We, however, are children of a different age. We’ve seen all sorts of things: a live dog’s head sewn to the back of another living dog, and an artificial kidney the size of a wardrobe, and a dead metal hand controlled by living nerves, and people who can remark casually in passing, “That was after I died the first time…” Yes, in our time Montesquieu’s chances of remaining a materialist wouldn’t have been too good. But we seem to manage it without too much bother.
It can be difficult at times, of course—when a chance breeze wafts the petals of mysterious plants across the ocean to us from the vast continents of the unknown. And what makes it difficult most often is when what you find is not what you were looking for. Soon the zoos and museums will be showing amazing animals, the first creatures from Mars or Venus. Yes, of course, we’ll gape at them and slap our thighs, but we’ve been expecting these animals for a long time already, and we’re well prepared for them to put in an appearance. We’d be far more amazed and disappointed if these animals proved not to exist at all, or to resemble our cats and dogs. As a rule, the science in which we believe (quite often blindly) prepares us long in advance for the miracles that lie ahead, and we only suffer psychological shock when we come up against the unforeseen, like some hole through into the fourth dimension, or biological radio communication, or a living planet… Or, say, a log hut on chicken legs… Volodya with the ginger beard was right when he said this was a funny old place they had here…
I reached the square and halted in front of the sparkling water kiosk. I remembered quite definitely that I had no change and I would have to break a note, and I was already preparing an ingratiating smile, because the kiosk women who sell sparkling water hate changing paper money, when I suddenly discovered a five-kopeck piece in the pocket of my jeans. I was amazed and delighted, but mostly delighted. I drank a glass of sparkling water with syrup, received a wet kopeck in change, and had a brief word with the kiosk attendant about the weather. Then I set off resolutely to walk home, to get the DM and TS over and done with as soon as possible and continue with my rational dialectical deliberations. As I stuck the kopeck in my pocket I stopped dead on discovering that there was another five-kopeck piece in there. I took it out and looked at it. The coin was slightly damp, and in the inscription “5 kopecks 1961” the “6” was obscured by a shallow dent. Perhaps even then I might not have paid any attention to this minor incident if it weren’t for the familiar, fleeting feeling that at one and the same time I was standing here on Peace Prospect and sitting on the sofa, gazing stupidly at that set of hooks. And this time, too, when I shook my head, the feeling disappeared.
I walked on slowly for a while, absentmindedly tossing the five-kopeck piece up in the air and catching it (it always fell on my palm tails up) and trying to concentrate. Then I saw the grocery store where I’d taken refuge from the crowd of kids that morning. Holding the coin between my finger and thumb, I went straight back to the counter where they sold fruit juices and water and drank a glass of water without syrup, and without enjoying it one little bit. Then, clutching the change in my fist, I walked off to one side and checked my pocket.
It was one of those cases when there is no psychological shock. I would have been more surprised if the five-kopeck piece hadn’t been there. But it was there—damp, dated 1961, with a dent over the digit “6.” Someone gave me a shove and asked if I was asleep. Apparently I was standing in the line for the cash desk. I said I wasn’t asleep and took a sales check for three boxes of matches. I was perfectly calm. After collecting my three boxes I went back out onto the square and began experimenting.
My experiment took about an hour. During that hour I made ten rounds of the square, until I was bloated with water and heavily burdened with boxes of matches and newspapers. I got to know all the salesmen and saleswomen and reached a number of interesting conclusions. The coin came back if it was used to pay. If you simply threw it away, dropped it, or lost it, then it would stay where it was. The coin returned to the pocket at the moment when the change passed from the seller’s hands into the hands of the buyer. If at that moment I held my hand in one pocket, the coin appeared in the other. It never appeared in a pocket that was closed with a zipper. If I kept both my hands in my pockets and took my change with my elbow, the coin could appear anywhere at all on my body (in one case it turned up in my shoe). The coin’s disappearance from the saucer of coppers was quite imperceptible; the five-kopeck piece immediately became invisible among the other copper coins and no movement occurred in the saucer at the moment when the five-kopeck piece moved back to my pocket.
And so, what we were dealing with was a so-called “unchangeable” five-kopeck piece in action. In itself the fact of unchangeability did not interest me very much. What astounded me most of all was the possibility of extraspatial displacement of a physical body. It was absolutely clear to me that the mysterious transference of the coin from the seller to the buyer represented a clear case of the notorious “zero-transport,” well known to lovers of science fiction under its various pseudonyms: hypertransit, repagular leap, Tarantoga’s phenomenon, etc. The possibilities in prospect were dazzling.
I had no scientific instruments. A basic laboratory thermometer would have been very useful, but I didn’t even have that. I was obliged to restrict myself to purely visual, subjective observation. I began my final round of the square with the following objective in mind: Placing the five-kopeck piece beside the saucer for small change and as far as possible preventing the salesperson from putting it in with the other money until he or she hands me my change, visually monitor the process of the coin’s displacement in space, while at the same time attempting to determine, at least qualitatively, the change in temperature in the vicinity of the presumptive trajectory of transit. However, the experiment was interrupted before it had even begun.
When I approached the sales assistant Manya, now an acquaintance of mine, the youthful militiaman with the rank of sergeant was already waiting for me. “All right, then,” he said in his professional voice.
I gave him an inquiring look, feeling an uneasy presentiment.
“Your papers, if you don’t mind, citizen,” said the militiaman, saluting and looking straight past me.
“What’s wrong?” I asked as I took out my passport.
“And the coin too, if you don’t mind,” the militiaman said as he took the passport. I handed him the five-kopeck piece without speaking. Manya watched me with angry eyes. The militiaman inspected the coin, said “Aha…” in a satisfied tone of voice, and opened my passport, which he studied the way a bibliophile studies a rare incunabulum. I waited in torment. A crowd was gathering around me, and some members of it were already expressing various opinions concerning my character.
“You’ll have to come with me,” the militiaman said eventually. I went with him. While we were on our way, the crowd that escorted us concocted several different versions of my troubled life history and proposed a large number of hypotheses concerning the reasons for the investigation that was beginning before their very eyes.
In the station the sergeant handed on the five-kopeck piece and the passport to a lieutenant, who inspected the five-kopeck piece and invited me to sit down. I sat down. The lieutenant said casually, “Hand over your small change,” and then also immersed himself in the study of my passport. I raked the coppers out of my pocket. “Count it, Kovalyov,” said the lieutenant, and setting aside the passport began looking into my eyes.