Brownie: A certain kind of supernatural creature inhabiting each occupied house, according to the imagination of the superstitious. There is nothing supernatural about brownies. They are either magi who have sunk to the lowest depths and are not amenable to reeducation, or mixed breeds resulting from the unions of gnomes with domestic animals. At the Institute they are under the administration of Kamnoedov and are used as unskilled labor.
Danaides: In Greek mythology the criminal daughters of King Danaus, who killed their husbands at his behest. At first, the Danaides were sentenced to fill a bottomless vessel with water. Subsequently, following an appeal, the court took into account that they were married under duress. This mitigating circumstance permitted their transfer to a somewhat less nonsensical occupation. At the Institute they now break up asphalt wherever they themselves had recently laid it.
Demon, Maxwell’s: An important element in the mental experiment of the great English physicist Maxwell. Intended for an assault on the second law of thermodynamics. In Maxwell’s mental experiment, the demon is placed next to an aperture in a dividing partition between the two compartments of a vessel filled with moving molecules. The work of the demon consists of allowing fast molecules to move from one compartment into the other, and to slam the door shut in the face of slow molecules. The ideal demon is thus able to create a very high temperature on one side and a very low temperature on the other side of the partition, without doing any work, realizing a perpetual engine of the second order. But only very recently, and only in our Institute, has it been possible to find and put such demons to work.
Dracula, Count: The celebrated Hungarian vampire of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. Never was a count. Committed a great many crimes against humanity. Was caught by the hussars and ceremoniously pierced with an aspen stake in the presence of a large assemblage of people. Distinguished for a tremendous power of survival: the autopsy disclosed one and one half kilograms of silver bullets in his body.
Gian Ben Gian: Either an ancient inventor or an ancient warrior. His name is always associated with the concept of a shield and is not encountered separately. (For example, it is mentioned in The Temptation of St. Anthony by Flaubert.)
Gnome: Found in West European tales—an ugly dwarf guarding underground treasures. I have spoken with some of the gnomes. They are in fact ugly and are in fact dwarfs, but as to treasures, they have never heard of them. The majority of gnomes are forgotten and considerably desiccated doubles.
Golem: One of the first cybernetic robots, made of clay by Leo Ben Beczalel. (See, for example, the Czech comedy The Emperor’s Baker; its golem bears a good resemblance to a real one.
The Hammer of Witches: An ancient manual of instructions on interrogation of the third degree. Was developed and applied by the clerics especially for exposing witches. Has been rescinded in modern times as obsolete.
Incubus: A variation of resuscitated corpses, which have a tendency to enter into wedlock with the living. Do not exist. In theoretical magic the term “incubus” is used in an entirely different sense; as a measure of the negative energy of a living organism.
Jinn: Evil spirit of Arabian and Persian myths. Almost all the jinns are doubles of King Solomon and the magi of his times. Used in military and political hooliganism applications. Distinguished by a repulsive character, gall, and total absence of a sense of gratitude. Their ignorance and aggressive behavior is so unbearable that all are now imprisoned. Widely used in modern magic as test specimens. In particular, E. Amperian determined, based on material obtained from thirteen jinns, the quantity of evil that a nasty ignoramus can inflict on a society.
Levitation: The ability to fly without any mechanical contrivances. The levitation of birds, bats, and insects is well known.
Oracle: In the belief of the ancients, a means of communication by the gods with men: the flight of birds (used by augurs), the rustling of trees, the dreams of a prophet, and so forth. Also the place where prophecies were made. “The Solovetz Oracle” is a small dark room. It has been planned for several years to install a large computer there for minor prophecies.
Phantom: A ghost, a spook. In modern view it is a condensation of necrobiotic information. Phantoms excite a superstitious horror, though they are entirely harmless. In the Institute they are used for the verification of historic truth, although they cannot be legal witnesses.
Pythia: A priestess, a prophetess in ancient Greece. Prophesied after breathing poisonous fumes. Pythias do not practice at the Institute. They smoke a great deal and restrict themselves to the study of the general theory of prediction.
Ramapithecus: In contemporary view, the immediate precursor of pithecanthropus on the evolutionary ladder.
Segure, Richard: The hero of the phantasmic story “The Mystery of Richard Segure,” the discover of three-dimensional photography.
The Star of Solomon: In world literature, a magical sign in the shape of a six-pointed star, possessing powerful thaumaturgical properties. In the present time, as with most other geometrically based incantations, it has lost its potency and is useful only for frightening the illiterate.
Taxidermist: A stuffer of figures. I recommended this term to the authors because C.J. Junta becomes infuriated when called by that name.
Tertium: One-sixtieth of a second.
Upanishads: Ancient Hindu commentaries on the four sacred books.
Vampire: Blood-sucking corpse of folklore. In reality, vampires are magi who, for one reason or another, have taken the path of abstract evil. The tried-and-true remedy for them is the wooden stake and bullets cast from virgin silver. In the text the word is used loosely.
Werefolk or Shape-Changers: People capable of turning into certain animals: such as wolf (werewolf), fox (kitzuneh), and the like. For some reason they excite horror in the superstitious. V.P. Korneev, for instance, turned into a rooster when he had a toothache and immediately felt relieved.
Zombi (also Cadaver): Generally speaking, an unliving object: a portrait, statue, idol, scarecrow. (See, for example, Count Cagliostro by A.N. Tolstoi.) One of the first zombis in history was the well-known Galatea, the work of the sculptor Pygmalion. Not used in modern magic. As a rule they are phenomenally stupid, capricious, hysterical, and almost unresponsive to training. In the Institute, unsuccessful doubles and doublelike colleagues are sometimes ironically called cadavers.
Footnotes
1: Izba na kurvikh nozhkakh: Log cottage on hen’s legs, of Russian folklore.
2: A magical place in Russian literature.
3: Reference to Zmei Gorynitch, a fire-breathing dragon of Russian folklore.
4: Common children’s song.
5: Leader of ghost goblins and supernatural monsters.
6: Reference to a well-known fairy tale with magic fish.
7: Sixty-three miles.
8: Vibegallo has the connotation in Russian of “running out in front”.
9: A full belly is deaf to learning.
10: Humorous periodical.
11: The quivering of its left calf is an important sign.
12: Where you are not competent, there you should not wish to be.
13: One-sixtieth of a second.
14: True. (Translator)
TALE OF THE TROIKA
The story began like this. One day, at the peak of my work rush, as I was sweating over a lost shipment intended for the Kitezhgrad Magicotechnical Plant, my friend Eddie Amperian showed up in my office. Being a polite and well-brought-up person, he did not materialize unceremoniously right in the rickety visitor’s chair, or barge in obnoxiously through the wall, or hurtle through the open transom like a catapulted cobblestone. Most of my friends are always in a hurry, late for something, or behind schedule, and they always materialize, or barge in, or hurtle through shamelessly whenever they feel like it, eschewing normal communications. Eddie was not like them: he modestly entered through the door. He even knocked, but came in before I had time to answer.
He stoppe
d in front of me, said hello, and asked:
“Do you still need the Black Box?”
“Box?” I muttered, my mind still on the lost goods. “What can I tell you? What box do you mean?”
“I’m disturbing you, aren’t I?” polite Eddie said carefully. “I’m sorry, but the boss sent me over. You see, approximately an hour from now the new elevator system will be launched for its first run beyond the thirteenth floor. We’ve been offered a ride.”
My mind was still saturated with the noxious fumes of inventory jargon, and all I could say was:
“We were supposed to have lost an elevator at the thirteenth floor of this year?”
But then the first few bits of Eddie’s information penetrated my gray matter. I laid down my pen and asked him to repeat what he had said. Eddie did so, patiently.
“Really?” I asked in a faint whisper.
“Absolutely,” Eddie said.
“Let’s go,” I said, getting the folder with the requisitions out of my desk.
“Where?”
“What do you mean where? To the seventy-sixth floor.”
“Not just like that,” Eddie said, shaking his head. “First we have to drop in to see the boss.”
“What for?”
“He asked us to. There’s some problem involved with the seventy-sixth floor. The boss wants to brief us.”
I shrugged without arguing. I put on my jacket, pulled out the requisition for the Black Box from the folder, and we set off to see Eddie’s boss, Fedor Simeonovich Kivrin, head of the Department of Linear Happiness.
An unbelievable hubbub reigned on the platform of the first floor in front of the elevator cage. The door of the shaft was open, as was the door into the elevator itself. Many lights were burning, the mirrors were sparkling, and the polished surfaces gleamed. Under the old, peeling banner that proclaimed “Let’s Get the Elevator Up by the Holiday!” huddled a crowd of curiosity seekers and people wanting rides. They were all listening politely to Modest Matveevich Kamnoedov, the deputy director, who was giving a speech before some electricians from the Solovetsk Boiler Supervisor’s Department.
“This must be stopped,” Modest Matveevich exhorted. “This is an elevator, not some spectroscope or microscope. The elevator is a powerful means of locomotion—that’s primary. It is also a means of transportation. The elevator must be like a dump truck: it gets you there, dumps you out, and comes back. That’s point one. The administration has long been aware that many of our fellow scientists, and that includes some academicians, do not know how to use an elevator. We are combating this, and we will put an end to it. There will be examinations for licenses for operating an elevator, and past services to us will not be taken into consideration…the establishment of the title of Senior Elevator Operator…and so on. That’s my second point. And on their part the electricians must guarantee uninterrupted service. There’s no use in falling back on objective conditions as an excuse. Our slogan is ‘elevators for everyone.’ No matter who. The elevator must be able to withstand the entrance of the least-educated academician.”
We made our way through the crowd and moved on. The pomp of that improvised meeting impressed me greatly. I had the feeling that today the elevator would actually, finally, be running and would continue running maybe for as much as twenty-four hours. That was impressive. The elevator had always been the Achilles’ heel of the institute and of Modest Matveevich, personally. Actually, there was nothing special about it. It was an elevator like any other, with its good points and its bad points. As befits a proper elevator, it constantly strove to get stuck between floors, was always occupied, burned out the bulbs that were screwed into it, and demanded irreproachable behavior and a deft touch with the gate. Getting into the elevator, one could never say with any certainty where and when one would be getting out.
But our elevator did have one unique trait. It could not stand going above the thirteenth floor. I mean, of course, that there are recorded instances in the history of the institute of individual skilled craftsmen who managed to overcome the contrariness of the mechanism and, giving it its head, went up to absolutely fantastic heights. But for the average man, the endless territory of the institute looming above the thirteenth floor was just a blank. There were all kinds of rumors, some contradictory, about those territories, almost completely cut off from the world and the influence of the administration. It was maintained, for example, that the one hundred twenty-fourth floor had an exit into an adjoining space with different physical properties, that on the two hundred thirtieth floor lived a mysterious race of alchemists—the spiritual descendants of the famous Union of the Nine established by the enlightened Indian king Asoka, and that on the one thousand seventeenth floor, the old man, his wife, and the Golden Fish still lived on the shore of the Blue Sea.
The floor that interested me the most, and Eddie too, was seventy-six. It was there, according to Inventory Control, that the Ideal Black Box was kept, indispensable to a computer lab. A talking bedbug lived there too, and the Department of Linear Happiness had long needed it. As far as we could tell, the seventy-sixth floor was a sort of storehouse for the anomalies of nature and society, and many of our employees were eager to dig their claws into that treasure trove. Fedor Simeonovich Kivrin, for example, dreamed of the granulated Grounds for Optimism that were supposed to be there. The guys from the Department of Social Meteorology were desperate for at least one qualified Cold Shoulder—three were indicated as being there, and all three had an effective temperature close to absolute zero. Old Christobal Joséevich Junta, director of the Department of the Meaning of Life and doctor of the most unexpected sciences, was champing at the bit to catch the sole remaining specimen of the Wingless Earthbound Dream and stuff it. Over the past twenty-five years he had tried no less than six times to break through all the barriers to the seventy-sixth floor, using his formidable powers of vertical translocation. But even he was unsuccessful: all the floors above thirteen, according to the clever plans of the ancient architects, were solidly blocked against any type of translocation. Thus a successful launching of the elevator would have signified a new epoch in the life of our collective.
We stopped outside Fedor Simeonovich’s office, and the old house spirit Tikhon, clean and presentable, cheerily opened the door for us. We went in.
Fedor Simeonovich Kivrin was not alone. Olive-hued Christobal Joséevich Junta was casually draped in the soft armchair behind his large work table, sucking on a smelly Havana cigar. Fedor Simeonovich himself, his large fingers tucked in his colorful suspenders, was walking up and down the office with his head bowed. He was trying to step along the very edge of the Persian carpet. Crystal vases on the table held the Fruits of Paradise: the large, rosy apples of the Knowledge of Evil and the completely inedible-looking, but nevertheless worm-eaten, apples of the Knowledge of Good. The porcelain dish at Christobal Joséevich’s elbow was full of cores and butts.
Detecting our presence, Fedor Simeonovich stopped in his tracks.
“And here they are in person,” he said without his customary smile. “P-p-please sit down. T-t-time is short. K-K-Kamnoedov is a blowhard, but he’ll be through soon. Ch-Christo, why don’t you ex-ex-explain the circumstances, it always comes out badly when I try.”
We sat down. Christobal Joséevich, his right eye squinting from the smoke, looked at us critically.
“I’ll explain, if you wish,” he said to Fedor Simeonovich. “The circumstances are such, young men, that the first people to reach the seventy-sixth floor should be those of us who are experienced and wise. Unfortunately, the administration feels that we are too old and too venerable to go on the first experimental launch. Therefore, you are going, and I warn you right now that this will not be a simple trip, but reconnaissance, and perhaps reconnaissance under fire. You’ll need stamina, courage, and the utmost discretion. Personally, I do not observe any of these qualities in you, but I defer to the recommendation of Fedor Simeonovich. And in any case, you must know that y
ou will most likely be in enemy territory—a merciless, cruel enemy who will stop at nothing.”
That preface made me start sweating, but then Christobal Joséevich began explaining how things stood.
It turned out that on the seventy-sixth floor lay the ancient city of Tmuskorpion, seized as a trophy of war, way back when, by the vengeful Prince Oleg the Prophetic. From time immemorial Tmuskorpion was the center of strange phenomena and the site of strange events. Why this was so, no one knew, but everything that could not be rationally explained at any stage of scientific and technological progress was sent there to be preserved for better times.
Back in the days of Peter the Great, at the same time that his famous museum, the Kunstkamera, was being founded in St. Petersburg, the local Solovetsk authorities, in the person of Lieutenant Bombadier Ptakha and his company of grenadiers, established “His Imperial Majesty’s Kamera of Marvelous and Amazing Kunsts with a Prison and Two Steambaths” in Tmuskorpion. In those days, the seventy-sixth floor was the second floor, and it was a lot easier to get into His Imperial Majesty’s Kamera of Kunsts than into the baths. But later, as the Edifice of Knowledge grew, access to it became increasingly difficult, and ceased completely with the appearance of the elevator. Meanwhile the Kamera of Kunsts kept growing, enriched by new exhibits, and became the Imperial Museum of Zoological and Other Natural Wonders under Catherine the Great, the Russian Imperial Preserve of Magical, Spiritual, and Occult Phenomena under Alexander II, and finally, the State Colony of Unexplained Phenomena under the Research Institute for Magic and Wizardry of the Academy of Sciences.
The destructive consequences of the invention of the elevator impeded the exploitation of the treasure trove for scientific research. Business correspondence with the administration was extremely difficult and inevitably drawn-out: cables lowered with correspondence snapped under their own weight; carrier pigeons refused to fly that high; radio communications were shaky because of the backwardness of Tmuskorpion’s technology; and the use of lighter-than-air craft merely led to needless expenditure of the limited supplies of helium. But all that is history now.