“Polly, Polly,” Kostylin exhorted, “you’ve got cattle on the brain! Let’s go to the lab instead.”
“I’m septic,” Pol declared. “I don’t want to go to the lab. I want to go to the cattle.”
“They’ll butt you,” Kostylin said, and stopped short. That had been a mistake.
“Really?” Polly said with quiet rapture. “A shirt. Red. I’ll get a bullfight going.”
Kostylin slapped his hands on his thighs in despair. “Look what I get stuck with! A craymatador!”
He got up and headed for the building. As he walked past Pol, Pol stood on tiptoes, bent over, and did a semiveronica with great elegance. Lin began to bellow, and butted him in the stomach.
When he saw the cattle, Pol immediately realized that there would be no bullfight. Under the bright, hot sky, enormous spotted hulks moved slowly in a row through thick, succulent, man-high grass stretching out to the horizon. The line ate its way into the soft green plain-and behind it was left black steaming ground bare of a single blade of grass. A steady electric odor hung over the plain—there was the smell of ozone, warm black soil, grass, and fresh manure.
“Zow!” Pol whispered, and sat down on a hummock.
The line of cattle moved past him. The school where Pol had studied was in a grain district and Pol knew little about cattle raising, and had long forgotten what little he had learned. He had never had occasion to think about beef cattle, either. He simply ate beef. And now, with a rumble and ceaseless crackling, a herd of beef on the hoof, crunching, tramping, and masticating, went past him with heart-rending sighs. From time to time some enormous brown dribbling muzzle, smeared with green, stuck up from the grass and let out an indistinct deep roar.
Then Pol noticed the cybers. They walked a bit ahead of the line—brisk, flat machines on broad soft caterpillar treads. Now and again they stopped and dug into the ground, lagged behind, and then rushed forward. There were few of them, perhaps fifteen in all. They rushed along the line with frightening speed, throwing moist black clods out from under their treads in fan-shaped showers.
Suddenly a dark cloud covered the sun. A heavy, warm rain began. Pol looked back at the village, at the white cottages scattered over the dark green of gardens. It seemed to him that the paraboloid grids of the weather condensers, on the openwork tower of the microweather station, were staring straight at him. The rain passed quickly; the cloud moved along after the herd. Dim silhouettes that had unexpectedly appeared on the horizon caught Pol’s attention, but here he started getting bitten. They were nasty-looking insects, small, gray, winged. Pol realized that these were flies. Perhaps even dung-covered ones. Once he had figured this out, Pol jumped up and rushed briskly back to the village. The flies did not pursue him.
Pol crossed a stream, stopped on the bank, and debated for some time whether or not to go swimming. Deciding it wasn’t worth it, he began climbing the path to the village. As he walked, he thought, It was right that I got the rain dumped on me. And the flies know who to land on… It’s what I get for being a parasite. Everybody works like human beings. The Captain is up in space… Athos catches fleas on blue stars… Lin, the lucky man, cures cattle. Why am I like this? Why should I, an honest, hard-working man, feel like a parasite? He shuffled down the path and thought about how good it had been the night when he latched onto the solution of Chebotarev’s Problem, and had dragged Lida from her bed and made her verify it. When everything had turned out right, she even kissed him on the cheek. Pol touched his cheek and sighed. It would be great to bury himself now in some really good problem like Fermat’s Theorem! But there was nothing in his head but ringing emptiness and some idiotic voice that affirmed, “If we find a square root…”
On the edge of the village Pol stopped again. Under a spreading cherry tree, a one-seater pterocar was resting on its wing. Near the pterocar squatted a boy of about fifteen, with a sorrowful expression. In front of him, buzzing monotonously, a long-legged litter robot rolled through the grass. Evidently all was not well with the litter robot.
Pol’s shadow fell over the boy, and the boy raised his head and then got up. “I landed the pterocar on him,” he said with an unusually familiar guilty look.
“And now you’re repenting, huh?” Pol asked as a teacher might.
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” the boy said angrily.
For some time they watched silently the evolutions of the squashed robot. Then Pol squatted down decisively. “Well, let’s see what we’ve got here,” he said, and took the robot by a manipulator. The robot let out a squeal.
“Does it hurt?” Pol sang tenderly, easing his fingers into the regulatory system. “Did im hurt ims paw? Poor baby hurt ims paw.”
The robot squealed again, shuddered, and was quiet. The boy sighed with relief and squatted down too. “That’s it,” he muttered. “Boy, was it yelling when I got out of the pterocar!”
“Of course we yelled, we did,” cooed Pol, unscrewing the armor. “We’ve got ourselves a good acoustics system, a loudmouthed one. It’s an itty bitty AKU-6, it is, with longitudinal vibration… molecular-notchedy-watchty, it is… ye-es.” Pol took off the armor plate and carefully laid it on the grass. “And what is your name?”
“Fedor,” said the boy, “Fedor Skvortsov.” He watched Pol’s deft hands enviously.
“Well, Uncle Fedor, the litter robot is as strong as three bears,” Pol communicated, extracting the regulator block from the depths of the robot. “I already know one Fedor here. A likable fellow, freckled. A very, very aseptic young man. Are you related to him?”
“No,” the boy said cheerfully. “I’m here for practical training. Are you a cyberneticist?”
“We’re passing through, we are,” Pol said, “in search of ideas. Do you-ums have any sparey-wary ideas?”
“I… my… in the laboratory we get a lot of ideas, and nothing ever works out.”
“I understand,” muttered Pol, digging into the regulator block. “A flock of ideas rush every whichway up into the air. At this point the hunter runs out and shoots the crayspider…”
“You’ve been on Pandora?” the boy asked with envy.
Pol looked around furtively, then let out the yelp of a crayspider that is overtaking its prey.
“Great!”
Pol put the litter robot back together, whispered to it through its steel-blue back, and the robot rolled into the direct sunlight to accumulate energy.
“Marvelous!” Pol said, wiping his hands on his pants. “Now let’s see what shape the pterocar’s in.”
“No, please,” Fedor said quickly. “I’ll do it myself, honest.”
“By yourself, then,” said Pol. “In that case I’ll go wash my hands. Who’s your teacher?”
“My teacher is Nikolai Kuzmich Belka, the oceanographer,” the boy said, bristling.
Pol did not risk anything witty, and silently clapped the boy on the shoulder and went on his way. He felt much better. He had already gone two blocks into the village when a familiar pterocar darted by with a whoosh and a boy’s voice, intolerably out of tune, imitated the yelp of a crayspider that is overtaking its prey.
Lost in thought, Pol ran into a two-headed calf. It shied off to the side and stared at Pol with both pairs of eyes. Then it lowered its left head to the grass under its feet and turned the right to a lilac branch hanging over the road. Here it was nicked with a switch, and it ran on, kicking. The two-headed calf was being herded by a very attractive suntanned girl who wore a colorful peasant dress and a tilted straw hat. Pol muttered crazily, “And everywhere that Mary went, her, uh, calf was sure to go.”