The double stared at me stupidly.
“OK, drop it, drop it,” I said. “Your cover’s blown.”
The double said nothing. He stood there like stone, not even blinking.
“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “It’s well after ten already. I’ll give you ten more minutes. Tidy everything up, dump that carrion, and go off dancing. I’ll disconnect everything myself.”
The double thrust out its lips as if it were playing the flute and began backing away. It stepped back very carefully, rounded the sofa, and stood so that the lab table was between us. I glanced pointedly at my watch. The double muttered an incantation and a calculator, a fountain pen, and a pile of clean paper appeared on the desk. Bending his knees and floating into the air, the double began writing something, glancing warily at me from time to time. It was all very convincing, and it almost had me fooled for a moment. But in any case, I had a sure way of finding out the truth. As a rule, doubles are entirely insensitive to pain. I fumbled in my pocket, pulled out a small pair of sharp pincers, and advanced on the double, clicking them suggestively. The double stopped writing. Looking him hard in the eyes, I snipped off the head of a nail that was protruding from the tabletop and said: “Weeell?”
“Why couldn’t you just leave me alone?” Vitka asked. “Can’t you see when someone’s working?”
“You’re a double,” I said. “Don’t you dare make conversation with me.”
“Put away the pincers,” he said.
“You shouldn’t go playing the fool,” I said. “Some double you are.”
Vitka sat on the edge of the table and rubbed his ears wearily. “Nothing’s going right for me today,” he declared. “Today I’m an idiot. I created a double and it turned out absolutely brainless. Dropped everything, sat on the plywitsum, a real brute. I smashed it over the head, broke its arm off… And the perch just keeps on dying all the time.”
I went across to the sofa and glanced into the bathtub. “What’s wrong with it?”
“How should I know?”
“Where did you get it?”
“At the market.”
I picked the perch up by the tail. “What did you expect? It’s just an ordinary dead fish.”
“Blockhead,” said Vitka. “That’s living water.”
“Aha,” I said, and started wondering what advice to give him. I have only the vaguest idea about the effects of living water. Mostly from the fairy tale about Tsarevich Ivan and the Gray Wolf.
Every now and then the genie in the carboy would start trying to wipe away the dust on the outside of the glass with his hand. “You could at least wipe the bottle,” I said when I failed to come up with anything.
“What?”
“Wipe the dust off the bottle. He’s bored in there.”
“To hell with him, let him be bored,” Vitka said absentmindedly. He thrust his hand back into the sofa and twisted something in there again. The perch came to life.
“See that?” said Vitka. “When I give it maximum intensity, there’s no problem.”
“It’s a bad specimen,” I said, guessing in the dark.
Vitka pulled his hand out of the sofa and fixed his gaze on me.
“The specimen…” he said. “Is a bad one…” His eyes glazed over like a double’s. “Specimen specimini lupus est.”
“And then it was probably frozen,” I said, growing bolder. Vitka wasn’t listening to me.
“Where can I get a fish?” he said, gazing around and slapping his pockets. “I need a little fishie…”
“What for?” I asked.
“That’s right,” said Vitka. “What for? Since there isn’t any other fish,” he reasoned, “then why not change the water? That makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“Er, no,” I objected. “That won’t do it.”
“What will then?” Vitka asked eagerly.
“Clear out of here,” I said. “Get off the premises.”
“Where to?”
“Wherever you like.”
He clambered over the sofa and grabbed me by the lapels. “You listen to me, all right?” he said threateningly. “Nothing in the world is identical to anything else. Everything’s distributed according to the Gaussian curve. Water’s not like other water… This old fool forgot all about the dispersion of qualities…”
“Come on, old man,” I appealed to him. “It’s almost New Year’s! Don’t get so carried away.”
He let go of me and started fumbling about. “Where did I put it? What a dumb hick! Where did I stick it? Ah, there it is…”
He dashed across to the table, where the plywitsum was standing upright. The same one. I jumped back to the door and said imploringly, “Come to your senses! It’s after eleven already! They’re waiting for you! Vera’s waiting!”
“Naah,” he answered. “I sent them a double. A fine double, a good talker… The life and soul… tells jokes, stands on his hands, dances like a lunatic…” He twisted the plywitsum in his hands, figuring something out, weighing something up, screwing up one eye.
“Clear out of here, I told you,” I roared in desperation.
Vitka shot me a rapid glance and I bit my tongue. The joking was over. Vitka was in that state of mind in which magicians obsessed with their work turn the people around them into spiders, wood lice, lizards, and other quiet animals. I squatted down beside the genie and watched.
Vitka froze in the classical pose for a material incantation. A pink vapor rose up from the table, shadows that looked like bats began flitting up and down, the calculator disappeared, the paper disappeared, and suddenly the entire surface of the table was covered with vessels full of transparent liquids. Vitka dumped the plywitsum on a chair without looking, grabbed one of the vessels, and started examining it closely. He was obviously never going to leave the place now. He grabbed the bathtub off the sofa, then leaped across to the shelves in a single bound and lugged a cumbersome copper aquavitometer back to the table. I was about to make myself more comfortable and clean off a little observation window for the genie when I suddenly heard voices, the clattering of feet, and doors slamming in the corridor. I leaped up and dashed out of the lab.
The huge building’s aura of nocturnal emptiness and tranquil darkness had disappeared without a trace. There were lamps blazing brightly in the corridor. Someone was dashing crazily up the stairs; someone else was shouting, “Valka! The voltage has dropped! Run to the electrical room!”; someone was shaking off a fur coat on the landing, sending wet snow flying in all directions. Walking toward me with a thoughtful expression on his face was Gian Giacomo, and trotting along behind him with his huge portfolio under its arm and his cane in its mouth was a gnome. We exchanged bows. The great prestidigitator smelled of good wine and French fragrances. I didn’t dare try to stop him, and he walked straight through the locked door into his office. The gnome stuck his briefcase and cane through the closed door and then dived into the radiator.
“What the hell?” I shouted, and ran toward the stairs.
The Institute was overflowing with members of staff. There seemed to be even more of them than on an ordinary working day. In the offices and laboratories lights were blazing; doors were standing wide open. The usual buzz of work filled the air: crackling electrical discharges, monotonous voices dictating figures and intoning spells, the sharp chatter of typewriters. And above it all Fyodor Simeonovich’s booming, triumphant growclass="underline" “’At’s good, ’at’s just grand! Well done there, good boy! But what fool turned off the generator?”
Somebody poked me in the back with the hard corner of something and I grabbed hold of the banister, feeling really furious now. It was Volodya Pochkin and Edik Amperian, carrying a coordinate-measuring machine that weighed half a ton.