“Drink or not, give me a little more horseradish, can't abide pork, smoking, and….” Krivoshein got confused. “And well, I guess washing, brushing your teeth….”
“There's a dozen more like that,” nodded the professor, “but they are all minor, semichemical, semimuscular, superficial reflexes. And deeper in the organism there are definite reflex processes that are connected so unilaterally that there is nothing to controclass="underline" oxygen leaves the bloodstream, breathe; not enough protein for the muscles, eat; excreted water, drink; poisoned yourself with things forbidden for the organism, be sick or die. And there are no variations. You can't say that life did not teach people about metabolic reactions — it taught them cruelly. Epidemics — how nice it would be to figure out through the use of your mind and your reflexes just which bacillus was destroying you and purge it from your body like fleas! Famines — just hibernate like a bear instead of puffing up and dying! Wounds and mutilations in fighting — regenerate your torn — off limb or gouged eye! And that's not enough. It would all be done at high speed. Muscular reaction happens in tenths and hundredths of a second, and the fastest of the metabolic actions — secretion of adrenaline into the bloodstream — takes seconds. The secretion of hormones by the glands and the pituitary is discovered only after years, and maybe only once in a lifetime. Thus,” he smiled wanly, “this knowledge is not lost by the organism; it simply has not yet been acquired. It's too difficult for man to learn such a lesson.”
“And therefore mastery of metabolism could drag on for millions of years?”
“I'm afraid that it could take dozens of millions of years,” sighed Vano Aleksandrovich. “We mammals are very recent inhabitants of earth. Thirty million years — is that an age? Everything is still ahead of us.
“There will be nothing ahead of us, Vano Aleksandrovich!” exclaimed Krivoshein. “The present environment changes from year to year — what kind of million — year learning process can there be, what kind of repetition of lessons? Man has stepped off the path of natural evolution, and now he must figure things out for himself.”
“And we are.”
“What? Pills, powders, hemorrhoidal suppositories, enemas, and bed rest? Are you sure that we are improving man's breed this way? Maybe we're ruining it?”
' I'm not trying to talk you into involving yourself with pills and powders if those are the terms you choose to use for the antibiotics our department is developing,” Vano Aleksandrovich said, his face taking on a cold and haughty look. “If you want to study your idea — go ahead, dare. But explaining the unrealistic and unplanned aspects of this decision in graduate work and for a future dissertation is my right and my duty.”
He stood up and tossed the butts from the ashtray into the wastebasket.
“Forgive me, Vano Aleksandrovich. I certainly didn't want to hurt your feelings.” Krivoshein also stood, realizing that the conversation was over, and ending on an unpleasant note. “But. Vano Aleksandrovich, there are very interesting facts.”
“What facts?”
“Well… in the last century in India there was a man — god, Ramakrishna. And, if someone was being beaten nearby, he had welts on his body. Or take 'burns by suggestion': a sensitive subject is touched with a pencil and told that it was a lit cigarette. In these cases metabolism is controlled without a 'learning process, is it not?”
“Listen, you nagging student,” Androsiashvili wheeled on him, “how many window bolts can you eat in a sitting?”
“Hmmmm,” Krivoshein said in confusion. “I don't think any at all. How about you?”
“Me neither. But a patient I had in the dim past when I worked in the Pavlov Psychiatric Clinic swallowed, without any particular harm to himself, ” the professor leaned back, remembering, “five window bolts, twelve aluminum teaspoons, three tablespoons, two pairs of surgical scissors, 240 grams of broken glass, one fork, and 400 grams of various nails. Now these are not the results of an autopsy, mind you, but the history of a disease — I cut him open myself. The patient was cured of suicidal tendencies and is probably still alive today.” The professor glanced down at Krivoshein from the heights of his erudition. “So in scientific matters it is better not to orient yourself by religious fanatics or secular psychopaths. No, no!” He raised his hand to stave off the obvious look of disagreement in Krivoshein's eyes. “Enough arguing. Go ahead, I won't stop you. I'm sure that you will try to regulate metabolism with some kind of machine or electronic method.”
Vano Aleksandrovich gave the student a thoughtful and tired look and smiled.
“Catching the Firebird with your bare hands! What could be better? And you have a holy goaclass="underline" man without diseases, without old age — age is a result of a breakdown in metabolism, too. Twenty years or so ago, I would have allowed myself to be fired up by this idea. But now… now I must do what can definitely be done. Even if it's only a pill.”
Krivoshein turned down a cross street toward the Institute of Systemology and almost bumped into a man in a dark blue cloak, much too warm for the season. The unexpectedness of the encounter produced further problems: Krivoshein stepped to the left to let the man past, while the man did the same to the right. Then both of them, letting the other go first, finally set off in opposite directions. The man stared at Krivoshein in amazement and stopped.
“I beg your pardon,” he muttered and went on.
The street was dark and empty. Krivoshein soon heard footsteps behind him and looked back: the man in the cloak was following at a short distance. “That Onisimov!” thought the graduate student. “He's got a detective tailing me!” He experimented by going faster and heard the man's pace increase. “Ah, the hell with him! I'm certainly not going to cover my tracks.” Krivoshein went on slowly, rambling. However, his back felt uncomfortable and his thoughts returned to reality.
“So, I guess Val tried another experiment. Maybe he wasn't alone? It failed; that corpse turning into a skeleton. But why are the police involved? And where is he? Our Val must have blown town on his bike until things calmed down. Or maybe he's in the lab?”
Krivoshein approached the monumental, cast — iron gates of the institute. The rectangular posts of the gates were so large that the left one easily contained the pass office and the right one the entrance way. He opened the door. Old man Vakhterych, the ancient guard of science, was nodding off behind the barrier.
“Good evening!” Krivoshein nodded at him.
“Good evening, Valentin Vasilyevich!” replied Vakhterych, obviously not about to ask him for his pass; they were used to visits by the head of the New Systems Lab at all hours.
Krivoshein, inside the grounds, looked back; the creep in the cloak was stuck outside. There you go, chum,” Krivoshein thought. “The pass system proves itself once again.”
The windows of the lodge were dark. A red cigarette light glowed by the door. Krivoshein crouched under the trees and made out a uniform cap on a man's head against the stars. “No, I've had it with the cops for one day. I'd better go home….” he laughed. “I mean to his house.”
He started for the gates, but remembered the fellow in the cloak and stopped. “That's against all the rules, the suspect running into the detective's arms. Let him do some work.” Krivoshein headed for the other end of the park — where the branches of the old oak hung over the iron pickets of the fence. He jumped from the branch onto the sidewalk and started for Academic Town.