“Excuse me,” Edik said politely, “but will all of its needs be material?”
“Well, of course,” Vybegallo yelled, “its intellectual needs will develop accordingly! As I have already remarked, the more material needs there are, the more varied the intellectual needs will be. It will be a mental giant and an intellectual luminary!”
I looked around at the people there. Many of them looked absolutely dumbfounded. The correspondents were scribbling away desperately. I noticed that some people were glancing from the autoclave to the incessantly guzzling cadaver and back again, with a strange expression on their faces. Stella was pressing her forehead against my shoulder, sobbing and whispering, “I’ve got to get out of here, I can’t take any more…” I think I was also beginning to understand just what Oira-Oira was afraid of. I pictured an immense maw gaping wide to receive a magically generated stream of animals, people, cities, continents, planets, the sun…
“Ambrosius Ambroisovich,” said Oira-Oira. “Could the universal consumer create a stone so heavy that even he would be unable to lift it, no matter how strong his desire?”
Vybegallo pondered that, but only for a second. “That isn’t material need,” he replied. “That’s caprice. That’s not the reason I created my doubles, for them to go getting, you know, capricious.”
“Caprice can be a need too,” Oira-Oira objected.
“Let’s not get involved in scholastics and casuistry,” Vybegallo proposed. “And let’s not start drawing analogies with religious mysticism.”
“No, let’s not,” said Oira-Oira.
B. Pitomnik glanced around and addressed Vybegallo again: “When and where will the demonstration of the universal model take place, Ambrosius Ambroisovich?”
“The answer,” said Vybegallo, “is that the demonstration will take place right here in my laboratory. The press will be informed of the time later.”
“But will it be just a matter of a few days?”
“It could well be a matter of a few hours. So it would be best for the comrades of the press to stay and wait.”
At this point, as though on command, the doubles of Fyodor Simeonovich and Cristóbal Joséevich turned and walked out of the room. Oira-Oira said, “Does it not seem to you, Ambrosius Ambroisovich, that holding such a demonstration in the Institute, here in the center of town, is dangerous?”
“We have nothing to be concerned about,” said Vybegallo. “It’s our enemies who should be feeling concerned.”
“Do you remember I told you there might possibly—”
“You, comrade Oira-Oira, possess an inadequate, you know, grasp of the matter. It is essential, comrade Oira-Oira, to distinguish possibility from reality, theory from practice, and so forth…”
“Nonetheless, perhaps the firing range—”
“I am not testing a bomb,” Vybegallo said haughtily. “I am testing a model of the ideal man. Are there any other questions?”
Some bright spark from the Department of Absolute Knowledge began asking about the operating mode of the autoclave, and Vybegallo happily launched into explanations. The morose lab assistants were gathering up their spiritual needs satisfaction technology. The cadaver was guzzling. The black suit he was wearing was splitting and coming apart at the seams. Oira-Oira watched him closely. Suddenly he said in a loud voice, “I have a suggestion. Everyone who is not directly involved should leave the premises immediately.”
Everyone turned to look at him.
“It’s going to get very messy,” he explained. “Quite incredibly messy.”
“That is provocation,” Vybegallo responded pompously.
Roman grabbed me by the hand and dragged me to the door. I dragged Stella after me. The other onlookers hurried after us. People in the Institute trusted Roman. They didn’t trust Vybegallo. The only outsiders left in the laboratory were the journalists; the rest of us crowded together in the corridor.
“What’s happening?” we asked Roman. “What’s going to happen? Why is it going to get messy?”
“He’s about to blow,” Roman answered, keeping his eyes fixed on the door.
“Who is? Vybegallo?”
“I feel sorry for the journalists,” said Edik. “Listen, Sasha, is our shower working today?”
The door of the lab opened and two lab assistants came out, carrying the tub and the empty buckets. A third lab assistant was fussing around them, glancing behind him apprehensively and muttering, “Let me help, guys, let me help, it’s heavy…”
“Better close the doors,” Roman advised.
The nervous lab assistant hastily slammed the door shut and came over to us, pulling out his cigarettes. His eyes were rolling and staring wildly. “Any moment now…” he said. “The smart-ass, I tried to tip him off… The way it guzzles! It’s insane, the way it guzzles.”
“It’s twenty-five past two—” Roman began.
Suddenly there was a loud boom and a jangling of broken glass. One of the lab doors gave a sharp crack and flew off its hinges. A camera and someone’s tie were blown out through the gap. We jumped back. Stella squealed again.
“Keep calm,” said Roman. “It’s all over now. There’s one less consumer in the world.”
The lab assistant, his face as white as his coat, dragged incessantly on his cigarette. From inside the lab we heard sniveling, coughing, and muttered curses. There was a bad smell. I murmured uncertainly, “Perhaps we ought to take a look.”
No one replied. Everyone just looked at me pityingly. Stella was crying quietly, holding on to my jacket. Someone explained to someone else, “He’s on watch today, get it? Someone has to go and clear it all up.”
I took a few hesitant steps in the direction of the doorway, but just then the journalists and Vybegallo came stumbling out of the lab, clutching onto each other.
My God, the state they were in!
Recovering my wits, I pulled the platinum whistle out of my pocket and blew it. The brownie emergency sanitation team came dashing to my side on the double, pushing their way through the crowd of staff.
5
Believe, that it was the most horrible spectacle that ever one saw.
What astounded me most of all was that Vybegallo was not discouraged in the least by what had happened. While the brownies worked on him, spraying him with absorbing agents and plastering him with fragrances, he piped in a falsetto voice, “You, comrades Oira-Oira and Amperian, you were apprehensive as well. Wondering what would happen, and how he could be stopped… You suffer, comrades, from a certain unhealthy, you know, skepticism. I’d call it a certain distrust of the forces of nature and human potential. And where is it now, this distrust of yours? It has burst! It has burst, comrades, in full view of the wider public, and splattered me and these comrades of the press.”
The press maintained a dismayed silence as it obediently presented its sides to the hissing jets of absorbents. G. Pronitsatelny was shuddering violently. B. Pitomnik was shaking his head and involuntarily licking his lips.
When the brownies had restored a first approximation of order in the lab, I glanced inside. The emergency team was briskly replacing windows and burning what was left of the gastric model in a muffle furnace. There wasn’t much left: a little heap of buttons with the English inscription FOR GENTLEMEN, the sleeve of a jacket, a pair of incredibly stretched suspenders, and a set of false teeth resembling the fossilized jaws of Gigantopithecus. Everything else had apparently been reduced to dust in the blast. Vybegallo inspected the second autoclave, the so-called self-sealing vessel, and declared that everything was in order. “Would the press please join me?” he said. “And I suggest that everyone else should return to their own duties.”