Here he had achieved significant and important results, from which it followed that humanity would be literally swimming in not quite imaginable happiness, if only the White Thesis itself could be found, and most importantly if we could understand what it is and where it could be found.
Mention of the White Thesis could be found only in Ben Beczalel’s diaries. It was alleged that he distilled it as a by-product of some alchemical reaction, and not having the time to waste on such trifles, he built it into some apparatus of his as an auxiliary subsystem. In one of his last memoirs, written while he was already in prison, Ben Beczalel proclaimed, “And can you imagine? That White Thesis did not come up to my expectations, not at all. And when I comprehended what use could have been made of it—I am referring to the happiness of all men, no matter how many—I had already forgotten where I had inserted it.”
The Institute numbered seven apparatus that had once belonged to Ben. Redkin had disassembled six of them down to the last bolt and had not found anything special. The seventh apparatus was the sofa-translator. But Victor Korneev had laid his hands on the sofa, and the blackest suspicions had crept into Redkin’s simple soul. He began to spy on Victor. Victor became instantly incensed. They quarreled, became confirmed enemies, and remained such.
Magnus Feodorovich was friendly toward me as a representative of the hard sciences, though he criticized my friendship “with that plagiarist.” Altogether Redkin was not a bad fellow, very hard working, very persistent, and totally lacking in the grasping instincts. He carried out an immense work, collecting a gigantic collection of the multifarious kinds of happiness. There you could find the simplest of negative definitions (“Happiness is not found in money”), the simplest positive definitions (“The highest satisfaction is in complete plenty, success, recognition”), casuistic definitions (“Happiness is the absence of unhappiness”), and paradoxical definitions (“The most happy of all be the fools, the imbeciles, the dumb, and the unsightly, as they know not the stabs of conscience, fear not ghosts or any of the unliving, are not struck by the terror of impending events; neither are they seduced by the hopes of future bliss”).
Magnus Feodorovich laid down a small box with his key, and looking at us under his eyebrows, said diffidently, “I found yet another definition.”
“What is it?” I said.
“Something like verse. But without rhymes. Do you want to hear it?”
“Of course we do,” said Roman.
Magnus Feodorovich took out a notebook and read haltingly:
“You ask:
What I consider
The highest happiness on earth?
Two things:
To change my mood
As easily as shillings into pence,
And,
To hear a maiden’s song,
Not in my life entwined,
But after
Having learned from me
Her own separate way.”
“Didn’t understand a thing,” said Roman. “Let me see it with my own eyes.”
Redkin gave him his notebook and clarified, “It’s Christopher Log. From the English.”
“Excellent verse,” said Roman.
Magnus Feodorovich sighed. “Some say one thing, others—another.”
“It’s hard,” I said sympathetically.
“Isn’t that the truth? How are you going to combine all that? To hear a maiden’s song…not just any song, but the maiden must be young, not on his way, and on top of that she would be singing after inquiring the way from him… How can that be? How can you set up an algorithm for such things?”
“Very iffy,” I said. “I wouldn’t undertake it.”
“There you are!” took up Magnus Feodorovich. “And you are our computer facility director. Who then could do it?”
“What if there can’t be any such thing?” said Roman, sounding like a provocateur in a film.
“How’s that?”
“Happiness.”
Magnus Feodorovich was instantly offended.
“How can there not be any,” he said with dignity, “when I myself have experienced it many a time?”
“By changing a penny for a shilling?” asked Roman.
Magnus Feodorovich became even more offended and tore the notebook out of his hands.
“You are still too young—” he began.
But at this juncture there was a roar, a crack, a flash of flame, and a stench of sulphur. Merlin appeared in the middle of the reception room.
“Good God!” said Oira-Oira in English, rubbing his eyes. “Canst thou not come in by the usual way as decent people do? Sir…” he added.
“Beg thy pardon,” Merlin said smugly, and looked at me with a satisfied mien. I must have been very pale, as I was very much afraid of auto-combustion.
Merlin straightened his moth-eaten mantle, threw a bunch of keys on the table, and pronounced, “Did you notice the weather lately, sirs?”
“As forecast,” said Roman.
“Exactly, Sir Oira-Oira! Exactly as forecast!”
“It’s a useful device, the radio,” said Roman.
“I don’t listen to the radio,” said Merlin. “I have my own methods.” He shook the hem of his mantle and rose a meter above the floor.
“The chandelier,” I said. “Be careful.”
Merlin looked at the chandelier and began, completely out of context, “I cannot forget, dear sirs, how last year, I and Sir Chairman of the Regional Soviet, comrade Pereyaslavski…”
Oira-Oira yawned agonizingly, and I felt very dejected too. Merlin probably would have been worse than Vibegallo, if he weren’t so archaic and self-assured. Due to someone’s absentmindedness, he had succeeded in promoting himself into a directorship of the Department of Prophecies and Forecasting, because in all of his forms he had written about his unremitting struggles with Yankee imperialism even as far back as the early Middle Ages, and attaching to them notarized copies of the appropriate pages from Mark Twain. Subsequently, he was transferred to his proper place as director of the weather bureau and now, even as a thousand years ago, he occupied himself with foretelling atmospheric phenomena—both by magical means and on the basis of the behavior of tarantulas, the increase in rheumatic pains, and the tendency of Solovetz pigs to lie down in the mud or to arise therefrom. As a matter of fact, the basic sources of his prognoses were the crudest intercepts of radio forecasts, carried out by means of a simple detector receiver, which, it was rumored, he stole in the twenties from a Solovetz exhibit of the work of young technicians. He was a great friend of Naina Kievna, and the two of them spent their time together collecting and broadcasting rumors about the appearance of a gigantic hairy woman in the forests, and the capture of a co-ed by a snowman from Elbrus. It was also said that, from time to time, he took pad in the night vigils at Bald Mountain with H.M. Viy, Brutus, and other hooligans.
Roman and I kept quiet and waited for him to disappear. But he, wrapping himself in his mantle, made himself comfortable under the chandelier, and droned on with his tale about how he and comrade Pereyaslavski traveled about the region on a tour of inspection. The entire story, which had become obnoxious to everybody, was pure hocum, a graceless and gratuitous paraphrase of Mark Twain. He spoke of himself in the third person, while occasionally, in confusion, called the chairman King Arthur.
“And so, the Chairman of the Regional Soviet and Merlin set off on their journey and came to the beekeeper, Hero of Labor, Sir Otshelnikov, who was a good knight and a renowned collector of honey. And Sir Otshelnikov reported on the success of his labors and treated Sir Arthur with bee venom for his arthritis. And so, Sir Chairman stayed there for three days, his arthritis quieted down, and they set out on their way, and on the way Sir Ar… Chairman said, ‘I have no sword.’
“‘No matter,’ said Merlin. ‘I will find you a sword.’ And they came to a large lake, and Arthur saw an arm rise out of the lake…”
The telephone then rang, and I seized the receiver with joy.
br />
“Hello,” I said. “Hello, I’m listening.”
Something was mumbling in the receiver while Merlin droned on in his nasal voice, “And by the Lezhnev lake they met Sir Pellinor. However, Merlin arranged it so that Pellinor did not notice the chairman…”
“Sir citizen Merlin,” I said. “Could you be a bit quieter? I can’t hear anything.
“Hello,” I said again into the phone.
“Who’s there?”
“Whom do you want?” I said, as a matter of habit.
“You will mark that down for me. You are not in a side show, Privalov.”
“My fault, Modest Matveevich. Privalov on watch, at your service.”
“All right. Report.”
“Report what?”
“Listen, Privalov. You are again behaving like I don’t know what. Whom are you talking with? Why are there others at your post? Why are there people in the Institute after the end of the working day?”
“It’s Merlin,” I said.
“Throw him out!”
“With pleasure,” I said. (Merlin, who was obviously eavesdropping, became covered with spots, said, “Bo-o-or,” and melted away.)
“With pleasure or without pleasure—that does not concern me. But there was a signal received here that the keys entrusted to you are piled in a heap on the table instead of being locked up in a box.”
Vibegallo must have informed him, I thought.
“Why are you silent?”
“It will be done.”
“Acknowledge in that form,” said Modest Matveevich. “Vigilance must be kept high. Are you up to it?”
“I’m up to it.”
Modest Matveevich said, “That’s all from here,” and hung up.
“Well, all right,” said Oira-Oira, buttoning, his green coat. “I’m off to open cans and uncork bottles. Be well, Sasha. I’ll come by again later.”
Chapter 2
I went, descending into dark corridors and ascending again. I was alone; I called out but no one answered; I was alone in that vast house, as Convoluted as a labyrinth.
Guy de Maupassant
Dumping the keys in my jacket pocket I set off on my first round.
Taking the front staircase, which to my memory was used only once when the most august personage from Africa came to visit, I descended into the limitless vestibule decorated with a multi-century accumulation of layers of architectural excesses, and peered into the gatehouse window. Two Maxwell macro-demons were oscillating about in its phosphorescent gloom. They were playing at the most stochastic of all games—pitch-and-toss. They occupied all their free time with this diversion. Looking more like poliomyelitis virus colonies under an electron microscope than anything else, they were huge, indescribably inept, lethargic, and dressed in worn liveries. As befit Maxwell demons, they opened and closed doors throughout all their life. They were experienced, well-trained exemplars, but one of them, the one in charge of the exit door, had reached retirement age, which was comparable to the age of the galaxy, and now and then reverted into second childhood, malfunctioning ignominiously. Thereupon, someone from Technical Maintenance would put on a driving suit, enter the gatehouse with its argon atmosphere, and bring the oldster back to reality.
Following instructions, I cast a spell on both of them, that is, I crossed the information channels and locked the input-output peripherals to myself. The demons did not react, being otherwise absorbed. One was winning, and, correspondingly, the other was losing, which greatly disturbed them, since it upset the statistical equilibrium. I covered the window with a shutter and circled the vestibule. It was damp, dark, and full of echoes. The Institute was obviously old, but apparently the building had been started at the vestibule. Bones of shackled skeletons whitened in moldy corners; somewhere water dripped in rhythmic splashes; statues in rusty armor and unnatural poses stood about in niches; shards of ancient idols were piled up to the right of the entrance, with a pair of plaster legs in boots crowning the lot. Looking sternly down from blackened portraits near the ceiling were the venerable images of old men, whose features bore obvious resemblances to Feodor Simeonovich, comrade Giacomo, and other masters. All this archaic junk should have been thrown out long ago, windows should have been cut into the walls and daylight let in, but it was all registered and inventoried, and forbidden to be sold off, by Modest Matveevich personally. Bats and flying dogs rustled in the capitals of the columns and in the gigantic chandelier, hanging from the blackened ceiling. With these, Modest Matveevich waged a never-ending struggle. He doused them with turpentine and creosote, dusted them with powder, sprayed them with hexachloroethane. They died by the thousands and pro-created by the tens of thousands. They mutated, and talking and singing variants appeared among them, while the descendants of the more ancient breeds now subsisted surely on pyrethrins, mixed with chlorophoss. The Institute cinephotographer, Sanya Drozd, swore that he saw a vampire that looked as much like the personnel director as two peas in a pod.
Someone moaned and rattled chains in a deep niche, which exuded an icy stench. “You will kindly stop that,” I said severely.
“What is that—some kind of mysticism? You ought to be ashamed!” The niche became quiet. I straightened the crooked rug with an executive mien and mounted the stairway.
As is well known, the Institute from the outside appeared to have two stories. In reality, it had at least twelve. I had simply not gone above the twelfth floor, because the elevator was constantly under repair, and I still hadn’t learned to fly. The front with ten windows was also an optical illusion, like most fronts. The Institute stretched at least a kilometer to the right and left of the vestibule, but nonetheless all the windows decidedly faced on the same crooked street and the same grain storehouse. This amazed me thoroughly. At first I pestered Oira-Oira to explain to me how this could be reconciled with classical, or at least relativistic, concepts of space. I didn’t understand a thing from the explanations, but gradually I became adjusted to the whole thing and ceased to be amazed. I am now fully convinced that in some ten or fifteen years any schoolboy will find his way around the general theory of relativity more easily than a contemporary expert. To achieve this, it is not at all necessary to comprehend how the space-time curvature comes about, hut only to have such a concept inculcated in us from early childhood, so that it can become habitual.
The entire first floor was occupied by the Department of Linear Happiness. This was the kingdom of Feodor Simeonovich; here was the smell of apples and pine forests, here worked the prettiest girls and the handsomest young men. Here there were no gloomy perverts, experts, and adepts in black magic; here no one tore out his hair, hissing and grimacing in pain; no one muttered curses that sounded like indecent street rhymes; no one boiled live toads and crows at midnight at the full moon on the eve of John the Baptist Day or evil-omen days. Here they worked on the basis of optimism. Here everything possible was done within the framework of white, submolecular, and infraneuron magic in order to raise the spiritual tone of each individual as well as of entire human collectives. Here they condensed and dispersed throughout the world the happiest good-natured laughter; developed, tested, and implemented behavioral and relational models that strengthened friendship and dissolved strife; distilled and sublimated extracts of grief palliatives, which did not contain a single molecule of alcohol or other narcotics. Currently they were preparing for the field trials of a portable disrupter of evil, and were designing new versions of the rarest alloys of intelligence and goodwill.
I unlocked the door to the central room and stood on the threshold admiring the working of the gigantic Children’s Laughter Still, which bore some resemblance to a Van de Graaff generator. In contrast to the generator, however, it operated in complete silence and there was a lovely smell around it. According to instructions, I had to turn off two large switches on the control panel, so that the golden glow in the room would fade, so that it would grow dark and still. In short, the instruction said I must turn off all
power in this production section. I didn’t even hesitate, but backed out into the corridor and locked the door behind me. To de-energize anything in the laboratories of Feodor Simeonovich seemed to be pure sacrilege.
I went slowly along the corridor, studying the sketches on the doors to the laboratories, and met Tichon, the house brownie, at the corner. He drew and nightly changed the sketches. We exchanged handshakes. Tichon was a pleasant grayish brownie from the Ryazan oblast, exiled to Solovetz by Viy for some infraction: It seems he either didn’t greet someone properly, or refused to eat a boiled viper… Feodor Simeonovich welcomed him, cleaned him up, cured him of chronic alcoholism—and he made his home here on the first floor. He drew superbly, in the style of Bidstrup, and was renowned among his local peers for good sense and sober comportment.
I was about to go up to the second floor, but remembered the vivarium and directed my steps to the basement. The vivarium supervisor, a middle-aged emancipated vampire by the name of Alfred, was drinking his tea. Seeing me, he attempted to hide the teapot under the table, broke the glass, reddened, and hid his eyes. I felt sorry for him.
“Congratulations on the coming New Year,” I said, pretending that I didn’t notice anything.
He coughed, covered his mouth with his palm, and replied thickly, “Thank you, and the same to you.”
“Everything in order?” I asked, surveying the rows of cages and stalls.
“Briareus broke a finger,” said Alfred.
“How did he do that?”
“Just like that. On his eighteenth right hand. He was picking his nose, turned clumsily—they are very ungainly, these hekatocheires—and broke it.”