But Elena Zavadskaya was going to Venus with the most unexpected intentions. In the first place, she turned out to be a member of the World Council. She was categorically opposed to the conditions under which Moskvichev and twenty thousand of his comrades worked. She was also categorically opposed to cities on swamps, to underground explosions, and to new graves over which the black winds would sing the legends of heroes. In short, she was going to Venus in order to study the local conditions carefully and to take necessary measures toward Venus’s decolonization. She conceived the Earthman’s mission to be the establishment of automatic factories on alien planets. Moskvichev knew all this. Zavadskaya hung over him like the sword of Damocles, threatening all his plans. But besides that, Zavadskaya was an embryomechanical surgeon. She could work without a clinic, under any conditions, up to her waist in a swamp, and there were still very few such surgeons on Earth. On Venus they were irreplaceable. So Moskvichev held his tongue, evidently hoping that eventually everything would work out somehow. Kondratev, coming to the conclusion that Zavadskaya’s method was irrefutable, got up and quietly went out onto the porch.
The night was moonless and clear. Above the dark, huge, formless forest, bright white Venus hung low. Kondratev looked at it a long time and thought, Maybe I should have a try there? It wouldn’t matter as what—ditchdigger, a leader of some sort, demolition man. It can’t be that I’m no good for anything at all.
“Are you looking at it?” came a voice out of the darkness. “I am too. I’m waiting until it sets, and then I’ll go to bed.” The voice was calm and tired. “I think and think, you know. Planting gardens on Venus… drilling into the moon with an enormous anger. In the last analysis, that’s the meaning of our existence, expending energy. And, as much as possible, in such a way that it’ll be interesting to you and useful to somebody else. And it’s gotten rather difficult to expend energy on Earth. We have everything, we’re too powerful. A contradiction, if you like. Of course, even today there are many people who work at full output—researchers, teachers, doctors in preventive medicine, people in the arts. Agrotechnicians, waste-disposal specialists. And there always will be a lot of them. But what about the rest? Engineers, machine operators, doctors in curative medicine. Of course some go in for art, but the majority look in art not for escape but for inspiration. Judge for yourself—wonderful young guys. There’s too little room for them! They have to blow things up, remake things, build things. And not build just a house, but at least a world—Venus today, Mars tomorrow, something else the day after tomorrow. The interplanetary expansion of the human race is beginning—like the discharge of some giant electric potential. Do you agree with me, comrade?”
“I agree with you too,” said Kondratev.
8. Cornucopia
Evgeny and Sheila were working. Evgeny was sitting at a table, reading Harding’s Philosophy of Speed. The table was piled high with books, microbook tapes, albums, and files of old newspapers. On the floor, among scattered microbook cases, sat a portable access board for the Informatoreum. Evgeny read quickly, fidgeting with impatience and making frequent notations on a scratch pad. Sheila was sitting in a deep armchair, with her legs crossed, reading Evgeny’s manuscript. The room was bright and nearly quiet—colored shadows flashed by on the stereovision screen, and the tender strains of an ancient South American melody could barely be heard.
“This is an amazing book,” said Evgeny. “I can’t even slow down. How did he do it?”
“Harding?” Sheila said absently. “Yes, Harding is a great craftsman.”
“How does he do it? I don’t understand what his secret is.”
“I don’t know, dear,” Sheila said without taking her eyes off the manuscript. “No one knows. He himself doesn’t know.”
“You get an amazing feel of the rhythm of the thought and the rhythm of the words. Who is he?” Evgeny looked at the preface. “Professor of structural linguistics. Aha. That explains it.”
“That explains nothing,” said Sheila. “I’m a structural linguist too.”
Evgeny glanced at her, and then immersed himself again in his reading. The twilight was thickening outside the open window. Tiny lightning-bug sparks flashed in the dark bushes. Late birds called to one another sleepily.
Sheila gathered up the pages. “Wonderful people!” she said loudly. “Such daring!”
“Really?” Evgeny exclaimed happily, turning toward her.
“Did you people really endure all that?” Sheila looked at Evgeny with eyes wide. “You went through all that and still remained human. You didn’t die of fear. You didn’t go crazy from loneliness. Honestly, Evgeny, sometimes I think you really are a hundred years older than I.”
“Precisely,” said Evgeny.
He got up, crossed the room, and sat down by Sheila’s feet. She ran her fingers through his red hair, and he pressed his cheek to her knee.
“You know what was the most frightening part of all?” he said. “After the second ether bridge. When Sergei lifted me out of the acceleration cradle and I started to go to the control room, and he wouldn’t let me.”
“You didn’t write about that,” said Sheila.
“Falin and Pollack were still in the control room,” said Evgeny. “Dead,” he added after a silence.
Sheila stroked his head silently.
“You know,” he said, “in a certain sense ancestors are always richer than descendants. Richer in dreams. The ancestors dream about things that will be mere routine for the descendants. Oh, Sheila, that was a dream—to get to the stars! We had given everything for that dream. But you flit off to the stars the way we flew home to Mother for summer vacation. You people are poor, poor!”
“Each age has its dream,” said Sheila. “Your dream took man to the stars, while ours is returning him to Earth. But it will be a completely different person.”
“I don’t understand,” said Evgeny.
“We ourselves don’t understand it properly yet. It is a dream, after all. Homo omnipotens. Master of every atom in the universe. Nature has too many laws. We discover them and use them, but still they get in our way. You can’t break a law of nature. You can only obey it. And that’s very boring, when you stop to think about it. But Homo omnipotens will just change the laws he doesn’t like. Just up and change them.”
Evgeny said, “In the old days such people were called magicians. And they chiefly inhabited fairy tales.”
“Homo omnipotens will inhabit the universe. The way you and I do this room.”
“No,” said Evgeny. “That I don’t understand. That is somehow beyond me. Probably I’m a very prosaic thinker. Somebody even told me yesterday that I was boring to talk to. And I didn’t take offense. I really don’t understand everything yet.”
“Who was it that said you were boring?” Sheila asked angrily.
“Well, somebody. It doesn’t matter—I really wasn’t up to my usual form. I was in a great hurry to get home.”
Sheila took him by the ears and looked him straight in the eyes. “The person who said that to you,” she muttered, “is a jackass and an ingrate. You should have looked down your nose at him and said, ‘I gave you the road to the stars, and my father gave you the road to everything you have today.’”
Evgeny grinned. “Well, people forget that. Ingratitude to ancestors is the ordinary thing. Take my great-grandfather. He died in the siege of Leningrad, and I don’t even remember his name.”