“You think, katso, that because you work for the police you know what is possible and what isn't?”
“Stop it!” Onisimov backed up to the wall.
“Impossible!” Krivoshein howled. “I'll show you impossible!”
He finished the sentence in a mellifluous, throaty woman's voice, and his face began turning into Elena Ivanovna Kolomiets's face: the cute nose turned up; the cheeks grew pink and round; the dark eyebrows arched delicately, and the eyes glowed with gray light.
“If anyone should come in now….” thought Onisimov feverishly and rushed to lock the door.
“Uh — huh, drop it!” Krivoshein, himself again, stood in the middle of the room in a boxer's stance.
“No, you misunderstood, ” muttered Matvei Apollonovich, coming back to his desk. “Why get upset?”
“Phew!. and don't even think about calling.” Krivoshein sat down, puffing, his face glistening with sweat. “Or I can turn into you. Would you like that?”
Onisimov's nerves gave out completely. He opened his drawer.
“Don't… please relax… stop… don't! Here, take your papers.”
“That's better.” Krivoshein took his papers and picked up his travel bag from the floor. “I explained to you nicely that you should drop your interest in this case — but no, you didn't believe me. I hope that I've convinced you now. Bye!”
He left. Matvei Apollonovich stood still listening to some sound reverberating in the room's stillness. A minute later he realized that it was his teeth chattering. His hands were also shaking. “What's the matter with me?” He grabbed the phone… and dropped it, sank into his chair and impotently laid his head on the cool surface of the desk. “The hell with this job.”
The door opened wide and the medical expert Zubato appeared on his doorstep with a plywood crate in his hands.
“Listen, Matvei, this really is the crime of the century. Congratulations,” he shouted. “Lookee here!” He noisily set the box on the table, opened it, and tossed out the straw packing. “I just got this from the sculpture studio. Look!”
Matvei Apollonovich looked up. He was staring at the plaster cast of Krivoshein's face — with a sloping forehead, a fat upturned nose, and wide cheeks….
Chapter 5
The best way to disguise that you limp with your left foot is 'to also limp with your right. You will then walk with a sailor's swagger.
— K. Prutkov — engineer. Hints for the Beginning Detective
“You sucker, show — off punk!” Krivoshein berated himself. “You found a wonderful application for your discovery — terrifying the police. He would have let me go anyway; there was no way out.”
His face and body muscles were exhausted. The painful ache was easing in his glands. “Three transformations in a few minutes is an overload. What a hothead. Well, nothing will happen to me. That's the beauty of it, that nothing can happen to me….”
The sky was quickly turning dark blue over the houses. The neon signs announcing the names of stores, theaters, and cafes went on with a slight hiss. The graduate student's thoughts returned to Moscow business.
“Vano Aleksandrovich passed with flying colors; he didn't even ask why I was being held. He identified me and that's all. I understand it: 'If Krivoshein is hiding his affairs from me then I don't want to know about them. The proud old man is hurt. And he's right. It was in conversation with him that I zeroed in on my goals in the experiments. Actually, it had been no conversation — it was an agreement. But it isn't everyone with whom you can argue and come out with enriched ideas.”
Vano Aleksandrovich kept circling him, watching with ironic expectation: what earth — shattering ideas will the dilettante biologist come up with? Once on a December evening, Krivoshein found him in his department office and told him everything that he felt about life in general and about man in particular. It was a good evening: they sat and smoked and talked, while a pre — New Year's storm howled and whistled outside, pounding snow against the window.
“Any machine is constructed somehow and does something,” Krivoshein was expounding. “The biological machine called Man also has these two parts to it: the basic one and the operative. The operative part — organs of sensation, the brain, motor nerves, and skeletal muscles — is for the most part subservient to man. The eyes, ears, the binding parts of the skin, the nerve endings in the nose and the tongue, and the pain and temperature receptors react to external stimulation, turn it into electrical impulses (just like the mechanism for information input in a computer), while the brain and the spinal column analyze and combine the impulses according to the 'stimulation — braking' principle (similar to the impulse cells of a machine). The synapses join and separate, sending commands to the skeletal muscles, which perform various actions — just like the executive mechanisms of a machine.
“Man controls the operative side of his organisms — he can even master reflexes, like pain, by will power. But with the basic side, which takes care of the fundamental process of life — metabolism — it isn't like that. That lungs suck in air; the heart forces blood into the dark crannies of the body; the gullet contracts and pushes pieces of food into the stomach; the pancreas secretes hormones and enzymes to reduce food to elements that the intestines can absorb; the liver excretes glucose into the blood. The thyroid and parathyroid produce wild things, thyroxin and parathyreodine, which determine whether a person will grow and mature or remain a cretinous dwarf, whether he will develop a sturdy skeletal system or whether his bones can be bent like pretzels. An inconsequential — looking growth by the base of the brain — the pituitary body — with the help of its secretions commands the entire mysterious kitchen of internal secretions as well as the functioning of the kidneys, blood pressure, and safe delivery in childbirth. And this part of the organism, which constructs man — his build, skull shape, psychology, health, and power — this part is not subject to the conscious mind!”
“Correct,” smiled Vano Aleksandrovich. “In your operative side I easily recognize the activity of the 'animal' or somatic nervous system and in the basic one, the realm of the 'vegetative' or sympathetic nervous system. These terms appeared in the eighteenth century; they used the Latin for animal and for plant. Personally, I don't think they're very apt. Perhaps your engineering terms will have greater success in the twentieth century. Well, continue, please.”
“Machines, even electronic ones, are constructed and made by man. Soon the machines will do it themselves; the principle is clear. But why can't man construct himself? Metabolism is subordinate to the central nervous system. The glands, blood vessels, and intestines are connected to the brain by the same kind of nerves as the muscles and sensory organs are. Why can't man control these processes the way he can wiggle his fingers? Why is man's conscious participation in this process limited to satisfying his appetite and thirst and several opposite needs? It's ridiculous. Homo sapiens, the king of nature, the crown of evolution, the creator of complex technology and art, is distinguished in the basic life process from cows and earthworms only in the use of knives and forks and alcohol!”
“Why is it so important to be able to bring sugar, enzymes, and hormones into the blood through will power?” Androsiashvili's bushy eyebrows arched. “Please be so kind as to tell me why, on top of all my worries in the department, I have to also think every hour about how much adrenaline and insulin I should produce in the pancreas and where I should direct it? The sympathetic system takes care of it for me, without bothering man — and that's fine!”