The important thing about man is not that he breathes oxygen. Not his arms and legs. You can develop fins, gills, wings, breathe fluorine, replace protein with organosilicon, and still be man. And you can have normal extremities, white skin, a head, and papers — and not be one! “Yes, but….” Krivoshein leaned on the desk. His eyes fell on his original's notes.
Disease and freakishness will disappear. Wounds and poisons will be no threat. Everyone will be able to become strong, brave, beautiful, will be able to mobilize the resources of his organism to do work that once seemed impossible. People will be like gods! Well, what are you smiling wisely for? This is really the method for the limitless perfection of man!”
“I'm wise, so I'm smiling,” Kravets answered coldly. “You're flying off somewhere again. That's not the only possibility.”
“Oh, come on! Doesn't every person strive to become better, more perfect?”
“Strives in keeping with his concepts of good and perfection. For one thing, you might end up with “Krivoshein's cosmetic baths. “
“What baths?”
“You know… five rubles a session. A citizen shows up, undresses behind a screen, and sinks into the biological liquid. The operator — some Zhora Sherverpupa, former hairdresser — puts on Mono — makh's Crown and asks: 'What would you desire? This time I want to look like Brigitte Bardot, his client orders. 'But make sure my eyebrows are thicker and darker. My guy really likes 'em dark. Why are you frowning? She'll even give Zhora a tip. And the male clientele will be turning themselves into Alain Delon or the Nordic handsomeness of an Oleg Strizhenov. And then next season the fashion will be for Lollabrigidas and Vitaly Zubkovs, as seen in the picture….”
“But we could program a minimal retrieval of information for the computer — womb… some kind of filter for banality and stupidity. Or program it to — “
“ — simultaneously instill inner qualities in the mass consumer? What if he doesn't want any? Doesn't he have the right not to want any for his money? 'What am I, some little lady will ask, 'abnormal or something. Why do you think you should change me? You're the weirdos! You see, the reinforced concreteness of the position of the middle — class boob stems from his absolute certainty that his own behavior is the norm.”
“But we can make sure it's not the norm for the computer — womb.”
“Hmmm… I suggest a simple experiment. Please put a finger into the liquid.”
“Which one?”
“Whichever one you won't miss.”
I dipped my ring finger into the liquid. The double put on the crown and went over to the medicine chest.
“Attention!”
“Ow, what are you doing?” I pulled out the finger. It was cut and bleeding.
Victor Kravets sucked his ring finger and then wiped the blood from the scalpel.
“Do you see now?” The computer has no norms of behavior. It doesn't give a damn about anything. Whatever you command it to do, it does.”
We healed the cuts.
Kravets brought me down from the heavens — headlong down a steep flight of stairs. We're a dreamy lot, inventors. And Bell probably thought that people would use his telephone only for pleasant or necessary news, and certainly not for gossip, or anonymous denunciations, or for sending an ambulance to perfectly healthy friends as a joke. We all dream about the good thing, and when life turns our inventions inside out, we just slap our sides, like loggers in a forest, and ask: “What are you doing, people?”
The hellish part of science is that it creates methods and nothing else. So we will have a “method for transforming information in a biological system.” You can turn a monkey into a man. But you could also turn a man into a donkey.
But I can't, I can't believe that after our discovery things would go on as they were! Not for the sake of science — for the sake of life. Our discovery was intended for life: it doesn't shoot; it doesn't kill — it creates. Maybe we're looking in the wrong place — the problem isn't in the computer but in man?
Graduate student Krivoshein finished reading the diary to the inner accompaniment of these troubling thoughts. Had they worked for nothing? Was their discovery too soon, ahead of its time, and could it harm mankind? In Moscow he hadn't given much thought to it: the discovery was only within him — it had nothing to do with anyone else — and he just explored it to his heart's content and said nothing. Of course, after his bath in the pool of the reactor he was bursting to share his knowledge and experiences with Androsiashvili and the guys in the form: radiation and radiation sickness can be overcome! But this knowledge was top secret… “because of the dregs!” Krivoshein was angry. “Because of the dregs, of whom there are maybe one in a thousand and for whom that prostitute science prepares methods of destroying cities and nations! Only methods. I guess we'll have to just wipe out those vipers. No one would catch me or shoot me… but then I'll be just like them. No, that's not it, either.
The student shut the diary and raised his eyes. The table lamp was lit without illuminating anything. It was light. Beyond the window the matching yellow faces of the buildings of Academic Town stared into the sun; it looked like the herd of houses would take off after the light any second. The clock said 7:30 in the morning.
Krivoshein lit up and went out on the balcony. People were gathering at the bus stop. A broad — shouldered man in a blue raincost paced under the trees. “Well, well!” Krivoshein was amazed by his tenacity. “All right, I have to save what can be saved.”
He went back inside, undressed, and took a cold shower. Then he opened the closet, critically eyed the meager selection of clothes. He chose a Ukrainian shirt with embroidery. He gave the worn suit a dubious stare, sighed, and put it on.
Then the student trained in front of the mirror for fifteen minutes and left the apartment.
Chapter 21
“Hey! Stop! Don't be a jackass!”
“Easier said than done….” muttered the jackass, and rambled on.
— A contemporary fable
The man in the raincoat noticed Krivoshein, turned to him, and stared.
“God, what a bumbling amateur detective!” Krivoshein thought to himself. “None of this watching my reflection in store windows or hiding behind a newspaper — he's pushing his way toward me like a preneanderthal on a county bus! Don't they train these guys? They should at least read comic books to improve their technique. A guy like this is really going to solve a crime, hah!”
He was angry. He walked right up to the man.
“Listen, don't you ever get relieved? Doesn't the seven — hour workday law apply to detectives?”
The man raised his eyebrows quizzically.
“Val….” he said in a soft baritone. “Val, don't you recognize me?”
“Hm….” Krivoshein blinked, stared, and whistled. “I see… you must be the double Adam — Hercules? So that's it! And I thought….”
“And then, you're not Krivoshein? I mean, you are Krivoshein, but the Moscow one?”
“Right. Well, hello… hello Val — Adam, you lost soul!”
“Hello.”
They shook hands. Krivoshein examined Adam's wind — burned, tanned face: the features were coarse, but handsome. “Val did a good job, just look at him!” But the light eyes behind the bleached lashes hid a certain temerity.
“There's going to be an awful lot of Valentin Vasilyevich Krivosheins around here.”
“You can call me Adam. I think I'll adopt the name.”
“Where have you been, Adam?”