“Speak of the devil,” Heiger growled, getting up. “Sorry, guys, I’ll be right back.”
He walked out, and immediately the girls in white aprons appeared. They rapidly and soundlessly organized a second round of coffee and disappeared, together with Parker.
“Well, will you come?” Andrei asked Izya.
“Glad to,” said Izya, gulping his coffee with whistling and champing sounds. “Who’ll be there?”
“The colonel will be there. And the Dolfusses, maybe Chachua… Why, who would you like?”
“To be honest, I could do without Madam Dolfuss.”
“Never mind, we’ll set Chachua on her.”
Izya nodded, and then suddenly said, “It’s a pretty long time since we got together, eh?”
“Yes, brother, work…”
“Lies, lies, what kind of work do you do? You just sit there, polishing your collection… make sure you don’t accidentally shoot yourself… Oh yes, by the way, I got hold of a pistol for you. A genuine Smith & Wesson, from the prairies.”
“Honestly?”
“Only it’s rusty, completely covered in rust—”
“Don’t even think of cleaning it!” Andrei shouted, bouncing up and down on his chair. “Bring it just the way it is—you’ll ruin everything, your hands are like grappling hooks… And it’s not a pistol, it’s a revolver. Where did you find it?”
“In the right place to look, that’s where,” said Izya. “Just wait, on the expedition we’ll find so many you won’t be able to lug them back home.”
Andrei put down his coffee cup. This aspect of the expedition hadn’t occurred to him, and he instantly felt his mood lift tremendously as he imagined a unique collection of Colts, Brownings, Mausers, Nagants, Parabellums, Sauers, Walthers… and moving further back into the depths of time, Lefaucheux and Lepage dueling pistols… immense boarding pistols with bayonets… magnificent homemade specials from the Far West… all those indescribably valuable items that he hadn’t even dared to dream of having as he read and reread the catalog of the private collection of the millionaire Brunner, which had ended up in the City in some miraculous fashion. Cases, crates, warehouses of firearms… Maybe he’d get lucky and find a Česká zbrojovka, with a silencer… or an Astra 900, or maybe even, dammit, a “Number Nine”—the Mauser 08, a real rarity, a dream of his… Yesss…
“Do you collect antitank mines?” Izya asked. “Or culverins, maybe.”
“No,” Andrei said, smiling joyfully. “I only collect personal firearms.”
“Well, there happens to be a bazooka on offer,” said Izya. “They don’t want much—only two hundred tugriks.”
“You’d better offer the bazooka to Ruhmer, brother,” said Andrei.
“Thanks. I’ve been at Ruhmer’s place before,” Izya said, and his smile froze.
Ah, dammit, thought Andrei, feeling awkward, but fortunately just then Heiger came back in. He was pleased.
“Come on then, pour the president a cup,” he said. “What were you talking about here?”
“Art and literature,” said Izya.
“Literature?” Heiger took a sip of coffee. “Come on then, out with it! What exactly do my counselors say about literature?”
“Oh, he’s just babbling,” said Andrei. “We were talking about my collection, not literature.”
“And what’s suddenly got you interested in literature?” asked Izya, giving Heiger a curious look. “You’ve always been such a practical president.”
“That’s why I’m interested, because I’m practical,” said Heiger. “Look at the figures,” he told them, starting to count on his fingers. “In the City we publish two literary journals, four literary supplements to newspapers, at least ten regular series of rubbishy adventure stories… and I think that’s all. And also about fifteen books a year. And in all that there’s nothing that’s even halfway decent. I’ve spoken to people who know about these things. Neither before the Turning Point nor after it has a single even slightly significant work of literature appeared in the City. Nothing but trash. What’s wrong?”
Andrei and Izya exchanged glances. Yes, Heiger could always spring a surprise, no denying that.
“I don’t quite understand what you’re saying here,” Izya told Heiger. “What does it matter to you anyway? Are you looking for a writer so he can write your life story?”
“Just drop the jokes, will you?” Heiger said patiently. “There are a million people in the City. More than a thousand are registered as writers. And they’re all third-rate hacks. That is, I don’t read them, of course.”
“Third-rate hacks, third-rate hacks,” Izya said, nodding. “The information you’ve been given is correct. No Tolstoys or Dostoyevskys anywhere in sight. Neither Leos nor Alexeis…”
“But seriously, why aren’t there?” Andrei asked.
“No outstanding writers,” Heiger continued. “No artists. No composers. No… what are they called… sculptors either.”
“No architects,” Andrei put in. “No movie directors…”
“None of all that,” said Heiger. “A million people! At first I was simply surprised, and then, to be honest, I felt alarmed.”
“Why?” Izya immediately asked.
Heiger indecisively chewed on his lips. “It’s hard to explain,” he confessed. “I personally don’t know what it’s all needed for, but I’ve been told that every decent society has all this. And if we don’t, it means something’s out of order… That’s the way I think about it. All right, then: before the Turning Point life in the City was hard, it was a shambles, and let’s assume no one had any time for the fine arts. But now life is basically coming together—”
“No,” Andrei interrupted pensively. “That has nothing to do with it. As far as I know, the greatest artists in the world actually worked in incredibly messy circumstances. There isn’t any general rule here. An artist could be a beggar, a madman, or a drunk, or he could be a really prosperous man, even rich, like Turgenev for instance… I don’t know.”
“In any case,” Izya said to Heiger, “if you’re planning, for instance, to abruptly improve the living standards of our writers—”
“Yes! For instance!” said Heiger taking another sip of coffee. He licked his lips and started looking at Izya through narrowed eyes.
“Nothing will come of it,” Izya said with some satisfaction. “And there’s no point in hoping it will.”
“Hang on,” said Andrei. “Perhaps artistic and creative people simply don’t end up in the City? They don’t agree to come here?”
“Or, let’s say, they’re not invited,” said Izya.
“No way,” said Heiger. “Fifty percent of the City’s population are young people. On Earth they were nobody. How would it be possible to tell if they were creative types?”
“Maybe it is possible to tell,” said Izya.
“Even so,” said Heiger, “there are tens of thousands of people in the City who were born and grew up here. What about them? Or does talent have to be inherited?”
“Yes, that really is rather strange,” said Andrei. “The City has excellent engineers. And pretty good scientists. No Mendeleyevs, maybe, but solid, world class. Take Butz, for instance… There are heaps of talented people—inventors, administrators, craftsmen, professionals… all sorts of applied specialists, in fact.”
“That’s just it,” said Heiger. “That’s what surprises me.”
“Listen, Fritz,” said Izya. “What do you want with unnecessary hassle? Say talented writers do appear here, and say they start lambasting you in their brilliant works—you, and the way you do things, and your counselors… Then you’ll have really bad problems. First you’ll try to persuade them, then you’ll threaten them, then you’ll have to jail them.”