I carried out all the calculations in Oira-Oira’s work on the mechanism of heredity in bipolar homunculi. For Vitka Korneev I drew up the stress tables for the M-field of the sofa-translator in nine-dimensional magospace. I performed the operational calculations for the Institute’s fish processing plant. I calculated the flowchart for the most economical mode of transportation of the Children’s Laughter elixir. I even calculated the probability of winning games in the different versions of solitaire—“big elephant,” “State Duma,” and “Napoleon’s tomb”—for the jokers from the solitaire group and performed all the quadratures for Cristóbal Junta’s numerical method, for which he taught me how to enter Nirvana. I was contented, the days were all too short, and my life was full of meaning.
It was still early, not yet seven o’clock. I switched on the Aldan and did a little bit of work. At nine o’clock in the evening I pulled myself together, regretfully closed down the computer room, and set off toward the fifth floor. The blizzard had still not abated. It was a genuine New Year’s blizzard. It howled and screeched in the old disused chimneys, piled up snowdrifts under the windows, and tugged furiously at the old street lamps, swaying them to and fro.
I passed the premises of the Department of Buildings and Contents. The entrance to Modest Matveevich’s waiting room was blocked off with crisscrossed metal I beams, and standing at the sides, sabers at the ready, were two massive ifrits in turbans and full battle gear. Both of their noses, red and swollen from colds, were pierced with massive gold rings with a tin inventory number. There was a smell of sulfur, scorched wool, and streptocide ointment in the air. I lingered for a while, examining them, because in our latitudes ifrits are rare beings. But the one standing on the right, with unshaven cheeks and a black eye patch, began glaring at me with his one eye. There were bad rumors about him—supposedly he used to eat people—so I hurried on my way. I could hear him snuffling and smacking his lips behind my back.
In the premises of the Department of Absolute Knowledge all the small upper windows were open, because the smell of Professor Vybegallo’s herring heads was seeping in. There was snow heaped up on the windowsills and there were dark puddles under the radiators of the central steam heating system. I closed the windows and walked between the virginally clean desks of the department’s staff members. Standing on the desks were brand-new ink sets that had never seen ink, but there were cigarette butts spilling out of the inkwells. This was a strange department. Its motto was “The cognition of infinity requires an infinite amount of time.” I could hardly dispute that assertion, but the staff drew an unexpected conclusion from it: “And therefore it makes no difference whether you work or not.” So in the interest of not adding to the amount of entropy in the universe, they didn’t work. At least, most of them didn’t. Not en masse, as Vybegallo would have said. Reduced to essentials, their task consisted of analyzing the curve of relative cognition in the region of its asymptotic approximation of absolute truth. Therefore some members of the department were always occupied with dividing zero by zero on their desktop calculators, and others kept requesting study assignments to eternity. They returned from their trips cheerful and overfed and immediately took time off on health grounds. In the gaps between assignments they wandered around from department to department, sat on other people’s desks smoking cigarettes, and told jokes about evaluating indeterminate forms with L’Hopital’s rule. They were easy to recognize from the empty look in their eyes and the cuts on their ears from constant shaving. In the six months I’d been at the Institute they’d only come up with a single job for the Aldan, and that boiled down to the same old division of zero by zero and involved absolutely no truth quotient at all. Perhaps some of them also did some real work, but I didn’t know anything about it.
At half past ten I stepped onto Ambrosius Ambroisovich Vybegallo’s floor. Covering my face with my handkerchief and trying to breathe through my mouth, I headed straight for the lab known to the staff of the Institute as the Nursery. Here, according to Professor Vybegallo, models of the ideal man were born in retorts. Hatched out… er… so to speak. Comprenez-vous?
The laboratory was stuffy and dark. I switched on the light, illuminating the smooth, gray walls decorated with portraits of Aesculapius, Paracelsus, and Ambrosius Ambroisovich himself. Ambrosius Ambroisovich was depicted in a black cap set on noble curls, with some kind of medal gleaming illegibly on his chest. There had once been another portrait on the fourth wall, but now all that was left was a dark rectangle and three rusty, bent nails.
There was an autoclave standing in the center of the laboratory, and another, somewhat larger, in the corner. There were loaves of bread lying on the floor around the central autoclave, beside zinc buckets of bluish skim milk and a huge tub full of steamed bran. Judging from the smell, the herring heads were somewhere close by too, but I couldn’t figure out exactly where. The laboratory was silent except for the rhythmic popping sounds coming from inside the central autoclave.
Going across to that autoclave on tiptoe, I don’t know why, I glanced in through the viewing port. I was already feeling nauseous from the smell, and now I began to feel really bad, although I hadn’t seen anything particularly special—something white and formless slowly heaving in the green gloom. I switched off the light, went out, and carefully locked the door. “Smack him in the chops,” I recalled. I was troubled by vague presentiments. I had only just noticed the thick magic line drawn around the threshold, traced out in cramped cabalistic symbols. On looking closer I realized that it was a spell against a gaki, a hungry demon of hell.
With a feeling of some relief I took my leave of Vybegallo’s domain and began climbing up to the sixth floor, where Gian Giacomo and his colleagues dealt with the theory and practice of Universal Transformations. Hanging on the landing was a colorful poster in verse, appealing for the establishment of a communal library. The idea had come from the local trade union committee; the verse was mine:
I blushed and went on. As I set foot on the sixth floor, I immediately saw that the door of Vitka’s laboratory was slightly ajar and I heard hoarse singing. I crept stealthily toward it.
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