Excerpt 12.… collected stamps, very energetically. Weingarten once took away with a satisfied purr the remnants of the stamp collection Malianov had as a teenager. He knew about stamps. He lost his tongue for a while. Yes, of course the royal collection had all of them. Mr. Stulov in New York had a few of these too. But if you just take the state collection … without even mentioning simple collectors …
“Counterfeit,” said Malianov finally. Contemptuously, Weingarten said nothing. “Well, then, brand new.”
“You fool,” Weingarten barked and put away the book.
Malianov couldn’t think of a comeback. If all this had been a lie or even the simple truth, rather than the horrible truth, Weingarten would have done it just the other way around. He would have shown them the stamps first, and then made up and given them that more-or-less accurate bull story about them.
“Well, and what do you do now?” Malianov asked, feeling his heart sinking somewhere again.
No one answered. Weingarten poured himself another glass, drank it, and ate the last herring roll. Gubar watched listlessly as his strange son played with the glasses, his serious, pale face intent. Then Weingarten took up the story again, without any jokes this time, as though too weary for them, barely moving his lips. How he called Gubar, and Gubar did not answer; how he called Malianov and discovered that Snegovoi did exist; how scared he was when Malianov went to let Lidochka in and didn’t come back to the phone for so long; how he didn’t sleep all night, pacing his room and thinking, thinking, thinking, taking bromides and thinking some more; how he called Malianov this morning and realized that they had contacted him, too, and then Gubar came over—with his own problems.
CHAPTER 6
Excerpt 13.… found out that Gubar was lazy and played hooky as a child and was overly concerned with sex then, too. He dropped out of school after the ninth grade, worked as an orderly, then as a driver on a fertilizer truck, then as a lab assistant in the institute, where he met Val, and now was working in a closed research institute on some gigantic, very important project, something to do with energetics. Zakhar had no special training, but was always a radio buff; electronics was in his soul and bone marrow, and he rose quickly in the institute, even though he was held back by the lack of a diploma.
He patented several inventions, and he had two or three in the works, and he definitely did not know which one was causing all these problems. But he figured that it was last year’s—he had invented something connected with “the constructive use of fading.” He figured, but he wasn’t sure.
The most important thing in his life had always been women. They were attracted to him like flies to honey. And when for some reason they stopped sticking to him, he began sticking to them. He had been married once and retained the most unpleasant memories and bitter lessons from the union; he now maintained the strictest code in relation to that institution. In short, he was a lady-killer of the highest degree, and in comparison with him, Weingarten looked like an ascetic, anchorite, and stoic. But for all that, he was no lecher. He treated his women with respect, even awe, and apparently saw himself as a humble source of their pleasure. He never had two lovers at the same time; he never got into fights or ugly scenes with them, and he never, apparently, hurt any of them. So in that area, from the time his unhappy marriage ended, everything was going very well. Until very recently.
He himself felt that the unpleasantness brought on by the space aliens began with the appearance of a repulsive rash on his feet. He rushed to a doctor as soon as the rash appeared, because he always took good care of his health. The doctor calmed him down, gave him some pills, and the rash went away. But then came the invasion of women. They came in droves—all the women he had ever been involved with. They hung around his apartment in twos and threes; there was one horrible day when there were five women in his apartment at the same time. And he simply did not understand what they wanted from him. And, worse than that, he had the sneaking suspicion that the women didn’t know either. They abused him; they groveled at his feet; they begged for something or other; they fought among themselves like cats; they broke all his dishes, shattered the blue Japanese water bowl, and ruined his furniture. They had hysterical fits; they tried poisoning themselves, some threatened to poison him, and they were inexhaustible and extremely demanding in lovemaking. And many of them had been married a long time, loved their husbands and children, and the husbands also came to Gubar’s apartment and behaved strangely. (Gubar mumbled more than ever in this part of the story.)
In brief, his life had turned into hell; he lost fifteen pounds; he had a rash all over his body; there was no question of doing his work, and he had to take an unpaid leave of absence even though he was deep in debt. (At first, he sought refuge from the onslaught at the institute, but very quickly realized that this would only lead to his personal problems hitting the public limelight. He also mumbled this part.)
This hell lasted ten days nonstop and suddenly ended the day before yesterday. He had just turned over the last of the women to her husband, a gloomy police sergeant, when a woman appeared with a child. He remembered the woman. He’d met her six years ago. They had been in a crowded bus, squeezed together. He looked at her, and he liked what he saw. Excuse me, he said, would you have a piece of paper and a pencil? Yes, here you are, she replied, taking the needed articles from her purse. Thank you so much, he said, now please write down your name and phone number. They had a wonderful time on the Riga seashore and parted quietly—it seemed never to meet again, pleased with each other and no strings attached.
And now she appeared on his doorstep with the boy and said he was his son. She had been married for three years to a very good and very famous man, whom she loved and respected deeply. She could not explain to Gubar why she had come. She cried every time he tried to find out. She wrung her hands, and it was apparent that she felt her behavior was immoral and criminal. But she would not leave. The days that she spent in Gubar’s ravaged apartment were the worst part of the nightmare. She behaved like a sleepwalker, talking all the time. Gubar could understand the words, but there was no way he could make any sense of them. And then yesterday morning she woke up. She pulled Gubar out of bed, led him to the bathroom, turned on the water full blast, and whispered an absolutely unbelievable tale into Gubar’s ear.
According to her (in Gubar’s interpretation) it seemed that since ancient times there had been this secret, semimystical Union of the Nine on Earth. These were monstrously secretive wise men, either very long-lived or immortal, who were concerned with only two things: first, that they gather and master all the achievements of every single branch of science, and second, that they make sure that none of the new scientific-technological advances be used by people for self-destruction. These wise men are almost all-knowing and practically all-powerful. It is impossible to hide from them, and it is no use fighting them. And now this Union of the Nine was taking on Zakhar Gubar. Why him—she did not know. What Gubar was supposed to do now she didn’t know either. He had to figure that out for himself. She only knew that all the recent unpleasantnesses he had had were a warning. And she was sent to him as a warning too. And so that Zakhar would remember the warning, she had been ordered to leave the boy with him. Who gave the order she didn’t know. In fact, she knew nothing else. And didn’t want to know. She only wanted to be sure that nothing bad happened to the boy. She begged Gubar not to resist and to think twenty times before taking any action. And now she had to go.
Weeping, her face buried in her handkerchief, she left. And Gubar was left with the boy. One on one. What took place between them until three in the afternoon, he didn’t wish to tell. But something did happen.
(The boy had a brief statement on the matter: “I straightened him out is all.”) At three p.m. Gubar couldn’t stand it anymore, and he called and then ran over to see Weingarten, his closest friend.
“I still don’t understand a thing,” he concluded. “I listened to Val and I listened to you, Dmitri. I
still don’t understand. Maybe it’s the heat? They say it hasn’t been this hot in two hundred and fifty years. And we’ve all gone mad, each in his own way.”
“Wait a minute, Zakhar,” Weingarten said, frowning. “You’re a stable person, so don’t start hypothesizing just yet.”
“What hypothesis!” Gubar said unhappily. “It’s clear to me without any hypothesis that we won’t come up with anything here. We have to report this to the right place, that’s what I say.”
Weingarten gave him a withering look.
“And where do you propose we report this information?”
“How should I know? There has to be some organization. Some local agency.”
The boy giggled loudly, and Gubar shut up. Malianov pictured Weingarten reporting in at the appropriate agency, telling the interested investigator his tall tale of the red-haired midget in the tight-fitting black suit. Gubar looked rather funny in the same situation. And as for Malianov himself …
“Well, fellows, you do what you like, but the police station is not the place for me. A man died under strange circumstances across the hall from me, and I am the last one to have seen him alive. And there’s no point in my going anyway, I have the feeling they’ll come for me.”
Weingarten immediately poured him a glass of cognac, and Malianov gulped it down, without even tasting it. Weingarten said with a sigh:
“Yes, buddies. There’s nobody to consult with. One word and they’ll stick us in the nuthouse. We’ll have to figure it out ourselves. Go on, Dmitri, go ahead. You have a clear head. Go on, figure it out.”
Malianov rubbed his forehead.
“Actually, my head is stuffed,” he said. “I have nothing to say. It’s all a nightmare. I do understand one thing: You were told straight out to drop your work. I was told nothing, but my life was made into—”
“Right!” Weingarten interrupted. “Fact number one: Someone does not like our work. Question: Who? Be observant: An alien comes to see me.” Weingarten ticked the points off on his fingers. “An agent from the Union of the Nine to see Zakhar. By the way, have you heard of the Union of the Nine? I have the name in the back of my head, I must have read about it or something, but I don’t remember where. Nobody comes to see you. That is, of course you are visited, but by agents in disguise. What is the conclusion to be drawn here?”
“Well?” Malianov asked gloomily.
“The conclusion that follows is that there are no aliens and no ancient wise men, but something else, some force—and our work is getting in its way.”
“That’s nonsense,” Malianov said. “Delirium. Just crap. Think a bit. I’m working on stars in the gas-dust cloud. You have that revertase. And Zakhar is really out in left field—applied electronics.” He suddenly remembered. “Snegovoi had talked about that, too. You know what he said? He said, there’s the estate, and there’s the water. I only just now figured out what he meant by that. The poor guy was busting his brains over it, too. Or maybe you think there are three different powers at work here?” he asked acidly.
“No, buddy, now just hold on!” Weingarten insisted. “Don’t be in such a hurry.”
He looked as though he had figured it all out long ago and would clear everything up completely if, of course, they only stopped interrupting and let him get on with it. But he didn’t clear anything up—he stopped talking and stared at the empty herring jar.
They all sat in silence. Then Gubar spoke softly.
“I keep thinking about Snegovoi. I mean … he probably was ordered to stop his work too … and how could he? He was a military man … His work was—”
“I have to pee!” the boy announced, and when Gubar sighed and led him off to the toilet, he added in a loud voice: “and go poo.”
“No, buddy, don’t you rush,” Weingarten spoke again. “Just imagine for a second that there is a group of creatures on Earth powerful enough to pull off all these stunts. Let’s say it’s that Union of the Nine. What’s important to them? To put an end to certain work in a certain field that leads to a certain goal. How do you know? Maybe there are another hundred people in Leningrad going crazy like us. And maybe a hundred thousand all over the world. And like us, they’re afraid to admit it. Some are afraid and some are embarrassed. And maybe some are happy! They’re making attractive offers, you know.”
“I haven’t gotten any attractive offers,” Malianov said gloomily.
“And that’s by design too! You’re a jerk, with no interest in money. You don’t even know how to bribe the right person at the right time. The whole world is one big obstacle to you. All the tables are reserved at a restaurant, that’s an obstacle. There’s a line for tickets, and that’s an obstacle. Somebody’s making time with your woman, and—”
“All right! That’s enough! I don’t need a lecture.”
“No. Just knock it off, buddy. It’s a completely possible supposition. It means, of course, that they’re mighty powerful, fantastically so … but, damn it all, hypnosis and suggestion do exist, and maybe even, damn it, telepathic suggestion! No, buddy, just imagine: There is a race, an ancient race, wise, and maybe not even human—our competition. They’ve been waiting patiently, gathering data, preparing. And now they’ve decided to deliver the coup de grâce. Note, not by open warfare, but much more cleverly. They realize that creating mountains of bodies is pointless, barbaric, and dangerous for them as well. And so they decide to operate carefully, with a scalpel, along the central nervous system, the foundation of all foundations, the most promising research. Get it?”
Malianov heard him and didn’t hear him. A disgusting feeling was climbing up to his throat. He wanted to shut his ears, go away, lie down, stretch out, hide his head under a pillow. It was fear. And not plain ordinary fear, but the Black Fear. Get away from here. Run for your life. Drop everything, hide, bury yourself, drown. Hey you, he shouted at himself. Wake up, you idiot! You can’t do that, you’ll die. And he spoke with effort.
“I get it, but it’s nonsense.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s a fairy tale.” His voice got hoarse and he coughed. “For young readers. Why don’t you write it down and take it over to Campfire Publications. Make sure Pioneer Vasya breaks up the evil gang in the end and saves the world.”
“All right,” Weingarten said very calmly. “These events did happen to us?”
“Well, yes.”
“The events were fantastic?”
“Well, let’s say that they were.”
“Well then, buddy, how do you expect to explain fantastic events without a fantastic hypothesis?”
“I don’t know anything about it,” Malianov said. “You two have fantastic events. And maybe you’ve both been drinking like crazy for the last two weeks. Nothing fantastic has happened to me. I’m not a heavy drinker.”
Weingarten’s face turned beet red and he slammed his fist on the table and shouted, “Goddamn it, you have to believe us, if we don’t believe each other, goddamn it, then everything would just go to hell! Maybe that was what those bastards were counting on, goddamn it! That we wouldn’t believe each other, that we would all end up alone, each to be manipulated as they want.”
He was shouting and sputtering so wildly that Malianov got scared. He even forgot about the Black Fear. “Well, all right,” he said, “come on, knock it off, don’t get hysterical. It was just a mistake on my part, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it.” Gubar came back from the toilet and stared at them, terrified.
Through with his shouting, Weingarten leaped up, grabbed a bottle of mineral water from the refrigerator, tore off the plastic cap with his teeth, and drank from the bottle. The carbonated water poured down his stubbly fat cheeks and immediately appeared in the form of sweat on his forehead and bare, hairy shoulders.
“I mean, what I really had in mind,” Malianov said placatingly, “is that I don’t like it when impossible things are explained away by impossible causes. You know, Occam’s razor. Otherwise you come up with Go
d knows what.”
“So, what’s your suggestion?” said Weingarten, placated, stuffing the empty bottle under the table.
“I don’t have one. If I did, I’d tell you. My brain’s been numbed by fear. Only it seems to me that if they’re really so all-powerful, they could have managed the whole thing a lot more simply.”
“How, for instance?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Well, they could have poisoned you with rotten canned goods. And Zakhar—given him a thousand-volt shock. And anyway, why even bother with all this killing and terror? If they’re such hotshot telepathists, they could have made us forget everything beyond simple math. Or created a conditioned reflex: as soon as we sat down to work, we’d get the runs, or the flu: drippy nose, achy head. Or eczema. There’s lots of stuff. Quietly, peacefully, no one would have even noticed.”
Weingarten was just waiting for him to finish.
“Look, Dmitri, you have to understand one thing.”
But Zakhar did not let him finish.
“Just a minute!” he pleaded, putting out his hands as though to lead Weingarten and Malianov to their separate corners. “Let me talk, while I still remember. Will you wait, Val, and let me talk? It’s about headaches. You just mentioned them, Dmitri. You know, I was hospitalized last year.”
It turned out that he was in the hospital the year before because there was something wrong with his blood, and he shared a room with this Vladlen Semenovich Glukhov, an orientalist. Glukhov was there with a heart condition, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that they got to be friends and met once in a while after they got out. And, just two months ago, that same Glukhov complained to Gubar that he had this huge project for which he had been gathering material for ten years and it was all going to hell because of a strange idiosyncrasy that Glukhov had developed. Namely: As soon as he sat down to write up his research, his head began aching terribly, to the point of nausea and fainting spells.