“Ah! The Pilgrim! Pilgrim, what is love?”
“Love,” said Pol, “is a characteristic property of highly organized matter.”
“What’s the ‘organized’ for and what’s the matter for—there’s the question!”
“So then will you—”
“Pilgrim, know any new jokes?”
“Yes,” said Pol, “but not any good ones.”
“We aren’t very good ourselves.”
“Have him tell one. Tell me a joke and I’ll tell you who you are.”
Pol began, “A certain cyberneticist—” (laughter) “—invented a prognosticator, a machine that could foretell the future—a great, huge complex a hundred stories tall. For a start he asked the prognosticator the question, ‘What will I be doing in three hours?’ The prognosticator hummed away until morning, and then answered, ‘You’ll be sitting here waiting for me to answer your question.’”
“Ye-es,” someone said.
“What do you mean ‘ye-es’?” Pol said coolly. “You asked for it yourselves.”
“Hey peasants, why are all these cyberjokes so dumb?”
“Not just ‘why’ but to what end, what for? There’s the real question!”
“Pilgrim! What’s your name, Pilgrim?”
“Pol,” Pol muttered.
Irina came onto the veranda. She was more beautiful than the girls sitting at the table. She was so beautiful that Pol stopped listening. She smiled, said something, waved to someone, and sat down next to long-nosed Zhora. Zhora immediately bent over to her and asked her something, probably “what for?” Pol exhaled and noticed that his neighbor on the right was crying on his shoulder: “We simply can’t do it—we haven’t learned how. There’s no way Aleksandr can get that through his head. Such things can’t be done in bursts.”
Pol finally recognized his neighbor—it was Vasya, the man with the bored voice, the same Vasya they had gone swimming with at noon.
“Such things can’t be done in bursts. We aren’t even adjusting Nature—we’re smashing her to pieces.”
“Ah… just what is the topic here?” Pol asked cautiously. He had absolutely no idea when and from where Vasya had appeared.
“I was saying,” Vasya repeated patiently, “that a living organism that does not change its genetics outlives its time.”
Pol’s eyes were glued to Irina. Long-nosed Zhora was pouring her champagne. Irina was saying something rapidly, tapping the glass with dark fingers.
Vasya said, “Aha! You’ve fallen in love with Irina! Such a pity.”
“With what Irina?” muttered Pol.
“That girl there—Irina Egorovna. She worked for us in general biology.”
Pol felt as if he had fallen on his face. “What do you mean ‘worked’?”
“As I was saying, it’s a pity,” Vasya said calmly. “She’s leaving in a few days.”
Pol saw only her profile, lit up by the sun. “For where?” he asked.
“The Far East.”
“Pour me some wine, Vasya,” said Pol. Suddenly his throat had become dry.
“Are you going to work here?” asked Vasya. “Aleksandr said you had a good head on your shoulders.”
“A good head,” muttered Pol. “A lofty unfurrowed brow and steely-calm eyes.”
Vasya started to laugh. “Don’t go pine away,” he said. “We must both be all of twenty-five.”
“No,” said Pol, shaking his head in despair. “What is there to hold me here? Of course I’m not staying here… I’ll go to the Far East.”
A heavy hand came to rest on his shoulder, and Kostylin’s powerful bass inquired, “Just who is going to the Far East? Huh?”
“Lin, listen, Lin,” Pol said plaintively. “How come I never have any luck?”
“Irina,” said Vasya, getting up.
Lin sat down in his place and drew over to himself a plate of cold meat. His face looked tired.
Pol looked at him with fear and hope, just as in the old days when their neighbors on the floor would arrange a school-wide manhunt to catch the clever Lieber Polly and teach him not to be quite so clever.
Kostylin wolfed down an enormous piece of meat and said in a bass that overcame the noise on the veranda, “Peasants! The new catalogue of publications in Russian has arrived. If you want it, ask at the club.”
Everyone turned toward him.
“What have they got?”
“Is there any Mironov, Aleksandr?”
“Yes,” said Kostylin.
“How about The Iron Tower?”
“Yes. I already ordered it.”
“Pure as Snow?”
“Yes. Look, there are eighty-six titles—I can’t remember everything.”
The veranda began to empty quickly. Allan left. Vasya left. Irina left with long-nosed Zhora. She didn’t know anything. She hadn’t even noticed. And, of course, she didn’t understand. Nor would she remember. She’ll remember Zhora. She’ll remember the two-headed calf. But she won’t remember me.
Kostylin said, “Unhappy love churns a person up. But it’s short-lived, Polly. You stay here. I’ll look after you.”
“Maybe I’ll go to the Far East anyhow,” said Pol.
“What for? You’ll only bother her and get underfoot. I know Irina and I know you. You’re fifty years stupider than her Prince Charming.”
“Still…”
“No,” said Kostylin. “Stay with me. Really, has your old buddy Lin ever led you astray?”
Pol gave in. He patted Kostylin’s immense back affectionately, got up, and went over to the railing. The sun had set, and a warm pellucid dusk had settled over the farm. Somewhere nearby a piano was playing and two voices were singing beautifully in harmony. Eh, thought Pol. He bent over the railing and quietly let out the yelp of a giant crayspider that has just lost its trail.
11. The Assaultmen
The satellite was enormous. It was a torus a mile and a quarter in diameter, divided inside into numerous chambers by massive bulkheads. The corridor rings were empty and bright, and the triangular hatchways leading into the bright empty rooms stood wide open. The satellite had been abandoned an improbably long time ago, perhaps even millions of years earlier, but the rough yellow floor was clean, and August Bader had said that he hadn’t seen even one speck of dust here.
Bader walked in front, as befitted the discoverer and master. Gorbovsky and Falkenstein could see his big protruding ears, and the blondish tuft of hair on the top of his head.
“I had expected to see signs of neglect here,” Bader said unhurriedly. He spoke in Russian, painstakingly enunciating each syllable. “This satellite interested us most of all. That was ten years ago. I saw that the outer hatches were open. I said to myself, ‘August, you will see a picture of horrifying disaster and destruction.’ I told my wife to stay on the ship. I was afraid of finding dead bodies here, you see.” He stopped before some sort of hatch, and Gorbovsky almost ran into him. Falkenstein, who had fallen a bit behind, caught up to them and stopped alongside, knitting his brows.
“Aber here it was empty,” said Bader. “It was light here, very clean, and completely empty. Please, look around.” He made a smooth gesture with his arm. “I am inclined to think that this was the traffic control room of the satellite.”
They pushed through to a chamber with a dome-shaped ceiling, and with a low semicircular stand in the middle. The walls were bright yellow, translucent, and they shone from within. Gorbovsky touched the wall. It was smooth and cool.
“Like amber,” he said. “Feel it, Mark.”
Falkenstein felt it and nodded.
“Everything had been dismantled,” said Bader, “but in the walls and bulkheads, and also even in the toroid covering of the satellite, remain light sources as yet hidden from us. I am inclined to think—”