Phooey! We were panicked.
     We yelled some more  in disgusting voices, when the hoses near the tank
began  shaking with energetic convulsions,  and the  hybrid  specimen in the
tank was covered with a white mist. We shut up. Three minutes later the mist
cleared. There  was  nothing in  the  gold  liquid. Only  ripples  and color
gradations spreading from the center to the edges.
     "Wow..." said my double. "I somehow never appreciated the fact that man
is seventy percent water. Now I've got it."
     We  made  our  way  to the window. The  humid stuffiness made  my  body
sticky. I unbuttoned my shirt, and so did my double. It was evening. The sky
had cleared.  The  windows of  the  institute  across the  way reflected the
sunset  as though nothing had happened. They reflected it like that on every
clear evening-yesterday, last month,  last year-when this had  not  existed.
Nature was making believe nothing had happened.
     The skeleton enveloped in translucent tissue stayed in my mind.
     "Those anatomical  details, the  grimaces...  brrrr!" said the  double,
lowering  himself into a chair. "I don't  even  feel  like seeing Lena right
now."
     I said nothing, because he had expressed my thoughts. It  was over now,
but then ... it's one thing to know, even intimately,  that  your woman is a
human being made of flesh, bones, and innards, and another thing to see it.
     I took  out the lab journal and looked at  the last few notes...  vague
and pointless. It's when  the experiment is working or when you get  a  good
idea that you write at length; here I had:
     April 8. Decoded numbers, 800 lines. Unsuccessful.
     April  9. Decoded  extracts from five rolls. Didn't understand a thing.
Some kind of schizophrenia!
     April 10. Decoded with the same  results.  I added  to  the flasks  and
bottles: Numbers 1, 3  and 5-2 liters  of glycerine; Numbers 2 and 7-200 ml.
of tyomochevina; and 2-3 liters of distilled water to all of them.
     April 11. "Streptocidal striptease with the trembling of streptococci."
That does it....
     And now I'll pick up the pen and write:
     April 22. The  complex has  re-created me, V. V. Krivoshein, Krivoshein
Number 2 is sitting next to me scratching his chin. A real joke!
     And then I was engulfed with a  wave of satanic  pride. After all, this
was  some  discovery!  It  encompassed  systemology,  electronics,  bionics,
chemistry, and biology-everything you could want and then some. And I did it
all. How I did it was another question. But the important  thing was me, ME!
Now I could invite the State Commission and  demonstrate the emergence of  a
new double  in the tank.  I could  imagine the  look on their faces. And  my
friends would  have  to  say:  "Boy  he  really  did it! That Krivoshein  is
something!"  And  Voltampernov   would  run  over  to  see....  I   had   an
uncontrollable urge to giggle; only the presence of my double stopped me.
     "Who cares about friends and Voltampernov," I heard my voice  say and I
didn't  realize at first  that it was  my double speaking. "This,  Val, is a
Nobel Prize!"
     That's  right: the Nobel Prize!  My portrait in all  the papers ... and
Lena, who treats me a little high-handedly now-and why not, she's beautiful,
and  I'm  not-will appreciate me then.  The  run-of-the-mill name Krivoshein
(once I tried looking in the encyclopedia for famous people with my name and
didn't find  any;  there  was  a  Krivoshilkov  and  a  Krivonogov,  but  no
Krivosheins yet) will resound. Krivoshein! The same....
     I  was made uneasy by these meditations. My vain thoughts  disappeared.
Really, what would happen? What should be done with this discovery?
     I shut my journal.
     "So,  are we going to  create  in our image?  A crush of Krivosheins? I
guess we could make others if we recorded  them into the computer. Damn  it!
This is ... it just doesn't make sense."
     "Hm. And things were so peaceful...." My double shook his head.
     Precisely. Everything had been peaceful-"Nice weather, miss. Which  way
are you  going?"  "In the opposite direction!" "Me too.  What's  your name?"
"What's it to you?"-and so on right  up to the wedding palace, the maternity
ward, a  licking for  killing a cat  with a slingshot, and burning the hated
zoology   textbook   after  graduation.   The   chairman  of  the  Dneprovsk
Registration Office put it so well in his article: "The family is the method
of  propagating  the  species and  increasing  the state's population."  And
suddenly-hail  science!-there  is  a  rival  method;  we  pour and  sprinkle
reagents from  the local  chemistry manual, pass  input through sensors, and
get a person. And  a mature one  at that, with  muscles  and  an engineering
degree, with habits and life experience.
     "It looks as if we're taking aim at the most  human of man's qualities:
love,  parenthood,  childhood!"  I  was  beginning  to  shudder.  "And  it's
profitable. It's efficient and profitable, the  most terrible things in  our
rationalistic age!"
     My double looked up and there was anxiety and tension in his eyes.
     "Listen, but why is that terrible? Okay, we worked-rather, you  worked.
So you made an experimental determination and  on its basis  a  discovery. A
method of synthesizing  information  into a person. The ancient dream of the
alchemist.... That's  very  nice! Once  upon a time  kings financed ventures
like  that very  generously.  Of  course,  they  chopped  off  the  heads of
researchers who  had  failed, but if you think about it, they were right. If
you  can't do it, don't take it  on. But nothing will happen to us. Just the
reverse. Why is it so terrible?"
     "Because this isn't the Middle Ages," I thought to myself. And  not the
last  century. And not  even the beginning  of  the twentieth century,  when
everything was still ahead of  us. In those days, discoverers had  the moral
right to  spread their arms and say: well, we had no  idea things would turn
out badly.... We, their lucky descendants, don't have that right. Because we
know.  Because it's  all  happened  before. It had  all happened before: gas
attacks, according to science; Maidanek and Auschwitz, according to science;
Hiroshima   and   Nagasaki,   according  to   science.   Plans   for  global
warfare-science   with  the  use  of  mathematics.   Limiting   warfare-also
science.... Decades had passed since the last  world war. The ruins had been
rebuilt. Fifty million corpses  had rotted  and enriched the earch. Hundreds
of  millions  of people had  been born and grown  up-and  the memory had not
faded. It was horrible to  remember and  more horrible to forget. Because it
had not become part of the past. The knowledge remained: people can do that.
     The inventors and researchers are merely specialists in their field. To
obtain new  information from  nature they have to expend  so much energy and
inventiveness  that they  have neither strength nor ideas  left for thinking
outside  their fields-what will this do in real life? These people and their
chosen fields-people for whom any  change or discovery is just another means
of  achieving  old aims: power, wealth, influence, and buyable pleasures. If
we  gave them our  process, they  would see only  one  new thing in it: it's
profitable!  Should  they  make  doubles  of  famous  singers,  actors,  and
musicians?  No, that isn't  profitable. It's better  to  produce records and
posters.  But it would be profitable to mass-produce  people  for a  special
goal:  voters  to  beat  a  political  opponent  (much easier  than spending
hundreds of  millions on the usual  election campaign), women  for brothels,
workers in rare fields, cannon-fodder soldiers ... and even specialists with
narrow vision and tame  temperament who  would  continue  inventing  without
getting involved in things that  were none  of their business.  A man with a
specific function-a  man-thing. What  could  be worse?  How do we  deal with
things and machines that  have outlived their usefulness  and have fulfilled
their function? They're recycled, burned, compressed, discarded. And you can
treat men, things, the same way.
     "But that's the  way  it is over there...." My double waved in a  vague
direction. "Our society wouldn't permit it."
     "And we don't  have  people who  are  ready to use everything from  the
ideas  of communism to  false radio  reports, from  their work  situation to
quotes  from the  classics in order  to  become  wealthy,  and  have a  good
position, and then  to get more and more for themselves,  at no  matter what
cost? People  who see  the  least  attempt to reduce  their  privileges as a
phenomenal catastrophe?"
     "We do,"  my double  agreed. "But people basically are good or else the
world would have turned into a mass of bums attacking each other a long time
ago, and died without thermonuclear war. But... if you don't count the minor
natural disasters-floods, earthquakes, epidemics-people are  at fault in all
their problems, including the most horrible ones. It's their fault that they
submitted  to  what they shouldn't have submitted to,  agreed  to what  they
should have fought, and thought that  they weren't  involved.  At fault that
they did work that  paid better instead of  work that was needed by everyone
and themselves. If more people  on earth coordinated their work and business
with the interests of mankind, we would have nothing to worry about with our
discovery. But that's not  the  way it  is. And that's  why, if  there is at
least  one  influential  and  active  bastard  in  dangerous proximity,  our
discovery will turn into a hideous monstrosity."
     "Because the application of scientific discoveries is mere  technology.
Once upon a time, technology was invented to help man in his battle  between
man and man. And  in that use technology didn't  solve any problems; it only
increased them. Think how many  scientific,  technological  and sociological
problems there are now instead of  the one that was solved twenty years ago:
how can you synthesize helium from hydrogen?
     "If we  announce our discovery, life will become  even scarier. And  we
will have fame. Every man, woman, and child will know exactly  whom to curse
and why."
     "Listen, maybe you're right . . . ?" my double asked. "We  saw nothing,
know nothing. People have enough terrible discoveries to deal with as it is.
Let's cut off the juice and turn off the faucets. How about it?"
     "And  right  away,  the problem no longer  exists. I'll write  off  the
reagents  I used up and  make up some excuse about the work. And  I'll start
work on something simpler and more  innocent...." "I'll go to Vladivostok to
be a  fitter in the ports." We stopped talking. Venus blazed over  the black
trees  outside the window. A cat cried with a child's voice. A howling  note
pierced the grounds' silence-they  were running tests on a new jet engine in
Lena's  construction  bureau.  "Work goes on.  It's  right;  1941  cannot be
repeated." I was thinking about  it so  that I could  put off  my decision a
little longer.  "Deep  underground, plutonium and  hydrogen  bombs are going
off. Highly  paid scientists and engineers are determined  to master nuclear
arms. And pointy-nosed rockets peer into space from their concrete silos all
over  the  world.  Each  is  pointed at  its  objective;  they're wired  up.
Computers  are  constantly  testing  them: any  problems?  As  soon  as  the
predetermined   time   of  reliability  runs  out  on  an  electronic  unit,
technicians  in uniform  unplug it and  quickly,  quickly, replace  it  with
another unit,  as though  the  war they absolutely  had to  win was about to
start any second. Work goes on."
     "Nonsense!"   I   said.  "Humanity   isn't  mature   enough  for   many
things-nuclear energy  and  space flight-so what? The discovery is objective
reality; you can't  cover it up.  If not us, someone else will come upon it.
The  basic idea of the experiment is simple enough. Are  you  sure that they
will deal with the discovery better than  we? I'm  not. That's why  we  must
think what to do to keep this discovery from becoming a threat to mankind."
     "It's complicated," my double sighed and stood up. "I'll take a look at
what's  happening  in  the tank."  He was  back  in a flash. Stunned.  "Val,
there's ... father's in there!"


     Radio  operators have a sure  sign  to go  by: if a  complex electronic
circuit works the first time after it's put together, expect  trouble. If it
doesn't  foul up in the trials, then it will embarrass the  workers when the
inspection commission is there; if it manages  to pass the commission,  then
it will exhibit one flaw after  another in mass  production. The weak points
always show up.
     The  computer was trying to achieve  informational equilibrium not with
me, the  direct  source  of  information,  but with the  entire  information
environment that  it found  out about from me, with the entire world. That's
why Lena appeared and that's why my father appeared.
     And that's why all the rest happened. That's why my double and I worked
nonstop for a  whole  week. This activity  of the  computer's was a  logical
extension of its development; but  from  a technical point of view it was an
attempt with  lousy equipment. Instead of  a  "model  of the world" the tank
contained a nightmare.
     I can't describe how my father made his appearance in the tank-it's too
terrible. That's the way  he had looked on  the day he died: a flabby, heavy
old man with a broad shaven face and a cloudy  mane of white hair around his
skull. The computer had  picked  the last and most depressing memory of him.
He had died before  I  got there. He wasn't breathing,  but I still tried to
warm his cooling body.
     Then I dreamed about  him  several  times, and it  was always  the same
dream: I rub my father's  cold body for all I'm worth and it gets warmer and
he  starts  breathing, with  difficulty at first, a death  rattle,  and then
normally. He opens his eyes and gets  up  out of bed. "I was sick a  little,
son," he says in an apologetic voice. "But I'm fine now." The dream was like
death in reverse.
     And now  the  computer was  creating him so that he could die once more
before our eyes. We understood rationally that this was not our father but a
regular information hybrid that could not be permitted to be  completed;  we
knew that it would  be a body, or a  mad creature, or something  along those
lines. But neither he nor I could put  on Monomakh's Crown  and  command the
computer to stop. We avoided looking at the tank and each other.
     Then I walked over to the panel and pulled the switch.  It was dark and
quiet in the lab for a moment.
     "What are you  doing?" My double ran  over to the panel and  turned the
juice back on.
     The  filter  condensers  did  not  discharge in  that second,  and  the
computer went on working. But everything disappeared from the tank.
     Later  I  saw all the chaos of my  memory in the  tank: my  fifth-grade
botany teacher Elizaveta Moiseevna; Klava, my  love interest  in those days;
some old acquaintance with a poetic profile; the Moldavian driver I glimpsed
briefly at a bazaar in Kishinev.... It's a hell to  list them all. It wasn't
a "model of the world" either;  everything was formed vaguely, in fragments,
the way it's  stored  in  human  memory,  which  knows  how  to  forget. For
instance,  only  Elizaveta  Moiseevna's  small,  stern  eyes  under  forever
frowning brows were right, and the only thing left of  the Moldavian was the
sheepskin hat lowered all the way to his mustache....
     We took turns sleeping. One always had to keep watch at the tank to put
on the crown in time and say "No!"
     My double was first to think of sticking a thermometer in the tank. (It
was  nice  to  observe  the pleasure he  derived from  his first independent
creative act!) The temperature was 104░F.
     "It's feverish delirium."
     "We should give it an aspirin," I joked.
     But,  thinking about it, we decided to lower the computer's temperature
by  pouring  quinine  into the flasks and  bottles  that  fed  the tank. The
temperature went  down  a  few degrees,  but  the  delirium  continued.  The
computer was  combining images the way they occur in a nightmare-the face of
the  institute's  first department head, Johann Johannovich Kliapp, smoothly
took on the features of Azarov, who then grew Hilobok's mustache....
     When the temperature  dropped some more, flat images, like on a screen,
of political figures, movie stars, productive workers with miniature  Boards
of  Commendation, Lomonosov, Faraday,  and Maria Trapezund, a  popular local
singer,  appeared   on  the  surface  of  the  liquid  in  the  tank.  These
two-dimensional shadows-some in color, some  in black and white-would appear
for a second and then melt away. It looked as if my memory was drying out.
     On the sixth or seventh day (we had lost track of time) the temperature
of the golden liquid dropped to 98.6░.
     "It's normal!" And I went off to get some sleep.
     My double stayed on duty.
     That night he shook me awake.
     "Get up! The computer is making eyes."
     I sent him to hell. He poured a mug of water on my head. I had to go.


     At first,  I  thought that there were bubbles  in the liquid. But  they
were eyes- white spheres  with pupils and  colorful irises.  They floated up
from the bottom, bounced against the transparent  sides of the tank, watched
our movements and the  blinking  lights on the TsVM-12's control panel. They
were blue, gray, brown, green, black, huge horse's  eyes with violet irises,
cat's eyes, glowing and with a vertical pupil, and black bird's eyes. It was
a collection of every kind of eye I had ever seen. Since they had no lids or
lashes, they seemed surprised.
     By morning eyes were appearing near  the tank as well: muscular growths
stuck out from the hoses, ending in lids and eyelashes. The lids opened. New
eyes stared at us intently and expectantly.  The infinite silent stares were
driving us crazy.
     And  then . . . feelers and  trunks grew like bamboo  runners from  the
tank, the  flasks,  and hoses.  There was something naive and  childlike  in
their  movements.  They interwove,  touched  the apparatus and bottles,  the
room. One little feeler reached an uninsulated clamp, touched it, and jerked
back, drooping.
     "Hey, this is getting serious!" my double said.
     It  was. The computer was moving from a contemplative method of getting
information to an active one, and was growing its  own sensors and executive
mechanisms  for  it.  Whatever you  called this development-  a striving for
informational equilibrium, self-construction, or  a biological synthesis  of
information- you couldn't help being impressed by the tenacity  and power of
the process.
     But  after all  we  had  seen, we were in no mood  for awe  or academic
curiosity. We guessed how it might end.
     "Enough!" I picked up Monomakh's Crown. "I don't know if we'll be  able
to make it do what we want . . ."
     "It would help if we knew what we wanted," my double added.
     ". . .  but for a  start we have  to  keep it from doing  what we don't
want."
     ."Get  rid  of the  eyes!  Get  rid  of  the  feelers!  Stop  gathering
information! Get rid of the eyes. Get rid of the feelers! Stop!" We repeated
these thoughts through the crown, spoke them into the microphones.
     But  the computer went on moving  its feelers and following us with its
hundreds of eyes. It was beginning to look like a showdown.
     "The result of our work," my double said.
     "So!" I  said. "If that's the way." I punched the tank. All the feelers
quivered and stretched  out for me. I moved away.  "Val, turn off the water!
Disconnect the feed hoses!"
     "Computer,  you're going  to die. Computer,  you'll  die of  hunger and
thirst if you don't obey."
     Of  course,  that was crude and obvious, but what else  could we do? My
double  slowly turned the handle on  the  water  supply. The stream of water
from the distillers turned into a  drip.  I clamped the hoses.  The  feelers
shuddered and drooped. They started curling up and going back into the tank.
The eyes dimmed, teared, and crinkled.
     An hour later everything was gone. The liquid in the tank was once more
golden and clear.
     "That's better!" I took off the crown and rolled up the wires.
     We  turned the water back on, removed the clamps and stayed  in the lab
until late  at night,  smoking, talking about  nothing, waiting to see  what
would  happen. We didn't  know  what we were more afraid of: a  new delirium
from the computer or that  the system, muzzled  so harshly, would fall apart
and  cease  existing. On the first day we  talked  about  "covering  up  the
discovery." But now we couldn't stand the thought that it might cover itself
and disappear.
     My double and  I took turns approaching the tank,  sniffing  carefully,
afraid to smell decay  or degeneration; not trusting the thermometer we kept
touching the sides of the tank and the warm living hoses. Were  they cooling
off? Were they enflamed with fever again?
     But the air  in the room stayed warm, humid, and fresh, as if there was
a  large, clean animal in the room. The computer was alive. It simply wasn't
undertaking anything without us. We had tamed it!
     After  midnight, I looked at my double,  like a mirror. He was blinking
with tired red eyes and smiled:
     "Everything seems okay, Shall we go to bed?"
     There was  no  artificial double for  me.  A comrade,  a colleague, was
sitting next to me, just as tired and happy as I was. And-how strange!-I had
not  felt joy at  meeting him in the  institute  grounds  and  I hadn't been
soothed  by the phantasmagoric memory show in the tank ... but  now I was at
peace and very happy.
     It's really true? the most  important thing for a person is to  feel in
control of a situation.



        Chapter 10


     Is not the zealous search  for causal connections another expression of
the property instinct in man?  Even  here we seek  to  know what  belongs to
what.
     -K. Prutkov-enzhener, Thought 10

     We  went  out  into  the institute  grounds. The  night was  warm.  Our
exhaustion made us forget that  we should not appear in public together, and
we remembered  only in the  entry. Old man Vakhterych stared at us  with his
inebriated eyes. We froze.
     "Ah. Valentin Vasilyevich!"  the old man exclaimed  happily.  "Done for
the day?"
     "Yes ..." we replied in unison.
     "Good."  Vakhterych  rose heavily  and unlocked  the front  door.  "And
nothing  will happen to the institute, and no one will steal  it, and have a
good  evening,  and  I  still  have  to sit  here.  People go off  to  enjoy
themselves, and I have to sit here...."
     We ran out into the street and hurried off.
     "That's  something!" I  noticed that  the facade  of  the new institute
building was decorated with multicolored lights. "What's the date?"
     My double counted on his fingers:
     "The first... no, the second of May. Happy holiday, Val!"
     "Belatedly... oh, boy!"
     I remembered that I had a date  with Lena for May I to go out with some
of her  co-workers and to go for a motorcycle excursion on the second. I had
blown it. She would never forgive me.
     "And Lena is out dancing right  now .  . . somewhere with somebody," my
double muttered.
     "What do you care?"
     We  fell silent. Buses, decorated with branches, raced up and  down the
street. Neon rocket boosters  were  set up on rooftops. We  could see people
dancing, singing, drinking, through open windows.
     I  lit  a  cigarette and  started  rethinking my  observations  of  the
computer-womb  (as we finally decided to call  the complex).  "First of all,
it's not  a  computer-oracle  or a  computer-thinker, because  there  is  no
winnowing  of  information  in it,  only combinations-sometimes  meaningful,
sometimes not. Secondly, it can  be controlled not only  by energy (clamping
the hoses, turning off  water and  power-in other words, grabbing it by  the
throat), but also by information. Of course, for now it responds only to the
command  'No!'-but  it's a  beginning. I think  the most  convenient  way to
command  it  is  through  Monomakh's  Crown  with  brain  waves. Third,  the
computer-womb, while very  complex, is still only a  machine,  an artificial
creation   without  a  goal.   The  striving  for  stability,  informational
equilibrium,  is  not a  goal but  a characteristic,  just  like  that of an
analytic scale. But it is expressed in a more complex way: through synthesis
in the form of living matter via external information. A goal always lies in
solving  a  problem. There  was no problem-and so it fooled  around from  an
excess of possibilities. But..."
     "...  man must set  its goals,"  my double  picked up; I was no  longer
amazed by  his ability  to  think with  me.  "As  for  all  other  machines.
Therefore, as the bureaucrats say, all responsibility lies with us."
     I didn't  feel  like thinking about responsibility.  You  work and work
unstintingly-and then you get stuck with responsibility, too. And  people go
off  to enjoy themselves. We missed the holiday.  What  dopes! And my  whole
life will go by in a smelly lab.
     We turned down  a chestnut-lined avenue  which led  to Academic Town. A
couple strolled ahead  of  us. My  double and I felt  a pang-we poor, sober,
hungry,  and  lonely men. That couple  fit in  so beautifully  in the gaslit
avenue. Tall and  elegant, he held her by  the waist. She bent her full mane
of hair toward him. We unthinkingly  sped  up,  in order to pass them and be
spared the lyrical sight.
     "We'll play some music, now, Tanechka! I have records  that'll make you
salivate!"  Hilobok's buzzing voice reached us,  and we  were  knocked for a
loop. The charm of the lovely picture faded. "Harry has another new one," my
double  announced.  As we got  closer  we  recognized  the  girl,  too. Just
recently she had come to the institute in school uniform to do her probation
work; now,  I think, she worked as a lab  assistant in  the digital computer
lab. I liked her looks: full lips, a soft nose, and big brown eyes that were
dreamy and trusting.
     "And  when Arkady  Arkadievich  is  on vacation or  on a business  trip
abroad, I  have to  make many  of his decisions," Harry said,  spreading his
peacock  tail.  "And   even  when  he's  here  ...  what?  Of  course,  it's
interesting, why not?"
     There goes little  Tanechka,  her  head  bent forward towards Hilobok's
shoulder,  and assistant  professor Harry seems like  a  shining  knight  of
Soviet science to her. Maybe he even has radiation sickness like the hero of
the  movie  Nine  Days  in  One Year? Or  maybe  his  health  is  completely
undermined by  his  scientific work,  like the hero of the  movie Everything
Will Remain  for  the  People?  And so she melts,  imagining herself as  his
heroine,  the  little fool.... Your  scientific  boyfriend is in fine shape,
don't you worry, Tanechka. He hasn't worn himself out with science. And he's
leading you directly to your first major disillusionment in life. He's a pro
in that department....
     My double slowed down and said under his breath:
     "Should we beat him up? It would be very easy; you go off to visit some
friends and establish an alibi, and I'll...."
     He beat  me to it by a split second. He spoke hurriedly in  general, to
prove  his individuality.  He understood that we thought  the same  way. But
since he  spoke up so soon, I  immediately developed the second mechanism of
proving my individuality: opposition to someone else's idea.
     "Over the girl, you mean? The hell with her; if not her, then he'll get
someone else."
     "Over her, and everything in general. For the good of my soul. Remember
the stink he made over our work?" His eyes narrowed. "Remember?"
     I remembered.  I  was working  in  Valery Ivanov's  lab  then. We  were
developing storage blocks for defense  computers.  Serious things were going
on in  the world,  and  we were  working  hard, not  observing  days off  or
holidays,  and  turned in  the  work  six  months  before  the  government's
deadline.   And   soon   the   institute  well-wishers   related   Hilobok's
pronouncement on us: "In science people who turn in research before it's due
are either  careerists or brown-noses, or  both!"  His pronouncement  became
popular. We have quite a few who are in no danger of being called careerists
or brown-noses from working the way we did. Sensitive and  hotheaded, Valery
kept  wanting to have a heart-to-heart with Hilobok, then had a  fight  with
Azarov and left the institute.
     My fists grew heavy with the memory. Maybe my double  could provide the
alibi, and I'd... ? And then  I pictured it: a sober intelligent man beating
another intelligent man to a pulp in front of a girl. What was that! I shook
my head to chase out the image.
     "No, that's not it. We can't succumb to such base feelings."
     "Then what is if?"
     "Then we must at  least  protect  those dreamy eyes from Harry's sweaty
embrace."  My double bit his  lip thoughtfully  and  pushed me  under a tree
(taking  the  initiative  again).  "Harry  Haritonovich,  could  I  see  you
privately for a moment?"
     Hilobok and the girl turned around.
     "Ah,  Valentin Vasilyevich! Of  course ... Tanechka, I'll catch up with
you." The assistant professor turned toward my double.
     "Aha!" I  got his plan and raced through the trees' shadows. Everything
worked  perfectly.  Tanechka got as  far as the fork  in the road,  stopped,
looked around and saw the same man who had called her boyfriend away just  a
few minutes before.
     "Tanechka,"  I  said.  "Harry  Haritonovich  asked  me  to  convey  his
apologies. He won't  be returning. You see, his wife  is back and....  Where
are you going? I'll walk you!"
     But Tanechka  was running away, hands over  her face, straight for  the
bus stop. I headed home.
     A few minutes later my double came in.
     "Wait," I  said before  he  could open his mouth. "You told  Harry that
Tanechka is the fiancee of your friend, who's a boxing champion?"
     "And a judo black belt. And you told her about his wife?"
     "Right. Well, at  least  we've  found  one positive application  of our
study."
     We got undressed, washed, and got ready for bed. I  took the bed and he
took the folding bed.
     "By the way, speaking of Hilobok," my  double said, sitting down on his
bed.  "We didn't  mention that our retrieval topic will be  discussed at the
next  scientific council?  If Harry hadn't reminded  me so  nicely, I  would
never have known. 'It's  time, Valentin Vasilyevich. After  all you've  been
working six months now, and it hasn't been discussed yet. Of  course, random
retrieval  is  a good thing, but  you've  been requisitioning equipment  and
materiel, and I keep getting calls from accounting, wanting to know what  to
call the account. And there's  talk in the institute that Krivoshein can  do
what he wants while everyone else has to fill out forms in triplicate. I, of
course, understand that  you must do all this for your dissertation, but you
must give your topic form and bring  it into the overall plan....' The creep
brought up work as soon as I told him about the boxing and judo."
     "If Hilobok is to be believed,  all  science is done to keep accounting
happy."
     I explained the situation to  my double. When  the computer was spewing
out  those crazy numbers, I had called Azarov in total despair and asked  to
see him for advice. As usual, he was too busy and suggested that it would be
better to have a scientific council; he would ask Hilobok to arrange it.
     "And by then, the little red egg had hatched," my  double finished. "So
shall we report  it? With the intention of  writing a master's dissertation.
Even Hilobok understands that it's important."
     "And I'll bring you in as a demonstration at my defense?"
     "We'll see who demonstrates  whom," he replied. "But basically ... it's
impossible. We can't."
     "Of course we can't," I agreed glumly. "And we can't apply for a patent
either.  It  looks  as if  I have  only expenses  so far  on  this deal,  no
profits."