“You knew him too,” said Andrei. “Remember, in my newspaper…”
“Yes, yes, yes!” Izya exclaimed. “That’s right! I remember now.”
“Only, for God’s sake, keep your mouth shut,” said Heiger.
Wearing his habitual frozen smile, Izya started plucking at the wart on his neck. “So that’s what it was…” he muttered. “I get it… I get it… So he wrapped himself in explosives and went out onto the plaza… He probably sent letters to all the papers, the freak… Right, right, right. And what measures do you intend to take?” he asked, addressing Heiger.
“I’ve already taken them,” said Heiger.
“Right, of course you have!” Izya said impatiently. “You’ve classified it, put out the official lies, let Ruhmer off the leash—that’s not what I meant. What do you think about this in general? Or do you assume that it’s an isolated incident?”
“Uh-uh. I don’t assume that it’s an isolated incident,” Heiger said slowly.
“Thank God!” Izya exclaimed.
“And what do you think?” Andrei asked him.
Izya quickly turned to face Andrei. “And you?”
“I think that any orderly society is bound to have its own psychos. And Denny was a psycho, that’s for sure. His philosophy had clearly driven him crazy. And of course, he’s not the only one in the City.”
“And what did he say?” Izya asked avidly.
“He said he was bored. He said we hadn’t found our true goal. He said all our work on improving the standard of living was garbage and it solved nothing. He said lots of things, but he couldn’t propose anything worthwhile himself. A psycho. Hysterical.”
“But what would he really have wanted to see?” asked Heiger.
Andrei gestured dismissively. “The usual populist nonsense. Like Nekrasov: ‘With its broad, radiant chest, the people will bear whatever the Lord may send…’”
“I don’t understand,” said Heiger.
“Well, he believed it was the task of enlightened people to raise up the people to their own enlightened level. But of course, he didn’t know how to go about it.”
“And why did he kill himself?” Heiger asked doubtfully.
“I told you, he was a psycho.”
“And what’s your opinion?” Heiger asked Izya.
Izya didn’t take even a second to ponder. “If a psycho is what you call a man who wrestles with a problem that has no solution,” he said, “then yes, he was a psycho. And you”—Izya jabbed his finger at Heiger—“will never understand him. You’re one of those people who only take on problems that have solutions.”
“Let’s assume,” said Andrei, “that Denny was absolutely certain his problem did have a solution.”
Izya brushed his opinion aside. “Neither of you understand a damned thing,” he declared. “You believe you’re the technocratic elite. Democrat is a dirty word for you: the cobblers should stick to their lasts. You have appalling contempt for the broad masses and you’re appallingly proud of the way you despise them. But in reality, it’s you who are the genuine, one hundred percent slaves of those masses! Everything you do, you do it for the masses. Everything you rack your brains over—the whole kit and caboodle, above all else it’s what the masses need. You live for the masses. If the masses disappeared, your lives would lose all meaning. You’re pathetic, pitiful applications engineers. And that’s why you’ll never be psychos. After all, rustling up everything the broad masses need is relatively simple, isn’t it? So your problems are by definition problems that have solutions. You’ll never understand people who kill themselves as a gesture of protest.”
“Why won’t we?” Andrei asked irritably. “What is there really to understand here? Of course we do what the overwhelming majority wants. And we give, or try to give, that majority everything short of flying pigs—which, by the way, are not actually required by the majority. But there’s always an insignificant minority that wants flying pigs and nothing else. Because it’s an idée fixe for them, you see. A morbid obsession. They have to have flying pigs! Simply because it’s impossible to find flying pigs anywhere. And that’s how the social psychos appear. What’s so hard to understand about that? Or do you really believe that all this rabble can be raised up to the level of the elite?”
“We’re not talking about me,” said Izya, baring his teeth in a grin. “I don’t consider myself a slave of the majority, a.k.a. a servant of the people. I’ve never worked for the majority and I don’t consider myself under any obligation to it.”
“All right, all right,” said Heiger. “Everyone knows you’re a case apart. Let’s get back to our suicides. You believe that suicides will happen, no matter what political line we pursue?”
“They’ll happen precisely because you pursue an entirely definite political line!” said Izya. “And the longer it goes on, the more of them there’ll be, because you take away from people the onus of providing their own daily bread and you don’t give them anything in return. People get sick of it all and start feeling bored. That’s why there’ll be suicides, drug addiction, sexual revolutions, fatuous revolts over paltry nonsense…”
“That’s bullshit!” Andrei said furiously. “Think before you spout that kind of drivel, you lousy experimenter! ‘Spice his life up a bit, add a little pepper!’ Is that it? Are you suggesting we create artificial shortages? Just think where what you’re saying leads to!”
“It’s not what I’m saying that leads there,” said Izya, reaching right across the table with his mutilated arm to take the pan of meat sauce. “It’s what you’re doing. But it’s a fact that you can’t give them anything in exchange. Your Great Construction Sites are nonsense. The experiment on the experimenters is hogwash, no one gives a damn about it… And stop attacking me, I’m not saying this to condemn you. It’s just the way things are. It’s the fate of every populist, whether he poses as a technocratic benefactor or vainly attempts to inculcate certain ideals in the people—ideals which, in his opinion, the people can’t live without… Two sides of the same coin, heads or tails. In the end, you get food riots or affluence riots, take your choice. You’ve chosen affluence riots, and good luck to you—why attack me over it?”
“Don’t pour sauce on the tablecloth,” Heiger said angrily.
“Sorry…” Izya absentmindedly smeared the puddle across the tablecloth with a napkin. “But the arithmetic’s quite clear,” he said, “even if the discontents only make up one percent. If there are a million people in a city, that means ten thousand discontents. Even if it’s a tenth of a percent—that’s a thousand discontents. And when that thousand starts clamoring under your windows! And then, note, there’s no such thing as completely contented people. There’s something everyone wants that he doesn’t have, right? You know, he’s quite happy with everything, but then he doesn’t have a car. Why not? You know, he got used to having a car on Earth, but here he hasn’t got one, and what’s even more important, there’s no way he can expect to get one… Can you imagine how many people like that there are in the City?” Izya broke off and started greedily gobbling down macaroni, drowning it in sauce. “The chow here’s delicious,” he said. “With my modest level of affluence the Glass House is the only place I can really fill my belly.”
Andrei watched him guzzling, snorted, and poured himself some tomato juice. He drank it and lit a cigarette. It’s always the apocalypse with him… Seven chalices of the wrath of God and the seven last plagues… The rabble is the rabble. Of course they’ll rebel, that’s what we keep Ruhmer for. Affluence riots are something new though, a kind of paradox. There’s probably never been anything like that on Earth. At least not in my time. And the classics don’t say anything about it. But rebellion is rebellion… The Experiment is the Experiment, soccer is soccer… Dammit!