My enemies shout. My friends whisper carefully, looking over their shoulders: “You really gave it to Hilobok. The jerk deserves it. Well, they'll get you now.” And they suggest where I should tranfer. “Why don't you intercede?” “Well, you see….” Even good old Fenya Zagrebnyak just spreads his hands apart. “What can I do? It's not in my field.”
A narrow specialist has a lousy life. Well — fed, secure, but lousy. All his interests are concentrated on elements of passive memory, say, and not on any old elements but only on cryotron elements, and only on film cryotrons and only on those made of lead — tin films. The worker, the farmer, the technician, the broad — based engineer, the teacher, and even the office worker can apply his knowledge and skills to many activities, enterprises, and companies, but there are only two or three institutes in the whole Soviet Union studying those damned cryotrons. What can poor Fedya do? He has to sit there and not make waves. In effect, a narrow speciality is a means of self — enslavement.
That's why it's rare among us specialists to find all for one (unless the one is Azarov). All against one is the more usual picture; that's easier. That's why passions flare up at the first sign of insubordination. “Anyone could be failed like that!” yelped Voltampernov — and it went on and on.
All right, I'll bear it. I can take it. The important thing is that it's done. I knew what I was getting into. But it's repulsive. It's unbelievably disgusting.
Onisimov put out his cigarette and stared at the computer. Something had changed slowly and imperceptibly in the distribution of the hoses. They seemed to be tensed. A shudder of contractions traveled through some of them. And — Onisimov jumped — the first drop fell loudly from the left gray hose into the tank.
Onisimov moved the stairs over to the tank and climbed up. He put his hand under the hose. In a minute it was full of the golden liquid. The lines in his skin were visible through it, as if under a magnifying glass. He concentrated, and the skin disappeared, revealing the red muscles, the white bones, the tendons…. “Ah, if they had only known how to do this,” he sighed. “The experiment wouldn't have gone like this. They didn't know. And it had an effect.”
He let the liquid splash into the tank, got back down to the floor, and washed his hand in the sink. The patter of drops from all the hoses rang merrily and springlike in the lab.
“Work! You're strong, computer,” Onisimov — Krivoshein said respectfully. “As strong as life.”
He obviously didn't want to leave the laboratory. But he glanced at his watch, put on his jacket, and hurried.
“Good morning, Matvei Apollonovich!” Hilobok greeted him rapturously. “Working already? I've been waiting for you. I wanted to report something,” he whispered, bringing his mustache close to Onisimov's ear, “Yesterday that. woman of his, Elena Ivanovna Kolomiets, came to his apartment, took something, and left. And there was someone else in there, too. The light was on all night.”
“I see. You did the right thing in telling me. As they say, jurisprudence will not forget you.”
“Oh, any time, it's my duty!”
“Duty aside,” Onisimov said in a stern voice, “aren't you motivated by other, stronger motives, comrade Hilobok?”
“What motives?”
“For instance the fact that Krivoshein ruined your doctoral dissertation defense.”
Harry Haritonovich's face sagged for a moment and then quickly took on a look of injury at the hands of humanity.
“Some people! Someone already had time to report that to you. What kind of people work here, I ask you, tsk, tsk? Don't be silly, Matvei Apollonovich. How could you doubt the sincerity of my motives! Krivoshein didn't have as tremendous an influence at the defense as you might have been told. There were more serious experts there than him, and many approved of it, but he, obviously, was jealous, and well, they suggested I make some changes, nothing terrible. I'll be up for it again soon. But, of course, if you suspect me, that's up to you. Then check things out for yourself. It was my duty to tell you, but now… good day!”
“Good day.”
Harry Haritonovich left furious: Krivoshein was getting him from the other world, too!
“You really let him have it, comrade captain!” the guard said approvingly.
Onisimov didn't hear. He was watching Hilobok leave.
It leads to one thing. But the question that comes up willy — nilly is “Is it worth it?”
Be straight, Krivoshein: you can kick the bucket in this experiment. It's that simple, based on your own statistics of success and failure in your experiments. Science and methodology aside, things never work the way they should the first time — that's the old law. And a mistake in this experiment is more than a spoiled sample.
I mean basically I'm climbing into the tank as a narrow specialist in this work. That's my speciality, like cryotron film is for Fenya Zagrebnyak. But I don't have to get in there — nobody's forcing me. Funny, I have to get into a medium that easily dissolves live organisms simply because my specialty worked out badly!
For people? The hell with them! Do I need more than the rest? I'll just live quietly for myself. And it'll be good.
And everything will be clear — with the lowest, coldest clarity of a scoundrel. And I'll have to spend my life justifying my retreat by saying that all people are like that, no better than me, and even worse, everyone lives only for himself. And I'll have to drop all my hopes and dreams of better things quickly so that they don't remind me. I sold out! I sold out and I have no right to expect anything better from anyone else.
And then it will get really cold in the world….
Golovorezov was asking him something.
“What?”
“I said, will my replacement be here soon, comrade captain? I came on at twenty — two hundred.”
“Didn't you get enough sleep?” Onisimov squinted at him merrily. “You'll have to stand it another hour and a half or so. Then you'll be relieved, I promise. I'll take the keys with me. That's better. Don't let anyone in here!”
Chapter 22
Einstein had a boss, and Faraday had one, and Popov had one… but somehow no one ever remembers them. Now that's a violation of subordination!
— K. Prutkov — engineer, Thought 40
The window of Azarov's office opened on the institute grounds. He could see the crowns of the lindens and the gray — glassed parallelepiped of the new building rising above them. Arkady Arkadievich never tired of the view. In the mornings it helped him chase away his neurasthenia and gave him energy. But today, looking out the window, he merely frowned and turned away.
Yesterday's feeling to loneliness and vague guilt hadn't passed. “Eh!” Azarov tried to wave it away. “Whenever anyone dies, you always feel guilty just because you're still alive. Especially if the person was younger than you. And loneliness in science is natural and usual for anyone working in the creative end. Each one of us only knows his own field. It's hard to understand one another. That's why we often replace mutual understanding with an unspoken agreement not to pry into other people's business. But what had he known? What was he doing?”
“May I? Good morning, Arkady Arkadievich!” Hilobok moved across the carpet, exuding cologne as he walked.
Onisimov's subtle hint had worried Harry Haritonovich. It occurred to him that someone might think that he was evening the score with Krivoshein over the dissertation by poisoning him to death. “It's only natural that when someone is killed they look for a killer. And around here, they could easily….” the assistant professor thought, paranoid. He wasn't quite sure who or what he had to be afraid of, but he knew he had better be afraid, to keep them from getting a jump on him.