Vladimir Savchenko. Self-discovery
страница №4
...rrifying the police. He wouldhave let me go anyway; there was no way out."
His face and body muscles were exhausted. The painful ache was easing
in his glands. "Three transformations in a few minutes is an overload. What
a hothead. Well, nothing will happen to me. That's the beauty of it, that
nothing can happen to me...."
The sky was quickly turning dark blue over the houses. The neon signs
announcing the names of stores, theaters, and cafes went on with a slight
hiss. The graduate student's thoughts returned to Moscow business.
"Vano Aleksandrovich passed with flying colors; he didn't even ask why
I was being held. He identified me and that's all. I understand it: 'If
Krivoshein is hiding his affairs from me then I don't want to know about
them.' The proud old man is hurt. And he's right. It was in conversation
with him that I zeroed in on my goals in the experiments. Actually, it had
been no conversation-it was an agreement. But it isn't everyone with whom
you can argue and come out with enriched ideas."
Vano Aleksandrovich kept circling him, watching with ironic
expectation: what earth-shattering ideas will the dilettante biologist come
up with? Once on a December evening, Krivoshein found him in his department
office and told him everything that he felt about life in general and about
man in particular. It was a good evening: they sat and smoked and talked,
while a pre-New Year's storm howled and whistled outside, pounding snow
against the window.
"Any machine is constructed somehow and does something," Krivoshein was
expounding. "The biological machine called Man also has these two parts to
it: the basic one and the operative. The operative part-organs of sensation,
the brain, motor nerves, and skeletal muscles-is for the most part
subservient to man. The eyes, ears, the binding parts of the skin, the nerve
endings in the nose and the tongue, and the pain and temperature receptors
react to external stimulation, turn it into electrical impulses (just like
the mechanism for information input in a computer), while the brain and the
spinal column analyze and combine the impulses according to the
'stimulation-braking' principle (similar to the impulse cells of a machine).
The synapses join and separate, sending commands to the skeletal muscles,
which perform various actions-just like the executive mechanisms of a
machine.
"Man controls the operative side of his organisms-he can even master
reflexes, like pain, by will power. But with the basic side, which takes
care of the fundamental process of life-metabolism-it isn't like that. That
lungs suck in air; the heart forces blood into the dark crannies of the
body; the gullet contracts and pushes pieces of food into the stomach; the
pancreas secretes hormones and enzymes to reduce food to elements that the
intestines can absorb; the liver excretes glucose into the blood. The
thyroid and parathyroid produce wild things, thyroxin and parathyreodine,
which determine whether a person will grow and mature or remain a cretinous
dwarf, whether he will develop a sturdy skeletal system or whether his bones
can be bent like pretzels. An inconsequential-looking growth by the base of
the brain-the pituitary body-with the help of its secretions commands the
entire mysterious kitchen of internal secretions as well as the functioning
of the kidneys, blood pressure, and safe delivery in childbirth. And this
part of the organism, which constructs man-his build, skull shape,
psychology, health, and power-this part is not subject to the conscious
mind!"
"Correct," smiled Vano Aleksandrovich. "In your operative side I easily
recognize the activity of the 'animal' or somatic nervous system and in the
basic one, the realm of the 'vegetative' or sympathetic nervous system.
These terms appeared in the eighteenth century; they used the Latin for
animal and for plant. Personally, I don't think they're very apt. Perhaps
your engineering terms will have greater success in the twentieth century.
Well, continue, please."
"Machines, even electronic ones, are constructed and made by man. Soon
the machines will do it themselves; the principle is clear. But why can't
man construct himself? Metabolism is subordinate to the central nervous
system. The glands, blood vessels, and intestines are connected to the brain
by the same kind of nerves as the muscles and sensory organs are. Why can't
man control these processes the way he can wiggle his fingers? Why is man's
conscious participation in this process limited to satisfying his appetite
and thirst and several opposite needs? It's ridiculous. Homo sapiens, the
king of nature, the crown of evolution, the creator of complex technology
and art, is distinguished in the basic life process from cows and earthworms
only in the use of knives and forks and alcohol!"
"Why is it so important to be able to bring sugar, enzymes, and
hormones into the blood through will power?" Androsiashvili's bushy eyebrows
arched. "Please be so kind as to tell me why, on top of all my worries in
the department, I have to also think every hour about how much adrenaline
and insulin I should produce in the pancreas and where I should direct it?
The sympathetic system takes care of it for me, without bothering man-and
that's fine!"
"Is it fine, Vano Aleksandrovich? What about disease?"
"Disease... so that's your angle: disease as an error in the workings
of the basic construction system." The professor's eyebrows turned into
sinusoids. "The mistakes that we try to rectify with pills, compresses,
vaccinations, and other operative interference, and usually without much
success. But... disease is the result of those effects of the environment
that the organism can't handle."
"And why can't it? After all, we know in most cases what is
harmful-that's the basis of disease prevention, epidemic control. We try,
simply, to keep away from danger. But the environment keeps spewing out new
mysteries: X-ray radiation, welding arcs, isotopes-"
"Enough!" The professor raised both hands in surrender. "I have the
feeling that you have a secret answer on the tip of your tongue and you just
can't wait for your interlocutor to bulge his eyes and ask with timid hope:
'But why?' All right! Look: my eyes are open wide." The whites of his eyes,
shot with red, sparkled. "And I am asking the long-awaited question. Why
can't people control their metabolism?"
"Because they've forgotten how it's done!" Krivoshein thundered.
"Bah!" the professor slapped his knee in glee. "They used to know and
forgot? Like a phone number? Interesting!"
"Let's remember that the human brain contains a huge number of
unactivated cells: ninety-nine percent, and in some, ninety-nine point
something. It's unlikely that they exist just like that, for a backup
reserve; nature doesn't allow excess. It's only natural to posit that those
cells contained information that is now lost. Not necessarily verbal
information-there is little of that in our organisms now because it's too
crude and approximate-but biological information, expressed in images,
feelings, sensations-"
"Stop! I know the rest!" Androsiashvili shouted exultantly. "Martians!
No, better than Martians. After all, they're going to get to Mars sooner or
later, and then it could be checked. Let's say inhabitants of a planet that
used to exist somewhere between Mars and Jupiter that has since
disintegrated into asteroids. Highly intelligent creatures lived there. They
had an artificial, varied environment, and they knew how to control their
organisms to adapt to the environment and also for fun. And these
inhabitants, sensing that their planet was about to die, moved to Earth."
"Perhaps it was that way," Krivoshein agreed calmly. "In any case, we
must assume that man had highly organized ancestors wherever they came from.
And they went wild, finding themselves in a wild, primitive environment with
harsh living conditions-in the Cenozoic Era. Heat, jungles, swamps,
animals-and no conveniences. Life was reduced to the struggle for survival
and all their refinements were wasted. Then over many generations it was all
lost, from literacy to the ability to control metabolism. Really, Vano
Aleksandrovich, put a city dweller in the jungle now, and see what happens
to him!"
"Very effective!" Androsiashvili smacked his lips in pleasure. "And the
excess brain cells remained in the organism along with the appendix and
hairy underarms? Now I understand why my dear colleague Professor Valerno
calls science fiction 'intellectual decadence.'"
"Why? And what does that have to do with this?"
"Because it replaces sober discussion with effective games of the
imagination."
"Well, you know," Krivoshein countered, getting angry, "in systemology
we don't put down working hypotheses with references to the ban mots of
friends. Any idea is usable if it is profitable."
"And in biology, comrade graduate student," Androsiashvili shouted,
rolling his eyes, "we only use ideas that are based on a sober,
materialistic approach! And not on the ruins of a fantasy planet! We deal
with something more important than technology-we deal with life! And since
you are now working in our field, I suggest you remember that! Any
dilettante comes along . . . and, phahh!" He immediately cooled off and
changed to a peaceful tone. "All right. Let's make believe that each of us
has smashed a plate. Now back to the serious things: why is your hypothesis,
to put it mildly, dubious? First of all, the 'unactivated' brain
cell-technological terminology is not applicable to biological concepts. The
cells are alive-therefore they are already activated. Secondly, why not
assume that these billions of cells are there as a reserve?"
Vano Aleksandrovich got up and looked down at Krivoshein.
"My dear comrade graduate student, I do have a little knowledge of
technology-after all, I am an evening student at MEI!-and I know that you,
hmm, in systemology, you have the concept and problem of reliability. The
reliability of electronic systems is guaranteed by a reserve of parts,
cells, and even units. Then why not assume that nature has created in man
the same kind of reserve for reliability in the brain? After all, nerve
cells do not regenerate."
"It's an awfully big reserve!" The graduate student shook his head.
"The average man uses a million cells out of a possible billion."
"And talented people use tens of millions! And geniuses . . . actually,
no one's measured their cells yet-maybe they use hundreds of millions.
Perhaps the brain of each of us is reserved for genius potential? I tend to
feel that genius and not mediocrity is man's natural state."
"Very effectively put, Vano Aleksandrovich."
"I see you are a cruel man . . . but, think what you will, my
reservations have as much value as your hypothesis about Martians gone wild.
Hah, and if you take into account the fact that I am your advisor and you
are my student, then they are even more valuable!" He sat down. "But let's
get back to the major issue: why is present-day man incapable of controlling
the autonomous nervous system and metabolism? You know why? Because it
hasn't come to that yet."
"So that's it!"
"Yes. The environment teaches man in only one way: through conditioning
drills. You know that in order to form a conditioned reflex the situation
and stimulus must be repeated frequently. And that's just how life
experience develops. And in order to form an unconditioned reflex that is
inherited the drill must be repeated for many generations for thousands of
years. You were right about the biological information in the organism; it
is not expressed verbally, but by the reflexes, both conditioned and
unconditioned. And it is man's will that controls reflexes, of course, in a
limited way. You don't think through from beginning to end which muscle must
contract how much when you light a cigarette, and you don't think through
the chemical reactions of the muscle contraction. The consciousness gives
the order to light up and the reflexes take over. Both the specific one that
you acquired from practicing that filthy habit-crumple the cigarette, inhale
the smoke-as well as the general ones passed on to you from your distant
ancestors: grabbing, breathing, and so on..." Vano Aleksandrovich-it wasn't
clear whether it was intended to be an illustration or not-lit a cigarette
and exhaled a stream of smoke toward the ceiling.
"I'm leading up to the fact that the consciousness controls when there
is something to control. In the operative part of the organism, when the
final action, as Sechenov noted long ago, is a muscular one ... remember?"
Androsiashvili sat back in his chair and quoted:" 'A child laughing at a
toy, Garibaldi smiling at the accusation of excessive love for his country,
a young girl trembling at the first thoughts of love, Newton creating
universal laws and writing them down-the final fact in all these instances
is muscular action.' Ah, how brilliantly Ivan Mikhailovich wrote! So the
operative part gives the mind something to control and lets it choose among
its vast store of conditioned and unconditioned reflexes for each unique
situation. And in the constructive part, where the body's chemistry takes
place, there is nothing for the mind to do. Just think for a moment about
what conditioned reflexes are involved in metabolism?"
"Drink or not, give me a little more horseradish, can't abide pork,
smoking, and...." Krivoshein got confused. "And well, I guess washing,
brushing your teeth...."
"There's a dozen more like that," nodded the professor, "but they are
all minor, semichemical, semimuscular, superficial reflexes. And deeper in
the organism there are definite reflex processes that are connected so
unilaterally that there is nothing to control: oxygen leaves the
bloodstream, breathe; not enough protein for the muscles, eat; excreted
water, drink; poisoned yourself with things forbidden for the organism, be
sick or die. And there are no variations. You can't say that life did not
teach people about metabolic reactions-it taught them cruelly. Epidemics-how
nice it would be to figure out through the use of your mind and your
reflexes just which bacillus was destroying you and purge it from your body
like fleas! Famines-just hibernate like a bear instead of puffing up and
dying! Wounds and mutilations in fighting-regenerate your torn-off limb or
gouged eye! And that's not enough. It would all be done at high speed.
Muscular reaction happens in tenths and hundredths of a second, and the
fastest of the metabolic actions-secretion of adrenaline into the
bloodstream-takes seconds. The secretion of hormones by the glands and the
pituitary is discovered only after years, and maybe only once in a lifetime.
Thus," he smiled wanly, "this knowledge is not lost by the organism; it
simply has not yet been acquired. It's too difficult for man to learn such a
lesson."
"And therefore mastery of metabolism could drag on for millions of
years?"
"I'm afraid that it could take dozens of millions of years," sighed
Vano Aleksandrovich. "We mammals are very recent inhabitants of earth.
Thirty million years-is that an age? Everything is still ahead of us.
"There will be nothing ahead of us, Vano Aleksandrovich!" exclaimed
Krivoshein. "The present environment changes from year to year-what kind of
million-year learning process can there be, what kind of repetition of
lessons? Man has stepped off the path of natural evolution, and now he must
figure things out for himself."
"And we are."
"What? Pills, powders, hemorrhoidal suppositories, enemas, and bed
rest? Are you sure that we are improving man's breed this way? Maybe we're
ruining it?"
' I'm not trying to talk you into involving yourself with pills and
powders if those are the terms you choose to use for the antibiotics our
department is developing," Vano Aleksandrovich said, his face taking on a
cold and haughty look. "If you want to study your idea-go ahead, dare. But
explaining the unrealistic and unplanned aspects of this decision in
graduate work and for a future dissertation is my right and my duty."
He stood up and tossed the butts from the ashtray into the wastebasket.
"Forgive me, Vano Aleksandrovich. I certainly didn't want to hurt your
feelings." Krivoshein also stood, realizing that the conversation was over,
and ending on an unpleasant note. "But. . . Vano Aleksandrovich, there are
very interesting facts."
"What facts?"
"Well ... in the last century in India there was a man-god,
Ramakrishna. And, if someone was being beaten nearby, he had welts on his
body. Or take 'burns by suggestion': a sensitive subject is touched with a
pencil and told that it was a lit cigarette. In these cases metabolism is
controlled without a 'learning process,' is it not?"
"Listen, you nagging student," Androsiashvili wheeled on him, "how many
window bolts can you eat in a sitting?"
"Hmmmm," Krivoshein said in confusion. "I don't think any at all. How
about you?"
"Me neither. But a patient I had in the dim past when I worked in the
Pavlov Psychiatric Clinic swallowed, without any particular harm to himself,
. . ." the professor leaned back, remembering, "five window bolts, twelve
aluminum teaspoons, three tablespoons, two pairs of surgical scissors, 240
grams of broken glass, one fork, and 400 grams of various nails. Now these
are not the results of an autopsy, mind you, but the history of a disease-I
cut him open myself. The patient was cured of suicidal tendencies and is
probably still alive today." The professor glanced down at Krivoshein from
the heights of his erudition. "So in scientific matters it is better not to
orient yourself by religious fanatics or secular psychopaths. No, no!" He
raised his hand to stave off the obvious look of disagreement in
Krivoshein's eyes. "Enough arguing. Go ahead, I won't stop you. I'm sure
that you will try to regulate metabolism with some kind of machine or
electronic method."
Vano Aleksandrovich gave the student a thoughtful and tired look and
smiled.
"Catching the Firebird with your bare hands! What could be better? And
you have a holy goal: man without diseases, without old age-age is a result
of a breakdown in metabolism, too. Twenty years or so ago, I would have
allowed myself to be fired up by this idea. But now... now I must do what
can definitely be done. Even if it's only a pill."
Krivoshein turned down a cross street toward the Institute of
Systemology and almost bumped into a man in a dark blue cloak, much too warm
for the season. The unexpectedness of the encounter produced further
problems: Krivoshein stepped to the left to let the man past, while the man
did the same to the right. Then both of them, letting the other go first,
finally set off in opposite directions. The man stared at Krivoshein in
amazement and stopped.
"I beg your pardon," he muttered and went on.
The street was dark and empty. Krivoshein soon heard footsteps behind
him and looked back: the man in the cloak was following at a short distance.
"That Onisimov!" thought the graduate student. "He's got a detective tailing
me!" He experimented by going faster and heard the man's pace increase. "Ah,
the hell with him! I'm certainly not going to cover my tracks." Krivoshein
went on slowly, rambling. However, his back felt uncomfortable and his
thoughts returned to reality.
"So, I guess Val tried another experiment. Maybe he wasn't alone? It
failed; that corpse turning into a skeleton. But why are the police
involved? And where is he? Our Val must have blown town on his bike until
things calmed down. Or maybe he's in the lab?"
Krivoshein approached the monumental, cast-iron gates of the institute.
The rectangular posts of the gates were so large that the left one easily
contained the pass office and the right one the entrance way. He opened the
door. Old man Vakhterych, the ancient guard of science, was nodding off
behind the barrier.
"Good evening!" Krivoshein nodded at him.
"Good evening, Valentin Vasilyevich!" replied Vakhterych, obviously not
about to ask him for his pass; they were used to visits by the head of the
New Systems Lab at all hours.
Krivoshein, inside the grounds, looked back; the creep in the cloak was
stuck outside. There you go, chum," Krivoshein thought. "The pass system
proves itself once again."
The windows of the lodge were dark. A red cigarette light glowed by the
door. Krivoshein crouched under the trees and made out a uniform cap on a
man's head against the stars. "No, I've had it with the cops for one day.
I'd better go home,..." he laughed. "I mean to his house."
He started for the gates, but remembered the fellow in the cloak and
stopped. "That's against all the rules, the suspect running into the
detective's arms. Let him do some work." Krivoshein headed for the other end
of the park-where the branches of the old oak hung over the iron pickets of
the fence. He jumped from the branch onto the sidewalk and started for
Academic Town.
"But what happened with his experiment? And who was that guy who met me
at the airport? The telegram really confused me: I thought he was Val! He
does look like him-very much so. Could it be? Val obviously didn't sit
around all year twiddling his thumbs! Too bad we didn't write. What petty
fools we are: each one wanting to prove that he could do without the other,
to astound the other a year later with his results. With his own results!
The highest form of possession. And so we've amazed each other. We're
destroying a major project with pettiness. With pettiness, lack of
forethought, and fear. We shouldn't have scattered every which way, but
tried to attract people who were worthy and real, like Vano Aleksandrovich,
from the very beginning. Yes, but back then I didn't know him, and it won't
help to try it now, when he storms past me and gives me dirty looks."
It had all happened in the spring, in late March when Krivoshein had
only begun mastering metabolism in his own body. Busy with himself, he
hadn't noticed spring until spring made him notice: a heavy icicle fell on
him from the roof of a five-story building. If it had fallen a half inch to
the left, it would have been the end of the experiments on metabolism as
well as the end of his organism. But the icicle merely ripped his ear, broke
his collar bone, and knocked him down.
"Disaster, disaster!" That's what he heard professor Androsiashvili
saying as he came to. He was leaning over him, feeling his head, unbuttoning
his coat. "I'll kill that janitor for not clearing the snow!" he said,
angrily shaking his fist. "Can you walk?" He helped Krivoshein up. "Don't
worry, your head is fairly whole. The clavicle will heal in a few weeks. It
could have been worse. Hold on, I'll walk you over to the infirmary."
"Thank you, Vano Aleksandrovich, I'll manage myself," Krivoshein
replied as heartily as he could, even squeezing out a smile. "I'll make it,
it's nearby."
And he moved on quickly, almost at a run. He stopped the bleeding from
his ear immediately. But his right hand was dangling loosely.
"I'll call them to get the electric stitcher ready!" the professor
called after him. "They'll be able to sew up the ear!"
Back in his room, Krivoshein taped up his ear, torn along the
cartilage, in front of the mirror and wiped away the caked blood with
cotton. That was easy. Ten minutes later there was only a pink scar where
the tear had been, and in a half hour, that was gone too. Mending the
clavicle was a lot harder; he had to lie on his bed all evening
concentrating on commanding the blood vessels, the glands, and the muscles.
The bones had much less chemical solution than soft tissue.
He decided to go to Androsiashvili's class in the morning. He got to
the hall early to take an inconspicuous seat in the back and ran into the
professor, who was instructing students about the hanging of posters.
Krivoshein backed off, but it was too late.
"Why are you here? Why aren't you in the clinic?" Vano Aleksandrovich
went pale, staring at the student's ear and the right hand in which he was
clutching his notebook. "What is this?"
"And you said it would take dozens of millions of years, Vano
Aleksandrovich." Krivoshein couldn't resist. "You see, it can be done
without 'drilling.'"
"You mean... it's working? How?"
Krivoshein bit his lip.
"Mmmm, a little later, Vano Aleksandrovich," he muttered awkwardly. "I
still have to figure it all out myself."
"Yourself?" The professor raised his eyebrows. "You don't want to
tell?" His face grew cold and haughty. "All right, as you wish. Pardon me!"
He went to his desk.
From that day on he nodded icily to his student when they met, and
never entered into a discussion. Krivoshein, to keep his conscience from
bothering him too much, lost himself in his experiments. He really did have
a lot more to learn.
"Don't you understand that I wanted to demonstrate my discovery-relive
my burning interest in it, your praise, fame, . . ." thought Krivoshein as
he tried to justify himself before the invisible Androsiashvili. "After all,
unlike the psychopaths I could have explained it all. Of course, this
doesn't work with other people yet; they don't have the constitution for it.
But the important thing is that I've proved the possibility of it, the
knowledge. If only the discovery had been limited to the fact that I can
heal my own wounds, breaks, and cure myself of diseases! The trouble with
nature is that it never gives just exactly as much as is needed for the
welfare of man-it's always either too much or too little. I got too much. I
could, probably, turn myself into an animal, even into a monster. That's
possible. Everything's possible. That's the scary part." Krivoshein sighed.
The window and glass door that opened onto the balcony of the fifth
floor glowed softly. It looked like the table lamp was on. "Is he home?"
Krivoshein ran up the stairs, rummaged through his pockets from force of
habit, remembered that he had thrown out the key a year ago, and swore at
himself, for it would have been very effective to suddenly walk in: "Your
documents, citizen!" There still was no doorbell, and he knocked.
He heard light, quick steps-they made his heart beat faster-and the
lock clicked. Lena was opening the door.
"Oh, Val, you're alive!" She grabbed his neck with her warm hands,
looked him over, smoothed his hair, hugged him, and began crying. "Val, my
darling... and I thought... they've been saying such horrible things! I
called your lab, and there was no answer. I called the institute, and when I
asked where you were, what had happened, they hung up. I came here, and you
were gone. And they told me that you were...." She sobbed angrily. "The
fools!"
"All right, Lena, don't. That's enough. What's the matter?" Krivoshein
wanted very much to hold her close and he barely controlled his arms.
It was as though nothing had happened: not discovery number one, not
the year of mad, concentrated work in Moscow, where he cast away the
past.... Krivoshein had tried more than once-for spiritual peace-to
eradicate Lena's face from his memory. He knew how it was done: a rush of
blood with an increased glucose level to the brain's cortex, small
oxidations directed at the nucleotides of a certain area-and the information
is removed from the cells forever. But he didn't want to... or couldn't.
'Wanting' and 'being able'-how do you distinguish them in yourself? And now
the woman he loved was weeping on his shoulder, weeping from anxiety about
him. He had to soothe her.
"Stop, Lena. Everything's all right, as you can see."
She looked up at him. Her eyes were wet, happy, and guilty.
"Val... you're not mad at me, are you? I said all those horrible things
to you then-I don't know why myself. I'm just stupid! You were hurt? I
thought that it was all over, too, but when I found out that something had
happened to you ... I couldn't. You see, I ran here. Forget it, please? It's
forgotten, all right?"
"Yes," Krivoshein said sincerely. "Let's go inside."
"Oh, Val, you can't imagine how terrified I was!" She was still holding
onto his shoulders, afraid to let go. "And that investigator... the
questions!"
"He called you in, too?"
"Yes."
"Aha, the old cherchez la femme!"
They went inside. It hadn't changed: a gray daybed, a cheap desk, two
chairs, a bookshelf piled with magazines up to the ceiling, and a wardrobe
with the usual mirrored door. In the corner by the door lay crisscrossed
dumbbells.
"I cleaned up a little, waiting for you. The dust... you have to keep
the balcony door shut tight, when you leave." Lena moved close to him. "Val,
what did happen?"
"If I only knew!" he thought with a sigh. "Nothing terrible... just a
lot of brouhaha."
"Why the police, then?"
"The police? They were called, and they came. If they had called the
fire department, they would have come too."
"Oh, Val,..." she placed her arms around his neck and wrinkled up her
nose. "Why are you like that?"
"Like what?" he asked, feeling more stupid by the second. "Well,
seemingly grown-up, but irresponsible. And when I'm with you I turn into a
silly schoolgirl.... Val, where's Victor. What happened to him? Listen," she
asked, her eyes growing wide, "is it true that he's a spy?"
"Victor? What Victor?"
"Are you joking? Victor Kravets, your assistant and nephew twice
removed."
"Nephew, lab assistant...." Krivoshein was momentarily confused. "So
that's it!"
Lena threw up her hands.
"Val, what's the matter with you? You can tell me. What happened in the
lab?"
"Forgive me, Lena, I just got confused. Of course, old Peter, I mean
Victor Kravets, my trusty assistant and nephew ... a very nice guy...." The
woman still regarded him wide-eyed. "Don't be surprised, Lena, this is just
a momentary amnesia, that always happens after... after an electric shock.
It'll pass, it's not serious. So you say the rumor's begun that he's a spy?
Ah, that Academy of Sciences!"
"Then it's true that there was a catastrophe in the lab? Why, why do
you keep everything from me? You could have been-no! I don't want to think
about it!"
"Stop, please God, stop!" Krivoshein said irritably, sitting down.
"Could have, couldn't have, did, wasn't.... You see, everything is fine. (I
wish it were, he thought.) I can't tell you anything until I've figured it
all out myself." He moved into an attack. "And what's your problem? So,
there's one Krivoshein more or less in the world-big deal! You're young,
beautiful, childless-you'll find someone else, someone better than an aging
codger like me. Take Peter, I mean, Victor Kravets: he's better for you?"
"Again?" she smiled, came up behind his chair, and put his head on her
bosom. "Why do you keep harping on Victor? I don't need him. I don't care
how good-looking he is; he's not you, understand? That's it. And the others
aren't you either. Now I know for sure."
"Hm?" Krivoshein untangled himself.
"What, 'hm'? You're jealous, silly. I didn't sit at home every night
like a nun. I went out. I was courted, even seriously by some. And still,
they were all wrong!" Her voice caressed him. "They're not like you-and
that's it! I came back to you anyway."
Krivoshein felt the warmth of her body with the back of his neck, felt
her soft hands on his eyes and experienced an incomparable bliss. "I could
sit like this forever. I've just come back from work, and nothing has
happened . . . and I'm tired and she's here . . . but something did happen!
Something very serious happened, and I'm sitting here stealing her
caresses!"
He got up.
"All right, Lena. You'll excuse me, but I'm not going to walk you home.
I'll just sit a while or go to sleep. I don't feel very well after all
that."
"I'll stay?"
It was half question, half statement. For a second Krivoshein was
overwhelmed with wild jealousy. "I'll stay?" she used to say and he would
agree. Or maybe he suggested it himself: "Stay tonight, Lena." And she
stayed.
"No, Lena, you go home." He laughed bitterly.
"That means you're still mad, right?" She looked at him and got mad.
"You're a fool, Val, a real jerk! The hell with you!" And she turned for the
door.
Krivoshein stood in the middle of the room, listening: the click of the
lock, Lena's heels on the stairs, the downstairs door slamming, quick light
steps on the pavement. He ran to the balcony to call to her-and the evening
breeze sobered him up. "So, I see her, and fall back in just like that! I
wonder what she said to him? All right, the hell with last year's romances!"
He went back inside. "I have to find out what happened here. Wait! He must
have a diary! Of course!"
Krivoshein pulled open all the drawers in the desk, tossing out
magazines, folders, quickly glancing through notebooks. No, that's not it.
On the bottom of the last drawer he found a cassette, a quarter filled, and
for a minute he forgot about his search: he got the cassette player from the
shelf, dusted it off, put in the cassette, and turned it on playback.
"With the rights of the discoverers," a hoarse voice began, after some
hissing, carelessly slurring the endings of words, "we are taking it upon
ourselves to research and exploit the discovery to be called-"
"The artificial biological synthesis of information," another voice
(though remarkably like the first) added. "It's not particularly euphonious,
but it's accurate."
"Fine. The artificial biological synthesis of information. We
understand that this discovery touches upon man's life like no other and is
capable of becoming the greatest threat or the greatest boon for mankind. We
swear to do everything in our power to use this discovery for the good of
humanity."
"We swear that until we have researched all the potentials of this
discovery-"
"And until it is clear to us how to use it with absolute reliability
for the good of humanity-" "Not to turn it over into anyone else's hands-"
"And not to publish anything about it."
Krivoshein stood with his eyes closed. He was transported to that May
night when they made that vow.
"We vow not to give away our discovery for our well-being, or fame, or
immortality until we are sure that it cannot be used to harm people. We will
destroy our work rather than permit that."
"We swear!" The two voices spoke in unison. The tape ended.
"We were hotheads then. So, the diary must be nearby." Krivoshein dove
into the desk once more, rummaged about, and a second later held a notebook
with a yellow cardboard cover, as thick and heavy as a book. There was
nothing written on the cover, but Krivoshein was certain that he had found
what he was after: a year ago, when he got to Moscow, he had bought himself
the exact same notebook in a yellow cover to keep his own diary.
He sat down at the desk, moved the lamp closer, lit a cigarette, and
opened the notebook.
PART TWO * SELF-DISCOVERY
Chapter 6
The relativity of knowledge is a great thing. The statement "two plus
two equals thirteen" is relatively closer to the truth than "two plus two
equals forty-one." You could even say that the move to the former from the
latter represents an expression of creative maturity, scholarly courage, and
unheard-of scientific progress-if you didn't know that two plus two equals
four.
We know that in arithmetic, but it's too soon to rejoice. For example,
in physics, two plus two equals less than four because of a defect in mass.
And in such fine sciences as sociology or ethics, not even two plus two, but
even one plus one can be either a future family or a conspiracy to rob a
bank.
-K. Prutkov-enzhener, Thought 5
May 22. Today I saw him off at the train. In the station restaurant,
the customers stared at two grown twins. I felt uncomfortable. He was happy.
"Remember, fifteen years ago, I-no, I guess it was you-left for the
exams at the physics-technological institute? It was all the same: a streak
of alienation, freedom, uncertainty...."
I remembered. Yes, it was the same. The same waiter with an expression
of chronic dissatisfaction with life served tenth-graders who had escaped
into life. Then we thought that everything was ahead of us; and so it was.
And now there is quite a bit behind us: happy things, and gray things, and
things that make it scary to look back, and yet it still seems that the best
and most interesting is ahead.
Then we drank the cheapest port. Now the waiter brought us fine cognac.
We each had a glass.
It was noisy and crowded in the restaurant. People were eating and
drinking in a rush.
"Look," my double pointed out, "a mother feeding twins. Greetings,
colleagues! Look at their eyes. How do you think they'll turn out? For now
their mother is taking care of them, and even so they managed to smear
porridge all over their faces in the same way. But in a few years another
bustling mother will take over-Life. One, say, will grab a chicken by the
tail and pull out all the feathers. The first in a collection of
unrepeatable impressions, since there will be no feathers left for the other
to pull. But the other will get lost in a store with great weeping and
wailing-another personal, unique experience. And a year later his mother
will let him have it for the jam that his brother gobbled up. Again
differences: one will sense injustice while the other is getting away
without punishment. Oh, mama, watch it. If things go on like that, one of
them will grow up to be a timid loser, and the other a sly fellow who gets
away with everything. You'll cry then, mama. You and I are like those
twins."
"Well, at least an unfair spanking won't knock us off the track. We're
at the wrong age."
"I'll drink to that!"
They announced the train. We went out to the platform. He went on
talking.
"You know what's interesting? What happens to that old saw about people
being born with a destiny? Let's say that it was intended at your birth for
you to move through space and time at a certain rate, to advance at work,
etc. And suddenly-abracadabra!-there are two Krivosheins! And they lead
separate lives in separate cities. Now what happens to the divine plan? Or
did God write it in two variants? And what if we turn into ten? And what if
we don't want to, and don't?" We both made believe that something ordinary
was happening. "Friends, check to see that you haven't kept the departing
passengers' tickets by mistake!" I hadn't. The train took him to Moscow.
We agreed to write to each other when necessary (I'll bet that he won't
feel that necessity very soon!) and to meet next July. We'll spend this year
approaching the problem from two angles; he'll take biology, and I'll take
systemology. We'll see....
When the train left I realized that I would miss him. I guess because
this was the first time that I had felt as comfortable with another person
as I do with ... with myself. There's no other way of putting it. Even
between Lena and me there is always something left unsaid, misunderstood,
strictly personal. But with him... but even with him, we each developed our
own secrets over a month of living together. Interesting, that bustling
mother life!
I was high on cognac, and coming back from the station I stared at
people and at life. Women with concerned, anxious faces entering stores.
Guys riding on motorcycles with girls on the back seat. Lines forming by the
newspaper kiosks, waiting for the evening papers. Human faces, how different
they all are, how understandable and mysterious! I can't explain how it
happens, but I seem to know about a lot of them. The corners of the mouth,
harsh or fine wrinkles, the bearing of the head, and the eyes-especially the
eyes!-they are all signs of preverbal information. Probably from the days
when we were apes.
Just recently I did not notice such things. I did not notice, for
instance, that people waiting in line were ugly. The banality and
meaninglessness of such an occupation, the worry that they will run out,
that someone will sneak in ahead of them, leaves an ugly imprint on the
face. And drunks are ugly, and brawlers are ugly.
But take a look at a young girl, laughing at a joke made by the boy she
loves. Or at a mother, nursing a child. At a master craftsman doing fine
work. At a good man thinking about something. They are beautiful, despite
pimples, wrinkles, and lines.
I could never appreciate beauty in animals. As far as I'm concerned
only man is beautiful-and then only when he is human.
A toddler stared at me as though I were a miracle, tripped and fell,
insulted by earth's pull. His mother, naturally, added to his pain. The
little guy suffered for nothing. What kind of marvel am I? Just a man
getting fat, with a round back, and a common face.
But maybe the little fellow was right: I'm really a miracle? And every
person is a miracle?
What do we know about people? What do I know about myself? In the
problem called life, people are a given that does not have to be proved. And
everyone who uses that given comes up with his own theory. Take my double,
for instance. He left and that was both unexpected and logical.
But wait! If I'm going to get into this, I should start at the
beginning.
It's funny to remember. Actually, I began with the simplest of
intentions. To do my dissertation.
But creating something secondhand and compilatory (sort of like the
topic recommended to me by my former chief professor Voltampernov, "Several
Peculiarities in Projecting Diode Memory Systems") was boring and repulsive.
I was human after all. I wanted an unsolved problem, to get into its soul
and to investigate nature with the help of reason, machines, and apparatus.
And to discover something that no one had ever known. Or to invent something
that no one else ever had thought of. And to be asked questions at the
defense that would be fun to answer. And then to be told by friends, "Well,
you really let them have it! Terrific!"
All the more because I can do that. It's not something you announce to
people, but I can say it in my diary: I can. Five inventions and two
completed research projects are proof of that. And this discovery... ah, no,
Krivoshein, don't be in a rush to add this to your intellectual laurels.
You're mixed up by this and still can't get it straightened out.
In a word, my heart's desire is what led me into the thick of that
tendency of world systemology where the fundamental operative function is
not the formula, or the algorithm, not even the recipe, but mere chance.
We, with our limited minds, love to make juxtapositions: lyric poets
and physicists, waves and particles, plants and animals, machines and
people.... But in life and in nature these things are not juxtaposed; they
complement each other. Just as logic and chance complement each other in
comprehension and solution finding. You can find much of the unproved, the
capricious, in mathematical and logical constructions and you can find
logical laws at work in random events.
For example, the ideological enemy of random retrieval, Voltampernov,
doctor of technological sciences, never missed a chance to parry my
suggestion (to study modeling of random processes) with the quip: "But that
will be modeling with, so to speak, coffee grounds!" Isn't this the best
illustration of that complementary nature?
And it was hard to argue. There was little achieved in this field, and
many projects ended unsuccessfully, and ideas... ideas didn't have enough
effect. In our department, like in the Wild West, they believed only in bare
facts.
I was thinking of following the example of Valery Ivanov, my friend and
former head of the lab, and to call it quits with the institute and move on
to another city. But-and here it was, the random chance!-the builders did
not complete the new building for perfectly good reasons, and the money
allotted in the institute's budget was not spent for good reason, and Arkady
Arkadievich announced a "contest" to find the best way to spend eighty
thousand rubles. I'm sure that the most virulent defender of determinism
would have to be careful not to make a mistake here.
I had formed my idea by then to research what a computer would do if it
was fed not by a program that had been reduced to a binary system, but with
ordinary-meaningful and random-information. Just that. Because when it is
programmed it works with an amazing brilliance that stuns reporters. ("A new
breakthrough in science: a machine can plan a shop's work in three
minutes!"-because the programmers in their modesty usually fail to mention
the number of months they prepared for that three-minute decision.)
Naturally, my idea done in an elementary way was nothing more than
delirium for any intelligent systemologist: the computer would not behave in
any way at all; it would simply stop! But I wasn't planning on doing it the
elementary way.
To spend eighty thousand rubles to equip a lab in the five weeks left
in a fiscal year, even a lab that was as flexible as one for pure research,
was no snap. It's no wonder that the equipment genius of the institute,
Alter Abramovich, still shakes hands respectfully whenever we meet.
Actually, he didn't realize that an idea coupled with a burning desire to
move into the operative expanses can work wonders.
So, this was the situation: there was money and nothing else. Five
thousand to the builders for the best lodge possible. (They tried all kinds
of manipulation, like "Dear man! we'll fulfill the plan and even win a
prize, you'll see!") Thirteen thousand for a TsVM-12 computer. Another nine
thousand for all kinds of sensors and receivers: piezoelectric microphones,
flexible strain gauges, germanium phototransistors, gas analyzers,
thermistors, an apparatus for calculating the electromagnetic biopotentials
of the brain using the SES-1 system with four thousand microelectrodes,
pulsometers, semiconducting moisture analyzers, and photoelemental "reading"
arrays . . . basically, everything that turns sounds, images, smells, small
pressures, temperatures, weather changes, and even spiritual impulses into
electrical impulses. With four thousand I bought various reagents,
laboratory glassware, chemical equipment-in case I ever wanted to employ
chemotronics, about which I had heard a little. (And if I'm going to be
completely honest, because it was easy to buy this stuff by requisition. I
don't have to mention the fact that I didn't use any of the eighty thousand
for personal effects.)
All this was fine, but the core of the experiment was still missing. I
knew what I wanted: a commutator that could switch and combine random
signals from the sensors in order to send them to a "reasoning" computer-a
piece of an electronic brain with a free circuit of connections of several
thousand switching cells. You can't get something like that even by written
order-it doesn't exist. Buy the parts that make up the usual computers
(diodes, triodes, resistors, condensers, etc.) and order one? It would take
too long, and was completely unrealistic. I would have to supply a detailed
blueprint for something like that, but what I wanted couldn't have a
blueprint. It was really a case of not knowing where I would go or what I
would find. And once more my friend chance gave me my "I don't know what"
and Lena.... Wait. Here I'm not willing to put it all down to chance.
Meeting Lena was a gift of fate, pure and simple. But as for the crystal
unit... if you think about something day and night, you'll always come up
with it, find or notice it.
Here was the situation: three weeks left 'til the end of the year;
fifty thousand rubles still unused; no hopes of finding the commutator; and
I'm riding a bus.
"They bought fifty thousand rubles worth of solid-state circuits and
then they found out they don't fit!" a woman in a brown fur coat was
exclaiming in front of me to her neighbor. "That's disgusting!" "Madness,"
she agreed.
"Now Pshembakov is trying to blame everything on the supply department.
But he ordered them himself!" "Just think of the gall!"
The words "fifty thousand" and "solid-state circuits" had gotten my
attention. "Excuse me, but what kind of circuits?"
The woman turned to me, her face so beautiful and stern that I was
sorry I had interrupted.
" 'Not-ors' and flip-flops!" she answered hotly.
"What parameters?"
"Low-voltage-excuse me, but why are you butting into our conversation?"
And that's how I met Elena Ivanovna Kolomiets, an engineer from the
nearby construction design bureau. The following day, engineer Kolomiets
wrote a pass for executive engineer Krivoshein to visit her department.
"Savior! Benefactor!" cried the head of the department, Zhalbek Balbekovich
Pshembakov, when engineer Kolomi...
