There were about sixty thousand head in the Volga-Unicorn herd. Pol very much liked the herd’s total autonomy—around the clock cybers and autovets cared for the cattle as a group, and each individually. The herd, in its turn, around the clock, served, on the one hand, the delivery-line processing complex and, on the other, the ever-growing scientific demands of the stock-raisers. For example, you could get in touch with the dispatch office and demand of the cowherd on duty an animal seven hundred twenty-two days old, of such-and-such a color and with such-and-such parameters, descended from the pedigreed bull Mikolaj II. In half an hour the designated animal, accompanied by a manure-smeared cyber, would be waiting for you in the receiving compartment of, say, the genetics lab.
Moreover, the genetics lab conducted the most insane experiments and functioned as the continual source of a certain friction between the farm and the processing complex. The processing workers, humble but ferocious guardians of world gastronomy, would be driven to a frenzy by the discovery in the regular cattle consignment of a monstrous beast reminiscent in appearance, and, more important, in flavor, of Pacific crab. A representative of the complex would quickly appear on the farm. He would immediately go to the genetics lab and demand to see “the creator of this unappetizing joke.” All one hundred eighty staff members of the genetics lab (not counting schoolchildren doing field work) would invariably step forward to claim the title of creator. The representative of the complex would, with restraint, recall that the farm and the complex were responsible for the uninterrupted supply to the delivery line of all forms of beef, and not of frog’s legs or canned jellyfish. The one hundred eighty progressively inclined geneticists would object as one man to this narrow approach to the supply problem. To them, the geneticists, it seemed strange that such an experienced and knowledgeable worker as so-and-so should hold such conservative views and should attach no significance to advertising, which, as everyone knew, existed to alter and perfect the taste of the populace. The processing representative would remind them that not one new food product could be introduced into the distribution network without the approbation of the Public Health Academy. (Shouts from the crowd of geneticists: “The great heroes saving us from indigestion!” “The Appendix-Lovers’ Society!”) The processing representative would spread his hands and indicate by his entire appearance that he was helpless. The shouts would turn into a muted growl and soon die out: the authority of the Public Health Academy was enormous. Then the geneticists would take the processing representative through the laboratories to show him “a little something new.” The processing representative would go pale, and assert with oaths that “all this” was completely inedible. In response the geneticists would give him a formal tasting consisting of meat that did not need spices, meat that did not need salt, meat that melted in the mouth like ice cream, special meat for cosmonauts and nuclear technicians, special meat for expectant mothers, meat that could be eaten raw. The processing representative would taste, and then shout in ecstacy, “This is good! This is great!” and would demand amid oaths that all this should get through the experimental stage within the next year. Completely pacified, he would take his leave and depart, and within a month it would all start over again.
The information gathered during the day encouraged Pol, and inspired him with a certainty that there was something to do here. For a start I’ll join the cyberneticists, I’ll herd cattle, thought Pol, sitting on the open veranda of the cafe and looking absentmin d-edly at a glass of carbonated sour milk. I’ll send half the litter robots into the fields. Let them catch flies. Evenings I’ll work with the geneticists. It’ll be neat if Irina turns out to be a geneticist. Of course they’d attach me to her. Every morning I’d send her a cyber with a bouquet of flowers. Every evening too, Pol finished the milk and looked down at the black field across the river. Young grass already showed faint green there. Very clever! thought Pol. Tomorrow the cybers will turn the herd around and drive it back. There we have it, shuttle pasture. But it’s all just routine—I see no new principles. Irina and I will develop cattle that eat dirt. Like earthworms. That will be something! If only the Public Health Academy…
A large company, arguing noisily about the meaning of life, tumbled onto the veranda, and immediately began moving tables around. Someone muttered, “A person dies, and he doesn’t care whether he has successors or not, descendants or not.”
“It doesn’t matter to Mikolaj II the bull, but—”
“Stuff the bull! You don’t care either! You’re gone, dissolved, disappeared. You don’t exist, understand?”
“Hold on, guys. There is a certain logic in that, of course. Only the living are interested in the meaning of life.”
“I wonder where you would be if your ancestors had thought like that. You’d still be making furrows with a wooden plow.”
“Nonsense! What has the meaning of life got to do with anything here? It’s simply the law of the development of productive forces.”
“What’s a law got to do with it?”
“The fact that productive forces keep developing whether you like it or not. After the plow came the tractor, after the tractor, the cyber—”
“Okay, leave our ancestors out of it. But do you mean there were people for whom the meaning of life consisted in inventing the tractor?”
“Why are you talking nonsense? Why do you always talk nonsense? The question is not what any given person lives for but what the human race lives for! You don’t understand a thing, and—”
“You’re the one who doesn’t understand a thing!”
“Listen to me! Everybody listen! Peasants! I’ll explain everything to you-Ow!”
“Let him talk! Let him talk!”
“This is a complex question. There are as many people arguing about the meaning of their existence as there are people in—”
“Shorter!”
“—in existence. First, ancestors don’t have anything to do with it. A person is given life independently of whether he wants it or—”
“Shorter!”
“Well, then explain it yourself.”
“Right, Alan, make it shorter.”
“Shorter? Here you go: Life is interesting, ergo we live. And as for those who don’t find it interesting, well, right in Snegirevo there’s a fertilizer factory.”
“‘Ataway, Allan!”
“No, guys. There’s also a certain logic to this.”
“It’s cracker-barrel philosophy! What does ‘interesting’ or ‘uninteresting’ mean? What do we exist for? That’s the question!”
“So what does displacement of the perihelion exist for? Or Newton’s law?”
“‘What for’ is the stupidest question there is. What does the sun rise in the east for?”
“Bah! One fool brings that question up to lead a thousand sages astray.”
“Fool? I’m as much a fool as you are sages.”
“Forget the whole thing! Let’s talk about love instead!”
“‘What is this thing called love?’”
“What does love exist for-there’s the question! Well, Zhora?”
“You know, peasants, pretend somebody is looking at you in a laboratory—people are just people. As to how philosophy begins… love, life…”
Pol took his chair and squeezed into the company. They recognized him.