“Here you are,” he said, handing me his keys. “You’re on duty, if I’m not mistaken… And by the way…” He hesitated. “Wasn’t I talking to you yesterday?”
“Yes,” I said, “you stopped by the computer room.”
He nodded. “Yes, yes, that’s right… we had a talk about trainees.”
“No,” I interjected respectfully, “not exactly. It was about our letter to the Central Academic Supplies Committee. Concerning an electronic peripheral device.”
“Ah, that’s it,” he said. “Very well then, I wish you a peaceful night shift… Victor Pavlovich, could I see you for a moment?”
He took Vitka by the arm and led him away down the corridor, and I went into the waiting room, where the second Janus Polyeuctovich was locking the safes. When he saw me, he said, “I see,” and immediately started jangling his keys. It was A-Janus. I’d already learned something about how to tell them apart. A-Janus looked a bit younger; he was unsociable, always formally correct, and not very talkative. He was supposed to be a hard worker, and people who had known him for a long time said that this fair-to-middling administrator was slowly but surely developing into an outstanding scientist. S-Janus, on the other hand, was always soft-mannered and very attentive, and he had the strange habit of asking, “Wasn’t I talking to you yesterday?” They said he’d been going downhill pretty badly just recently, although he was still a scientist with a serious international reputation. And yet A-Janus and S-Janus were one and the same person. I just couldn’t get my head around that. It seemed too artificial somehow. I even suspected it was just a figure of speech.
A-Janus closed the final lock, handed me some of the keys, said good-bye coolly, and went out. I sat at the academic secretary’s desk, put my list down in front of me, and dialed my own number in the computer room. There was no answer—the girls must have gone already. It was 1430 hours.
At 1431 hours the great magician and sorcerer the famous Fyodor Simeonovich Kivrin came bursting into the waiting room, panting noisily and setting the parquet floor creaking. As the head of the Department of Linear Happiness, Fyodor Simeonovich was famous for his incorrigible optimism and faith in the bright future. His own past history was extremely turbulent. Under Ivan Vasilyevich—the czar Ivan the Terrible—the oprichniki of the minister of state security, Malyuta Skuratov, had jibed and joked as they burned him in a wooden bathhouse as a sorceror on the denunciation of his neighbor, a church sexton; under Czar Alexei Mikhailovich the Peaceful he was beaten mercilessly with rods, and the collected manuscripts of his works were burned on his bare back; under Czar Peter the Great he was initially elevated to the role of a specialist in chemistry and mining but somehow managed to displease Prince Romodanovsky and ended up in exile at the Tula Arms Plant, from where he fled to India, traveled around for a long time, was bitten by poisonous snakes and crocodiles, effortlessly mastered yoga, came back to Russia at the height of Pugachev’s rebellion, was accused of being the rebels’ healer, had his nostrils slit, and was exiled to Solovets in perpetuity. In Solovets he survived a whole heap of other misfortunes before he eventually became attached to NITWiT, where he soon became a head of department, and recently he had been doing a lot of work on the problems of human happiness, waging a dedicated struggle against those of his colleagues who believed that the basis of happiness was material abundance.
“Greetings to you!” he boomed, laying the keys to his laboratories in front of me. “Poor man, what have you done to deserve this? On a night like this you ought to be out having fun. I’ll call Modest, this is such nonsense, I’ll take the shift myself…”
I could see this idea had only just occurred to him and he was really taken by it.
“All right now, where’s his telephone number? Curses, I never remember telephone numbers… One-one-five or five-one-one…”
“Thank you, Fyodor Simeonovich,” I cried. “Please don’t bother! I’ve just settled in to get a bit of work done!”
“Ah, a bit of work! That’s a different matter. ’At’s good, ’at’s splendid, well done! Dammit, I know nothing at all about electronics… I must do some studying, get away from all this word magic, this old junk, hocus-pocus with psychofields, primitive stuff… Antiquated methods.”
And right there and then he conjured up two big apples, handed one to me, bit off half of the other, and began munching on it with relish.
“Curses, I’ve made a worm-eaten one again. How’s yours—is it all right? ’At’s good. I’ll come back and see you later, Sasha. I don’t really understand that system of computer commands properly… I’ll just have a glass of vodka and then come back… The twenty-ninth command of that machine of yours… Either the machine is lying, or I don’t understand… I’ll bring you a detective noveclass="underline" Erle Stanley Gardner. You read English, don’t you? He writes well, the rascal, great stuff. He’s got this real hard-headed lawyer, Perry Mason. Do you know him? And then I’ll give you something else to read, some science fiction. Asimov, maybe, or Ray Bradbury…”
He went over to the window and exclaimed in delight. “A blizzard, dammit. How I love that!”
The slim and elegant Cristóbal Joséevich Junta came in, wrapping himself in a mink coat.
Fyodor Simeonovich turned around. “Ah, Cristó!” he exclaimed. “Just look at this, that fool Kamnoedov has locked a young boy in to keep watch on New Year’s Eve. Let’s let him off; the two of us can stay, we’ll remember the old times and have a drink, what do you say? Why should he have to suffer? He ought to be out dancing with the girls…”
Junta put his keys on the desk and said casually, “Association with girls affords pleasure only when it is attained through the overcoming of obstacles.”
“But of course!” boomed Fyodor Simeonovich. “‘Much blood is spilled and many songs are sung for ladies fair’… How does that one of yours go? ‘Only he shall attain the goal who knows not the word fear…’”
“Precisely,” said Junta. “And anyway, I can’t stand charity.”
“He can’t stand charity! Who was it who begged Odikhmantiev from me? Enticed away a fine laboratory assistant, you did… You put up a bottle of champagne right now, nothing less… No, you know what, not champagne! Amontillado! Do you have any of the old Toledo stock left?”
“They’re waiting for us, Teodoro,” Junta reminded him.
“Ah yes, that’s right… I’ve still got to find a tie… and some felt boots. We’ll never get a taxi… We’re off then, Sasha, don’t get too bored now.”
“No one on duty in the Institute on New Year’s Eve ever gets bored,” Junta said in a low voice. “Especially new boys.”