'I don't understand your reasons for leaving the Institute,' said Viktor. 'I can't make out what you're saying. I understand that the authorities set the Institute various tasks which you find disturbing. That's clear enough. But the authorities have made mistakes in less esoteric realms than ours. Look at the way the boss was always strengthening our ties of friendship with the Germans; only a few days before the outbreak of war he was sending Hitler whole trainloads of rubber and other raw materials of strategic importance. And in our field – well, even a great politician can be pardoned for failing to understand what's going on there… As for my life – everything's been back to front. My work before the war was closely linked to practice. In Chelyabinsk I used to go to the factory and help set up the electronic apparatus. But since the war began…'
He waved his hand in mock despair.
'I'm lost in a labyrinth. Sometimes I feel awkward, sometimes I feel quite terrified. Heavens…! All I wanted was to establish the physics of nuclear reactions. What's happened is that time, mass and gravity have collapsed and space has become two different things; it no longer really exists and has no meaning except in terms of magnetism. There's a clever young man in my laboratory called Savostyanov. Well, once I got talking to him about my work. He asked lots of questions; I replied that all this wasn't yet a theory – just a few ideas and a general direction of research. Parallel space is merely an exponent in an equation, not a physical reality. The only symmetry so far is in a mathematical equation; I don't yet know if there's a corresponding
symmetry of particles. Mathematics has left physics behind; I don't know whether or not the physics of particles will ever fit into my equations. Savostyanov listened for a long time and then said: "All this reminds me of a fellow-student of mine. He got hopelessly muddled with some equation and said: 'You know, this isn't science – it's a blind couple trying to screw in a patch of nettles.' " '
Chepyzhin burst out laughing.
'It's odd that even you can't see the significance to physics of your own mathematics,' he said. 'It's like the cat in Alicein Wonderland – first you see the smile, then the cat itself.'
'Dear God…!' said Viktor.'But deep down I know that this is the central axis of human life. No, I'm not going to give in. I'm not going to betray the faith.'
'I can appreciate what a sacrifice it must be to part with the laboratory at the very moment when the link between physics and your mathematics is about to emerge,' said Chepyzhin. 'It must be hard for you, but I'm very glad: honesty is never just wiped off the slate and forgotten.'
'I just hope I'm not wiped off the slate myself,' said Viktor.
Natalya Ivanovna brought in the tea and shifted the books to make room on the table.
'Ah! Lemon!' said Viktor.
'You're an honoured guest,' said Natalya Ivanovna.
'A nonentity,' said Viktor.
'Come on!' protested Chepyzhin. 'What do you mean by that?'
'Dmitry Petrovich, tomorrow my fate's being decided. I'm sure of it. Where will I be the day after tomorrow?'
He moved his glass of tea closer. Beating out the rhythm of his despair with a teaspoon, he said absent-mindedly, 'Ah! Lemon!', then felt embarrassed at having repeated the same words in exactly the same intonation.
For a while neither of them spoke. Then Chepyzhin said: 'I've got some thoughts I'd like to share with you.'
'Of course,' said Viktor as absent-mindedly as before.
'Nothing special,' said Chepyzhin, 'just a few whimsical notions… As you know, the idea of an infinite universe is already a truism. A metagalaxy will one day seem like a sugar-lump that some thrifty Lilliputian takes with his tea. While an electron or a neutron will seem like a whole world populated by Gullivers. Even schoolboys understand this.'
Viktor nodded and thought to himself: 'Yes, this isn't anything special. The old man's not on form today.' His thoughts turned to Shishakov and tomorrow's meeting: 'No, I'm not going. If I do go, then I have to either repent or argue about politics – and that's the equivalent of suicide.' He gave a slight yawn and thought: 'A weak heart. That's what makes people yawn.'
'One might think that only God was able to limit Infinity,' Chepyzhin went on. 'Beyond a cosmic boundary, we have to admit the presence of a divine power. Right?'
'Of course,' said Viktor, thinking to himself: 'I may be arrested any day, Dmitry Petrovich. I'm not in the mood for philosophy. Yes, I'm probably done for. I talked too much when I was in Kazan. I said things I shouldn't have said to a fellow called Madyarov. Either he's an informer, or else he's been arrested and they've made him talk. It's a mess, a terrible mess.'
He looked at Chepyzhin. Aware that Viktor was only pretending to pay attention, Chepyzhin continued:
'I think there is a boundary limiting the infinity of the universe – life itself. This boundary's nothing to do with Einstein's curvature of space; it lies in the opposition between life and inanimate matter. In my opinion, life can be defined as freedom. Life is freedom. Freedom is the fundamental principle of life. That is the boundary – between freedom and slavery, between inanimate matter and life.
'Now, as soon as freedom first appeared, it began to evolve. It evolved along two lines. First: man has more freedom than protozoa. The whole evolution of the living world has been a movement from a lesser to a greater degree of freedom. This is the very essence of evolution – the highest being is the one which has the most freedom.'
Viktor was now watching Chepyzhin thoughtfully. Chepyzhin nodded as though approving of his attentiveness.
'And then there's a second, quantitative, line of evolution. If we assume the weight of an average man to be fifty kilos, then humanity now weighs 100 million tons. That's a great deal more than, say, a thousand years ago. The mass of animate matter will constantly increase at the expense of that of inanimate matter. The terrestrial globe will gradually come to life. After settling the Arctic and the deserts, man will burrow under the earth, continually pushing back the horizons of his underworld cities and fields. Eventually there will be a predominance of animate matter on earth. Then the other planets will come to life. If we try to imagine the evolution of life over infinity, then the animation of inanimate matter will take place on a galactic scale. Inanimate matter will be transformed into free, living matter. The universe will come to life. Everything in the world will become alive and thus free. Freedom – life itself – will overcome slavery.'
'Yes,' said Viktor with a smile. 'You can even take the integral.'
'Listen now,' said Chepyzhin. 'I used to study the evolution of stars, but now I've come to understand the importance of the slightest movement of a spot of living mucus. Take the first line of evolution -from the lowest to the highest form of life. One day man will be endowed with all the attributes of the deity – omnipresence, omnipotence and omniscience. The coming century will bring a solution to the problem of the transformation of matter into energy and the creation of life itself. There will be a parallel development towards the attainment of extreme speeds and the conquest of space. More distant millennia will see progress towards the harnessing of the very highest form of energy – psychic energy.'
Suddenly Viktor realized that this wasn't just idle chatter and that he strongly disagreed with it.
'Man will learn to materialize in his laboratory the content and rhythm of the psychic activity of rational beings throughout the metagalaxy. Psychic energy will cross millions of light-years of space instantaneously. Omnipresence – formerly an attribute of God – will have become one more conquest of reason. But man won't just stop there. After attaining equality with God, he will begin to solve the problems that were beyond God. He will establish communication with rational beings from the highest level of evolution, beings from another space and another time to whom the whole history of humanity seems merely a dim flicker. He will establish communication with the life of the microcosm whose whole evolution occurs within the twinkling of a man's eye. The abyss of time and space will be overcome. Man will finally be able to look down on God.'