out of the cabin at any cost; he was
gripped by blind anger and lost his head.
     I knocked him off his feet again. Sazhin's lessons came in  handy after
all.  This time he fell on his bunk, but so hard that his head hit the wall.
It looked to me as if he had lost consciousness. But he stirred and groaned.
I folded a towel, wet it under the tap, and laid it on his face.
     There was a knock  at  the door. I slid a glance at Mikhail. He did not
even  turn  round.  I  released the  catch on  the door. In  came a  perfect
stranger wearing a wet raincoat; apparently it was raining harder.
     "You coming, Sergei Nikolaevich?"
     "No," I answered. "I'm  not. My friend isn't  feeling well. Sea-sick, I
guess. I'll stay with him."
     Mikhail still did not move, nor even  raise his head. I waited till the
footsteps died away down the corridor.
     "I'm  going to the bar,"  I warned Mikhail. "But, if you'll  excuse me,
I'm locking the door."
     I  locked the  door, but  did  not  get to the  bar.  Again  the sudden
darkness, that I was so used to,  returned me to the familiar chair with the
helmet and pick-ups.
     The  first  thing I  heard  was the  tail end  of  a conversation which
clearly was not meant for my ears.
     "A traveller in time - that's stale. I should call it a  'walk  in  the
fifth dimension'."
     "Maybe in the seventh?"
     "We'll formulate it. How is he?"
     "Unconscious, so far."
     "Consciousness has already returned."
     "And the encephalogram?"
     "Recorded in full."
     "I told you before he's a real find."
     "Shall I turn on the isolator?"
     "Turn it off,  you meant to say? Give it zero three, and then zero ten.
Let his eyes get used to light gradually."
     The  blackness lifted a bit. As if a crack had opened somewhere letting
in  a  tiny  ray of light. Though invisible,  it made the  objects around me
visible.  With each passing  second they grew more clear-cut, and soon I saw
Zargaryan's face before me, as if on a cinema screen.
     "Ave, homo, amici  te  salutant. ( Greetings, man, friends salute you.-
tr.) Do I need to translate?"
     "No," I answered.
     There  was now full light. The astronaut's helmet lightly slipped  from
my head and lifted up. The chair-back gave me a push as if suggesting that I
get up. I did. Nikodimov was already in his place at  the desk, inviting  me
to join them both.
     "Did you have many experiences?"
     "Many. Shall I relate them?"
     "Not in any case.  You are tired. You will tell  us tomorrow. What  you
need now is rest, and a proper sleep. Without dreams."
     "But what I saw ... were they dreams?" I asked.
     "We'll put oft all  exchange of  information till tomorrow," he smiled.
"Today, don't relate a thing, not even at home. The main thing is sleep, and
more sleep."

     "But shall I fall asleep?" I doubted.
     "Without  a doubt. After supper,  take this tablet.  And tomorrow we'll
meet again  here. Let's say at two  o'clock. Ruben Zargaryan  will come  for
you."
     "Now I'll have him homo in a jiffy. Swift as the wind," said Zargaryan.
     "And don't think about anything. Don't try to recollect anything. Don't
live it over  again,"  added  Nikodimov. Urbi  ot orbi, not  a word. Need  I
translate?"
     "I guess not," I said.

        PROGRESS TOWARD THE SOLUTION

     I  kept  my word, and gave Olga  only  a general outline about what had
taken place. I myself did not want to relive all I had seen in my artificial
dreams, even in my thoughts. Nor did I ask  Olga about anything that had the
slightest connection with my dreams. But  late at night, in bed, I could not
restrain myself.
     "Did we ever get an invitation from the Hungarian Embassy?"
     "No," said Olga in surprise. "Why do you ask?"
     "Which  of  your  acquaintances is called  Fedor Ivanovich, and  who is
Raisa?"
     "I  haven't the faintest," she  answered, more surprised than ever.  "I
don't know any people with those names. No wait ... I remember. You know who
Fedor Ivanovich is? The head  of a polyclinic. Not ours, but  the one  I was
asked to work in, the one  attached to the ministry. And Raisa - that's  his
wife. It was she who made mo the offer. When did you get to know them?"
     "I'll tell you tomorrow. Right now, my mind is a muddle. Forgive me," I
muttered, and fell asleep.
     I woke up late, after Olga had already gone leaving my breakfast on the
table and coffee  in  the  thermos. I didn't want  to  get up. I lay in bed,
unhurriedly going over the events of yesterday. I remembered with particular
clarity the  dreams  I  had seen in Faust's  laboratory  -  not dreams,  but
living,  concrete reality. I  remembered them in detail, down to the  little
things  you  usually don't notice  in real  life. And immediately I recalled
even the  paper pad in  the  hospital consulting  room, the  colour  of  the
buttons on Mikhail's  raincoat, the sound of the probe falling on the floor,
and  the  taste of  the  apricot  palinka or  brandy.  I  recalled  all  the
Hoffman-style   confusion,   compared   the   conversations,   actions   and
interrelations, finally coming to strange  conclusions. Very strange, though
their strangeness hardly lessened their cogency.
     A telephone  call got  me out of bed.  It was  Klenov,  who had already
found out from Zoya about my meeting Zargaryan. I would have  to take a hard
line.
     "Do you know what 'taboo' means?"
     "Suppose I do?"
     "Then  get  this:  Zargaryan   is  taboo,   Nikodimov  is  also  taboo,
telepathy's taboo. That's the works."
     "I'll tear my clothes to ribbons."
     "Tear away! By the way, have you got a cottage in Zhavoronki?"
     "A garden plot, you  mean to say? Only  it's not in Zhavoronki. We were
offered two choices: Zhavoronki or Kupavna. I chose the last."
     "But you could have chosen Zhavoronki?"
     "Naturally. Why are you interested?"
     "I'm interested in a lot of things. For instance, who is  press-attache
now at the Hungarian Embassy? Kemenes?"
     "You haven't got encephalitis, by any chance?"
     "I'm asking in all seriousness."
     "Kemenes is press-attache in Hungary. He hasn't been sent to Moscow."
     "But he might have been?"
     "I get it. You're writing a thesis on the subjunctive mood."
     In a way,  Klenov almost guessed  it. In my  attempts to figure out the
secret hovering around  me, I  tripped over  the  subjunctive mood  time and
again that  morning. What might  have  happened  if.... If  Oleg hadn't been
killed at Dunafoldvar? If it hadn't been Oleg  that married Galya, but I? If
I  had gone in for medicine after the war instead of entering the faculty of
journalism? If  Olga had agreed to work at the ministry's  clinic? If  Tibor
Kemenes hadn't  gone to work in Belgrade, but had come to Moscow? If, if....
Over the subjunctive  mood, this Hoffman  devilry burst into rich  bloom.  I
might have gone to a reception in the Hungarian Embassy.  I  might have gone
on  the  Ukraine  around Europe.  I  might  have been a  Doctor  of  Medical
Sciences, a  surgeon operating on a  living  Oleg. All of these things might
have been in real life, if....
     And another if.  What  if I had seen not  dreams at  Zargaryan's, but a
hypnotic stream of life, altered here  and there according to circumstances?
Then the fantastic Jekyll  and Hyde story would have received a lawful vote.
If Gromov the journalist could be turned into a surgeon for  a certain time,
then why shouldn't Gromov  the surgeon  become journalist Gromov for a time?
He had that day on Tverskoi Boulevard.  In a flash,  flooded with Indian ink
and lilac mist. In a  flash, like Hyde jumping into Jekyll's  body from  the
foam-rubber  chair  in Faust's  laboratory.  You  see,  Dr.  Gromov had  his
Nikodimov and Zargaryan who controlled the same mysterious forces.
     That meant that  Zargaryan,  Nikodimov and  I, the three of us equally,
had   taken  part   in   the   simultaneous  current  of  certain   parallel
non-intersecting lives. How many parallel  lives were there? Two, five, six,
a hundred, a thousand of them? What  course were they following, and in what
space or time? I remembered  Galya's talk  with Hyde  about the plurality of
worlds. What if it wasn't a fantastic hypothesis, but a scientific discovery
- one more mystery solved about matter?
     But my mind refused to accept this explanation. All the more so because
my mind was untrained in the exact sciences. I could only bewail the limited
knowledge of our education in the  humanities. I did not have  enough brains
to think over, to ponder upon, the problem I had brought to light,
     That was the state of mind I was in when Galya dropped in on her way to
work.  She had learned from Olga last night  that I'd gone to see Zargaryan,
and she was literally burning with curiosity to know if I'd found the key to
the puzzle.
     "I found it," I said. "Only I can't turn the key in the lock: I haven't
the strength."
     I told  her about  the  chair in Faust's laboratory, and about my three
'dreams'. She was silent for a long time before she gave me a question. "Had
he grown old?"
     "Who?"
     "Oleg."
     "What did you expect? Twenty years have gone by."
     She fell  silent again, lost in thought. I was afraid that her personal
curiosity overshadowed that of a scientist. But I was mistaken.
     "Something else  interests me,"  she said, breaking the  silence.  "The
fact that you  saw  him grown older. With  wrinkles. With a  scar that never
existed. It's impossible!" "Why?"
     "Because you've never  read  Pavlov.  You  cannot see in  a  dream what
you've never seen in real life. The blind from birth do  not see dreams. And
what was Oleg like when you knew him? A boy, a youth. Where did the wrinkles
of a forty-year-old man come from, and the scar on the temple?"
     "But if it's not a dream?"
     "You've already got an explanation?" Galya shot back.
     I got the  idea that she had guessed exactly what explanation I thought
the most likely, and the most frightening.
     "So  far it's  only an attempt  at  an  explanation,"  I  reminded  her
hesitantly. "I keep trying to compare my adventure with  these dreams.... If
Hyde could play  such a joke on Jekyll, then why couldn't they both exchange
roles?"
     "Mysticism."
     "But  don't you  remember your talk with  Hyde  about the plurality  of
worlds? Parallel worlds, parallel lives?"
     "Rubbish," objected Galya.
     "You simply don't  want  to take it seriously," I reproached her. "It's
easy enough to say 'rubbish'. They said  the same thing about the Copernicus
hypothesis."
     I didn't make  her give  in by this  remark but at least forced her  to
think about my own thesis.
     "Parallel worlds? Why parallel?"
     "Because they don't intersect anywhere."
     Galya laughed, openly scornful.
     "Don't try writing science  fiction: that's my advice. You wouldn't get
anywhere. Non-intersecting worlds?" She snorted. "So Nikodimov and Zargaryan
have found a point of intersection? A window into an anti-world?"
     "Who knows?" I said.
     I found out the answer to that two hours later in Faust's laboratory.

        OPEN, SESAME!

     To tell  the truth, I went there as if to an examination, with the same
inner  trepidation and  fear before the unknown. Again and  again I ran over
the dreams  I recalled, the visions I'd seen during the experiment. I called
them 'dreams' from habit, though  I had come to the  final  conclusion  that
they  weren't  dreams  at  all. I  compared  all  details  suggesting such a
comparison, and systematized my conclusions.
     "Have you  got it well  rehearsed?" asked Zargaryan merrily when he met
me.
     "Rehearsed what?" I muttered, embarrassed.
     "Your story, of course."
     He saw through me. But rising anger made me overcome my  embarrassment.
"I don't much like your attitude."
     He only laughed in answer.
     "Do all  the complaining  you like. The  tape-recorder  isn't turned on
yet."
     "What tape-recorder?"
     "The 'Yauza-10'. For purity of sound, it's wonderful."
     I hadn't  expected  to make a tape-recording. It's one thing  to tell a
story, bat quite another to tape-record. I shook my head, almost refusing.
     "Sit down  and begin," Nikodimov encouraged me. "You'll make  your mark
in science. Pretend you're dictating to a pretty stenographer."
     "Only no hunter's tales,"  added Zargaryan with sly humour. "The tape's
supersensitive, with Munchausen tuning.... I'm switching on."
     Childishly, I stuck my tongue out at him, and my shyness disappeared at
once.  I began  my story without any prologue, quite freely, and  the more I
talked the more colourful it became. I did not simply relate it: I explained
and compared, looking into the past; compared the vision with reality and my
experiences with my subsequent views. All Zargaryan's irony disappeared like
smoke:  he  listened greedily, stopping me  only  to  reverse  the  tape.  I
resurrected for  them  all  the impressions  I had  in the lab chair: Lena's
anger in  the hospital, Sichuk's face convulsed  with evil, and the lifeless
smile  of Oleg on the  operating table, everything that I recalled and  that
had  staggered  me, that even shocked me now while  I tape-recorded my still
vivid recollections.
     The  tape  reel was  still turning when I  finished: Zargaryan did  not
immediately turn it off, and it  recorded  the whole minute  of silence that
reigned in the room.
     "So you  didn't see the department store arcade," he observed bitterly.
"Nor the road to the lake. A pity."
     "Wait, Ruben," Nikodimov stopped him.  "That's not the point. You  see.
the phases are almost identical. The same time, the same people."
     "Not quite."
     "Only infinitesimal deviations."
     "But they are there," said Zargaryan,
     "Not mathematically."
     "And the difference in the signs?"
     "Does such a difference change a  man? Time changes, perhaps. If it's a
minus phase, then it's possibly  time  coining from an  opposite direction -
counter-time."
     "Don't  be so sure. Perhaps it's  only a  different system  of counting
time," said Zargaryan.
     "All the same, everybody will call it fantasy! And reason?"
     "If you don't violate reason,  you won't  get anywhere in general.  Who
said that? Einstein."
     The conversation didn't get any clearer. And I coughed.
     "Excuse  me," said  Nikodimov, embarrassed. "We got carried away.  Your
dreams don't give us any peace."
     "But are they dreams?" I expressed my doubts.
     "You doubt it? So you've been thinking, have you? Maybe we'll start off
the explanations with yours?"
     I  remembered all  Galya's sneers, but  I was not afraid of hearing the
same again. So I stubbornly repeated the myth of Jekyll and Hyde, who met on
the crossroads  of space  and time. If  this was an  anti-world,  plurality,
mysticism, the ravings of a  mad dog - so be it! But I had no other theories
to explain it with.
     However, Nikodimov did not even smile.
     "Have you studied physics?" he asked suddenly.
     "Through  a  school textbook,"  I  admitted, and  thought:  'Now  he'll
start!'
     But Nikodimov did not mock me, he merely stroked his beard.
     "A rich  training. But how, with the  help of a school textbook can you
define a plurality of worlds? Let's say, in Cartesian co-ordinates?"
     Searching my memory, I found  the Wellsian  Utopia that  Mr. Barnstaple
got into, without turning off an ordinary highway.
     "Excellent," agreed Nikodimov. "We'll  begin with that. What did  Wells
compare  our three-dimensional world  to? To a book whose  every page was  a
two-dimensional world. So, one might suppose that in multi-dimensional space
there  might  also be  neighbouring three-dimensional worlds, moving in time
along nearly parallel routes. That's  according to Wells. When he  wrote his
novel after the First World War, the genius Dirac was still a youth, and his
theory received popular acclaim  only in  the  thirties. You can, of course,
picture up what Dirac's 'vacuum' is?"
     "Approximately," I said  carefully.  "Generally speaking, it  is not  a
void, but something like a neutrino-antineutrino pulp. Like  plankton in the
ocean."
     "Picturesque, but not lacking sense," agreed Nikodimov again. "And this
very same plankton from elementary particles, the neutrino-antineutrino gas,
constitutes a border between worlds with a plus sign and  those with a minus
sign. There are scientists who look for anti-worlds in other galaxies, but I
prefer seeking  them right next door. And  not  only a symmetrical system  -
world and anti-world,  but  the  infinity  of this symmetry. As  we  have an
infinite number of combinations in  a game of chess, so  even here there are
infinite combinations of worlds and anti-worlds, adjacent to each other. You
ask  how  I  picture this  adjacency?  As a  stable,  geometrically isolated
existence? No, on the contrary. In a simplified form this is the idea of the
inexhaustibility of  matter, of its perpetual motion generating these worlds
along  certain new,  still  unknown  co-ordinates. To  be more exact,  along
certain phase-like trajectories.
     "Well, but  what about ordinary motion then?" I interrupted, perplexed.
"I'm also a particle of matter, but I move through space independent of your
quasi-motion."
     "Why 'quasi'? One is  simply  independent of  the other. You are moving
through  space independent of your moving through time. Whether  you  sit at
home or travel  somewhere - you get  equally older.  So  it  is here: in one
world you might,  let's say, be travelling by sea; in the other, at the very
same time, you are playing chess  or having dinner at home. More  than that:
in the infinite repetition of worlds you  may travel, be ill, or work; while
in other infinite plurality  of similar worlds,  you  don't actually  exist,
perhaps through an unfortunate accident or suicide, or you were simply never
born at all because your parents never met. I hope I make myself clear?"
     "Quite clear."
     "He's  shamming," said Zargaryan. "What he  needs right  now is a vivid
example  - that's  clear at a glance. Look here, imagine  an unusual reel of
film. In  one  frame you are  flying in an  aeroplane,  in  another  you are
shooting,  in a third you are killed.  In one  frame a tree  is growing,  in
another  it is  cut down. In  one, the Pushkin  monument  stands on Tverskoi
Boulevard, in another in the centre of the  square. In a word, life shown in
separate frames, moving, let us say, vertically from  below  upward or  from
above downward. And now picture the same life in separate frames, but moving
horizontally from every frame, from left to  right  or vice versa. There you
have an approximate model of  matter in multi-dimensional space. Now what do
you  think is the  most  essential  difference between  this  model  and the
simulated object?"
     I didn't answer. What was the use of guessing?
     "The difference is that there are no identical  frames,  but  identical
worlds exist."
     "Similar," I countered.
     "Not  only," Nikodimov interrupted.  "We  still don't  know  the law by
which  matter  moves  in  these  dimensions.  Take  the  simplest  law:  the
sinusoidal. With the ordinary sinusoid, the slightest change in the argument
brings  about  a corresponding change of function,  and that  means  another
world.  But in a period, we get the same value of the sine  and consequently
the same world. And so on into eternity."
     "That means I might also  find myself in a world like ours? Exactly the
same?"
     "You wouldn't even notice any difference," said Zargaryan.
     "And how do you explain what happened to me on the boulevard?"
     "The same as you do. Jekyll and Hyde."
     "A Gromov from another world who looks the same as me?"
     "Precisely.  A  certain  Nikodimov  and  a  Zargaryan  in   that  world
transferred  the  conscious  mind  of  your  double.  This   did  not  occur
momentarily, not all at once. Your own mind protested, argued: that explains
the dualism during the first few minutes. But afterwards it  gave in  to the
aggressor."
     I suggested the proposition  that my trying episode in the hospital was
an exchange visit, but Nikodimov doubted it.
     "It's  possible, of course, but scarcely  likely. It would be closer to
the truth to suppose that it was  a Gromov more or less like your aggressor.
The  same profession,  the  same  circle of acquaintances,  the  same family
situation.  But  I've  already  told  you  of the  possibility  of an almost
complete, and even utterly complete, identity...."
     "To put it  more  vividly,"  interrupted  Zargaryan,  "we have  visited
worlds whose borders fit into the borders of ours, touching the interior. We
call them adjacent worlds, conditionally of course. And there  are even more
interesting  worlds intersecting  ours or, shall we say, perhaps in  general
not having  points of contact with ours. There, time is either in advance of
our time, or it lags behind. And who knows by how much?" He was silent, then
added almost dreamily:

     Far beyond a certain birch-tree,
     So long, so very dear to me,
     In sudden silence is revealed
     The unknown - strange and most unreal.

     "You didn't  finish," I laughed, remembering  the  same  verses.  "It's
different farther on!"

     To reach an unknown world we strive,
     'It's sad, not all who go arrive.

     The desk telephone rang.
     "Not all who go," repeated Nikodimov thoughtfully. "Our  chief wouldn't
arrive."
     The telephone kept ringing.
     "Talk of the devil, and.... Don't answer."
     "All the same, he'll find us."
     The trip into the unknown  was put off till the evening when we were to
meet in the Sofia Restaurant,  where  freedom from  the top brass was  fully
guaranteed.

     NOSCE TE IPSUM (KNOW THYSELF)

     I  did  not  see  Olga  until  supper  time:  she was  delayed  at  the
polyclinic.  There  was nobody to talk with, about  what had happened. Galya
didn't  ring  up,  and  I  was  careful  to  avoid  Klenov  because  of  his
insufferable instructive manner; because of it I even  slipped away  from an
editorial meeting.
     I wandered the streets for about an hour,  so as  not to arrive  at the
restaurant too early  and have to hang around the  entrance looking foolish.
Trying to collect my thoughts,  I sat by Pushkin's  monument, but everything
I'd heard that morning was so new  and surprising that I couldn't even think
it all out. Finally, all the flow of my thoughts led to the question  of how
to  evaluate  my  meeting  the   two  scientists.  As  an  unusual  success,
'reporters' luck',  or as a menace  that always lies hidden in something the
mind cannot  grasp. I was inclined to think it  was  'reporters' luck'. If a
lab guinea-pig could  reason, it would  probably be proud of its association
with  scientists.  And I was proud of  mine. Another sign of reporters' luck
was the  type of  scientists my  friends  belonged to. I read somewhere that
scientists  are divided into classic and romantic types. The classic typo is
he who develops something new on the basis  of  the  old, on what is  firmly
established  in  science.  But  the  romanticists  are  dreamers.  They  are
interested in fields of knowledge  close to  their own or remotely connected
with  them.  They  not only produce  something new founded on the old:  more
often  they do  it by  using utterly unlooked-for associations. I  had  even
expressed my admiration  of this type in an article I wrote. Now 'reporters'
luck' had thrown us together.  Only romantics can so bravely and  recklessly
sin against reason. And, apparently, I  was very anxious to continue my part
in this sinning.
     Such were my  thoughts as I went  to keep my appointment,  arriving not
earlier but even later than  my new friends. They already awaited me at  the
entrance: Zargaryan all in smiles and Nikodimov, dressed in an old-fashioned
stiff jacket, modestly  effacing himself  in the rear. The stand-up starched
collar,  popular  around the turn  of  the  century,  would  have suited him
perfectly - he looked as severe as a  prophet out  of the Old Testament. The
irresistible Zargaryan more than made up for it. Wearing a strict dark suit,
with  just enough of  his  tie  showing  to display  a gold pin linked to  a
rounded shirt-collar, he so impressed the  stout,  bald  maitre d'hotel that
Nikodimov and I went unnoticed. We walked behind, half-smiling at the waiter
bustling ahead of our tall Ruben and captiously selecting the secluded table
we ordered.
     When dinner was served, Zargaryan poured the cognac.
     "The first toast is mine ... to chance meetings."
     "Why 'chance'?"
     "You can't possibly  imagine how great a role chance plays in my  life.
By chance I met Zoya and  through her,  by  chance,  you. I even  met  Pavel
Nikodimov by chance. Five years ago I read his  article on the concentration
of the sub-quantum biofield in the Bulletin  of the  Academy of  Sciences. I
went to him at once. It turned out that we were approaching one and the same
problem along different paths."
     He was silent. I  remembered Klenov  telling  me that  they  worked  in
absolutely different fields of science, but before I could utter my question
Zargaryan read my mind.
     "A strange union, eh? Physics and neurophysiology," he laughed.
     "What are you, a mind-reader?"
     "And why not? I must be according to my staff position. After all I'm a
telepathist. I'm engaged in  many  things in this field, but most of all I'm
interested in dreams. Why do we so often dream of  what we  never saw in our
conscious  lives?  How  is  this connected  with Pavlov's teaching  that the
essence of dreams is  a reflection of  reality. What  stimulations, in  such
cases, act on the brain cells? Perhaps things one is accustomed to -  light,
sounds,  contacts,  smells?  But  if not?  Then  there must be  certain  new
stimulations we are not aware of...."
     I  remembered  why  my  dreams  drew  his  attention:  they   were  not
reflections of reality. But, apparently, many people  have seen such dreams.
Only  these  dreams weren't stable,  as Zargaryan  had explained. They  were
easily forgotten,  hazy in  the conscious mind,  but the main thing was they
did not repeat themselves.
     "I figured it this way," he continued. "If, according to Pavlov, dreams
reflect what  is seen in our waking  hours,  yet  the one  experiencing them
never  actually  saw the things he  dreamed of,  then it means somebody else
did. But who? And how can what he sees be imprinted on the conscious mind of
another?"
     I interrupted him.
     "Then my department store, street scene, the road to the lake or pond -
they are some stranger's dreams?"
     "Without any doubt."
     "But whose?"
     "I still didn't know at the time. There arose a supposition that it was
hypnotic  transmission. But  suggestion does not occur by chance, suggestion
out of nowhere. It is always sent from the hypnotizer to the hypnotized. Not
one of the cases I observed showed any evidence of suggestion. I put forward
the idea of  mental telepathy.  In parapsychology, we call the brain sending
the signal the  inductor, and the  brain  receiving  it the percipient.  And
again, not in one case investigated did we  manage to discover the inductor.
Characteristic examples are  your more stable dreams. Who transmits  them to
you? From where? You wore lost in conjectures. I was, too, though I inclined
to the supposition that it is some other  living person existing  in another
form  and  perhaps  in   another  world.  However,  that  would   he  almost
mysticism....  I  stood  before  a  closed door. It was Pavel Nikodimov  who
opened it for me, or rather  his paper  did. Then  I  said:  'Open, Sesame!'
Isn't that the way it was, Pavel?"
     "Just about," affirmed  Nikodimov good-heartedly. "But you skipped  the
most picturesque  details:  Sesame  did not open so  easily. You see,  I'm a
crabby fellow ... get along rather badly with people. My assistant ... well,
he ran away when  they began to put pressure on us.  Took you for a lunatic,
Ruben. I can even remember the district psychiatrist he phoned to.  But even
that didn't  stop you. But you're right,  our  collaboration  began  from  a
chance meeting. So I back your toast. Let's drink to it."
     "And   afterwards?"  I  asked.  "It's  a  big  jump  from  an  idea  to
experimental tests."
     "We  didn't jump, we crawled. The mathematical idea led to the physical
state  of  the  field.  We  started  off  with  biocurrents.  You  see,  the
biocurrents of the brain are actually electro-magnetic fields originating in
its  nerve cells. Through their radiation  they  generate a  sort  of single
energy-field - the so-called conscious and subconscious of a person's  mind.
Take your analogy. The  fields of Jekyll and Hyde are only similar: they are
incompatible or, as we say, antipathetic.
     While you are awake, while your  brain  is active, the antipathy of the
fields  is constant and  invariable. But  when you fall  asleep, the picture
changes. The antipathy is now weakened, so  the fields of the  'doubles' are
superposed, so to say, and your dreams automatically  repeat what the  other
has  seen. But for Jekyll to  become Hyde a complete compatibility of fields
is necessary, which is possible only during exceptional activity on the part
of  the  inductor's  field.  And  we've discovered  that  you  possess  this
exceptional gift of activity."
     I listened eagerly to  Nikodimov, but not all of it sank in, some of it
escaped me. It was as if I had spells of deafness and from time to time lost
the  guiding  thread  in  this   devilish  labyrinth  of   fields,  doubles,
frequencies  and  rhythms; but  with sheer force  of will I would  catch  it
again. It looked like a speech interrupted by dots to indicate omissions.
     "... through our  experiments," Nikodimov was saying,  "we came  to the
conclusion that under reciprocal transmission the fields activate waves with
a frequency much higher than the usual alpha-rhythm. We called this new type
of frequency kappa-rhythm. And the higher the  frequency of the kappa waves,
the more vivid are the dreams received by the  sleeping receptor. Further on
it  wasn't  so  difficult to establish the  regularities  as  well. Complete
compatibility of  fields is connected with a sharp rise in frequency.  So we
got  the  idea of making a concentrator, or a transformer of biocurrents. By
establishing the  directed current of  radiation we apparently transfer your
conscious mind,  locating an identical mind for it beyond the borders of our
three-dimensional world. Of  course, we are still at the very  beginning  of
the road  - the movement of the field  along a phase  trajectory is somewhat
chaotic for the time being, because we cannot yet  control it. We cannot say
exactly where you will regain consciousness - in the present, past or in the
future, going by our time. Dozens of experiments must still be made...."
     "I'm ready," I interrupted him.
     Nikodimov did not answer.
     A  husky,  boyish  voice drifted down  to  us  from  the  stage where a
juke-box stood  that a young pop-music fan had turned  on. The voice floated
over  the noisy dining-hall, over the short-  or long-haired  or bald heads,
over  the  wine-darkened crystal goblets, floated invisibly  and  powerfully
with a strength and purity of feeling unexpected in a restaurant almost blue
with cigarette smoke.
     "A song with an undercurrent," said Zargaryan.
     I  listened.  "You  are  my  destiny,"  sang  the  boy,  "you   are  my
happiness...."
     "And you are our destiny," Zargaryan picked up the words with a serious
and even triumphant note. "And maybe our happiness. You alone."
     I averted my eyes, embarrassed.  Whatever  you say, there  is something
good about being somebody's destiny  and happiness. Nikodimov at once caught
my movements and the rather vain idea behind it.
     "But perhaps we are your destiny,  too," he said. "You will  know a lot
more,  and  particularly about yourself. You see, you are only a particle of
that living  matter  which is 'you'  in an  endlessly complicated vastness -
time. In a word, as the ancient Romans said: Nosce te ipsum - know thyself."

        THE LAST SUPPER

     I was ready to know myself in all the sum  total of dimensions,  phases
and co-ordinates, but I didn't  tell Olga about it that night. I gave her  a
vague sketch of my talk with the  scientists  and  promised to  relate it in
greater  detail  the  following  day,  which was  her  birthday.  We usually
celebrated it  alone,  but this  time I invited Galya and  Klenov to  be our
guests.  I wanted very much to include Zargaryan  and  Nikodimov, the guilty
parties in this unexpected -  I could even say wonderful - event in my life.
I  had mentioned it  in passing when we  left  the restaurant, but Nikodimov
either wasn't listening attentively or missed it through absent-mindedness.
     "Best leave it," Zargaryan had whispered confidentially. "He won't come
anyway - he's a hermit, as he admitted himself. But I'll come when I can get
away, perhaps a  bit late though. We haven't  finished our talk yet," and he
slyly stressed it, "about self-knowledge, have we?"
     He certainly came later than the rest of our company, arriving when the
table-talk had already turned  into argument, so hot an argument that  there
was shouting, an argument stubborn to  the point of rudeness when you forget
all formalities in an effort to get your word in.
     My  story  of  what I experienced during the test and of my later  talk
with the scientists had made the impression of maniacal raving.
     "We-ell..." Klenov muttered uncertainly, and was silent.
     "I don't believe it," cried  out Galya excitedly,  red in  the face and
with sparks in her eyes.
     "Why not?"
     "It's nonsense! And it's sensation-hunting, as my lab colleagues say. A
shady business. They're pulling the wool over your eyes."
     "But  why should they?" snapped  Klenov. "What's their  game? Nikodimov
and Zargaryan aren't glory-hunters or schemers. It would be all very well if
they wanted publicity, but they demand silence, d'you see. With their names,
they  don't  want to  arouse  even  a  shadow  of doubt that  it's  a  truly
scientific venture."
     "Everything  new  in  science,  all  discoveries,  are  built  on  past
experiments," said  Galya heatedly.  "And  where can you  see  that  in this
experiment?"
     "The new often refutes the old."
     "There are different kinds of refutations."
     "Exactly.  Einstein wasn't believed either, at first, for it was Newton
he refuted!"
     Olga  kept stubbornly silent and out  of it  all, until it drew Galya's
attention.
     "W7hy don't you say something?"
     "I'm afraid to."
     "Whatever for?"
     "You people  are only arguing about certain abstract ideas, but  Sergei
is taking a direct part in the experiment. And, as I understand it, it won't
stop  here. If  everything he  says  is  true, why,  the brain of an average
person can scarcely sustain it."
     "And are you so sure that I'm an average person?" I joked.
     But  she did not take  it as a  joke,  nor did she answer me. Galya and
Klenov again ruled the conversation. I had to answer dozens of questions and
again repeat my story of the dreams I'd had in Faust's laboratory.
     "If Nikodimov can prove his hypothesis," Galya finally admitted,  "then
it will turn physics upside down.  It will be the greatest upset  that  ever
occurred in our knowledge of the world.  If  he proves  it, of course,"  she
added stubbornly. "The experiment on Sergei is still not proof."
     "But I'm interested in  something else,"  said Klenov thoughtfully. "If
you accept the truth of the  hypothesis  a priori, another  question  arises
that's of no less importance: how did life develop on every space phase? Why
are they so  similar? I'm  not referring to  the physical  but their  social
aspect. Why is it that each transformed Moscow of Sergei's is a present-day,
post-war Moscow which is capital of the Soviet Union and not tsarist Russia?
Look, if Nikodimov's hypothesis is proved, do you realize what they will ask
about in the West, before anything  else?  Politicians,  historians,  church
dignitaries and  journalists will ask: is it obligatory that all worlds have
a similar social structure?  Is it absolutely certain  that their historical
development has been identical?"
     "Nikodimov spoke of still other worlds from different currents of time,
perhaps even with counter-times. In that  case, one might hit on Neanderthal
man or on the first of Earth's stellar flights."
     "That  isn't  my point,"  Klenov  said impatiently. "However  brilliant
Nikodimov  and  Zargaryan's  discovery  may  be,  it  does  not  reduce  the
importance of  the question  of social systems in every world.  According to
Marxism,  all  is  clear:  the  physical  similarity  presupposes  a  social
similarity. Everywhere the  development  of productive forces determines the
character of production relations. But can you imagine the song that will be
sung  by  those  adherents  of  the  cults  of personality and  chance?  The
barbarians  might not have reached  Rome, and the  Tatars, Kalka. Washington
might  have lost the war of American  independence, and  Napoleon might have
won at Waterloo. Luther might not  have become head of the Reformation,  and
Einstein  might  not  have  discovered  the  theory of  relativity. Bradbury
carried this dependence  of  historical development  on blind  chance to the
absurd. A traveller in  time accidentally kills a butterfly in the  Jurassic
period,  and  it  leads to  a change  in the  American presidential election
campaign: in place  of a progressive and  radical  candidate,  they  elect a
fascist and obscurantist  as  President. We know, of course, that Gold-water
wouldn't have been elected any way even if all the dinosaurs of the Jurassic
period had been killed. And we know that if Napoleon had won at Waterloo, he
would probably have been  defeated  somewhere  near Liege. And somebody else
would have headed  the Reformation instead of Luther; and if Einstein hadn't
discovered the theory of  relativity, someone else would  have done so. Even
not  rising  to  the heights of  historical materialism, Belinsky wrote more
than a hundred years ago that blind chance did not rule either in  nature or
in history, but strict, irrevocable, inner necessity did."
     Klenov spoke with that professional erudition of  a  lecturer, which so
annoyed  me  at  editorial  meetings, and I  cut in purely in the spirit  of
contradiction.
     "Well, but  just  imagine if  there  had  never been  a  Hitler in some
neighbouring world? He was never born. Would there have been war or not?"
     "Can't you answer that yourself?  And Goering, Hess,  Goebbels, Rommel,
and  lastly Strasser? The Krupps would  have passed the conductor's baton to
somebody.  And I  visualize you as a  great delegate with a mission, Sergei.
Don't  laugh  -  truly great.  Not  only  in  helping to  prove  Nikodimov's
hypothesis, but in the fact  that you will be  strengthening the position of
the Marxist conception of history. That everywhere and always, under similar
conditions of life on our planet, no matter what changes, phases or whatever
you  call them  take  place,  the class struggle always determined and still
determines social development until it becomes a classless society."
     At this  moment Zargaryan appeared with a bouquet of chrysanthemums. In
ten minutes he won over Olga  and Galya, and Klenov's professional erudition
changed into the respectful attention of a college freshman.
     Zargaryan gathered up all the threads of the talk at once, spoke of the
proposed  Nobel  prize winners, of his recent  trip to London,  interchanged
remarks  with Galya  about the  future  of laser technology.  With  Olga  he
discussed  the  role  of  hypnosis  in paediatrics. Then he praised Klenov's
article in the journal Science  and Life. But he purposely, or so it  seemed
to me, diverted the conversation from my part in the scientific experiment.
     However,  when it struck eleven he  caught my perplexed glance and said
with his characteristic smile: "I know, d'you see, what you're thinking. Why
is Zargaryan silent about the experiment?  Am I right? Actually, old chap, I
didn't  want to leave  right  away, because  further  conversation  will  be
impossible after  I've  said my say. Intriguing?"  he laughed. "It's  simple
enough, really. You see, tomorrow we intend making a new experiment,  and we
are asking you to take part."
     "I'm ready,"  I said, repeating  what I had  already  told  him  in the
restaurant.
     "Don't be in a  hurry," Zargaryan stopped me,  and now there was a note
of seriousness in his voice which I had noticed once  before,  and agitation
as well.  "First, the new experiment is to be much  longer than the previous
one. Maybe  it will last several hours, perhaps even twenty-four.... Second,
the test will  cover  more remote phases. I  say 'remote'  only  to keep  it
within  the  bounds of  comprehension.  The point  is  hardly  a  matter  of
distances, the  more so that we cannot determine them; and  besides, what we
mean by distances is of no importance for the activities of the biocurrents.
The diffusion of the radiation  is practically  instantaneous and  does  not
depend either on the spatial  arrangement of the phase or on the sign of the
field. But  I must honestly warn you that we  do not know the degree of risk
involved."
     "So it's dangerous?" asked Galya.
     Olga  asked no questions, though the pupils of her  eyes seemed a shade
larger.
     "I cannot answer that definitely." Apparently  Zargaryan had no  desire
to  conceal anything from me. "If  the  aiming  is not accurate  enough, our
converter might lose  control of the superposed  biofield. What  the results
would be  to the test-subject, we don't know. Now imagine something else: in
this world  he is  unconscious, in  the  other his conscious  mind has  been
imparted to  a certain person ... let's say  somebody  travelling by  plane.
What would happen to Sergei's conscious mind if there were a crash, we don't
know.  Would the converter  manage to switch over the biofield  in time,  or
would two people die, one in that world and one in this?"
     Zargaryan was answered with silence. He stood up, and resumed.
     "I've  already told you  that after my explanation the small talk would
end. You are  free, Sergei, to make your decision. I'll come for  you in the
morning and hear it with full respect even if it is a refusal."
     We  saw  him out in silence, returned to the table in silence, and  the
conversation was not resumed for a long time.
     Finally, Galya asked me point-blank:  "You're  waiting for my advice, I
suppose?"
     I  silently shrugged  my  shoulders.  What did it  matter  whether  she
advised me or not?
     "I already started believing  in this  delirium," she continued.  "Just
imagine  -  I believed  it.  And if  I were  suitable for the  test and  had
received the offer you have... I should not think twice about my answer. But
as to advice.... Well, that's Olga's job."
     "I won't talk you out of it, Sergei," said Olga. "Decide for yourself."
     I still kept silent, not taking my eyes off my empty glass. I waited to
hear what Klenov would say.
     "You  know, it would be interesting to know..." he  suddenly began, not
speaking to anyone  in particular. "That is,  I wonder if Gagarin thought it
over when they offered him the chance to make the first flight into space?"


        PART TWO. JOURNEY ACROSS THREE WORLDS

     It is not enough to have this
     globe, or a certain time - I will
     have thousands of globes, and all time.
     Walt Whitman, Poem of Joys

     But, looking into the future,
     As through a mirage-like prism,
     What a supreme paradise I desire-
     Out of one eye to glimpse communism.
     Ilya Selvinsky, Sonnet

        THE EXPERIMENT

     Zargaryan came for me in  the morning before Olga left for work. We had
both got up early, as we always do when one of us is leaving on a holiday or
a business  trip. But the feeling of the abnormality and strangeness of this
morning, compared to other  such  moments in the past, cast  a darkness over
the  window, the sky, and  the spirit. We purposely didn't speak of what lay
ahead  but  conversed  as usual  in  little more  than monosyllables. I kept
looking for my  missing toothbrush and Olga couldn't get the water to run at
the proper temperature.
     "Now it's hot, now it's cold. You try the taps."
     I tried my hand at it, and got nowhere.
     "Are you nervous?"
     "Not a bit."
     "But I'm afraid."
     "Wasted emotion. Nothing  happened before.  T sat  a couple of hours in
the chair, and that's all there was  to it. Fell  asleep and woke up. Didn't
even have a headache afterwards."
     "But  you  know this time it won't be  for two hours.  Maybe ten, maybe
twenty-four. A  long experiment.  I  can't  even  understand  how they could
permit it."
     "If  it's  permitted,  then everything's  okay. You  needn't  have  any
doubts."
     "But  I do have doubts." Her voice rang a bit shrilly. "First, I  doubt
it  as  a  doctor.  Twenty-four hours  without  consciousness.  Without  the
supervision of a doctor...."
     "Why  without a  doctor?" I  interrupted. "Outside  of his  speciality,
Zargaryan  has  had medical training. Besides,  there's lots of  pick-ups to
keep everything under control - pressure, heart and breathing.  What else do
you want?" Her eyes shone suspiciously  close to  tears. "And  if you  don't
return...." "From where?"
     "Do you know from whore? You haven't the  faintest idea.  Some sort  of
transferred biofield. Worlds. A wandering conscious mind. It's terrifying to
think of."
     "Then  don't  think  of  it.  People  fly  in   aeroplanes.  It's  also
terrifying, but they do it. And nobody worries over it."
     Her  lips trembled, the towel slipped from her hand to the floor. I was
glad when the telephone rang and I could avoid a recurrence of the dangerous
topic.
     It was Galya. She wanted lo come over, but was afraid she mightn't make
it in time." "Zargaryan isn't there yet?"
     "Not  so far.  We're  waiting."  "How's  your mood?"  "Not  bad. Olga's
crying."  "How silly. In her place I'd  be glad  -  her man off on a feat of
glory."
     "Let's not overdo it, Galya."  "Why not? That's how they'll see it when
it's all over. No other way. A leap  into  the future. The very  thought  of
such a chance is enough to make your head swim."
     "Why  into the future?" I laughed,  wanting to tease her. "What if it's
into some Jurassic period? With pterodactyls!"
     "Don't  talk nonsense,"  interrupted  Galya. Doubting  Thomas  has  now
turned fanatic. "Don't you dare even think it."
     "Man proposes, God disposes. Well, let's say chance rather than God."
     "What  did you learn in the faculty of journalism? A fine Marxist  I've
found!"
     "Look, baby,"  I prayed. "Don't force  me  to  repent  of my  political
mistakes right now. I'll do that when I come back."
     She laughed, as if we were talking about a trip to the cottage.
     "Well, good luck, you hear? And bring me back a souvenir."
     "It  would be  interesting to know  what souvenir I could bring her," I
told   Klenov   who  had   joined  Olga  and   I  for   morning  coffee.  "A
pterodactyl-claw or a dinosaur-tooth?"
     I  was  touched. He hadn't been  too  lazy to come to see me off  on my
rather unusual journey, and had even managed to calm Olga down.
     The tears had gone from her eyes.
     "To  get  a  gander  at  dinosaurs  wouldn't be  bad," observed  Klenov
philosophically. "You could organize some kind of safari in time. That would
make a big noise."
     I sighed.
     "There'll be no noise,  Klenov.  And no safari. I'll meet you somewhere
in  an  adjacent  bit  of  life.  We'll go to  the cinema  and  see Child of
Montparnasse. We'll drink palinka again. Or Hungarian tsuika."
     "You have  no imagination," said Klenov angrily.  "They  won't send you
into  an adjacent  little world. Remember  what Zargaryan  said?  It's quite
possible there are worlds moving in some other course of time. Let's suppose
their  time is behind ours. But not  by a million years! What if it's a half
century behind? You look around and on the streets it's October 1917."
     "And if it's a hundred years ago?"
     "That  wouldn't be  bad either. You'll go to work  at  the  Sovremennik
magazine ( The Contemporary.-Tr.) Maybe they put out a Sovremennik with  the
same trend? Probably. And there you 'll see Chernyshevsky sitting at a desk.
Interesting, right? You're not drooling at the mouth?"
     "Drooling."
     We both laughed, and loudly enough to upset Olga.
     "I want to cry, and they laugh!"
     "We have a shortage of sodium chloride in our bodies," said Klenov. "So
our tear  ducts have dried  up. And,  by the way, Olga,  tears from a hero's
wife are contra-indicated. Better have a drink of cognac.  What if you  wake
up in the future and find there's a dry law?"
     I  had  to refuse the cognac, because Zargaryan  was already ringing at
the front door. He looked  severe and official, and never dropped a word all
the way to the  institute. I was  silent, too. Only when he had  parked  his
Volga car alongside  its twins in the  institute's parking lot,  and we were
going up the granite steps to the door, did bespeak. There was no  smile, no
funny accent, none of the usual whimsy that accompanied his sly remarks or a
laugh.
     "Don't think I'm afraid or disturbed. It's Nikodimov who figures  it is
possible that  a certain per cent of risk is involved. The problem, he says,
is  not yet mastered, too few experiments. And I think that everything is in
our  hands,  that  it's  a  hundred  per  cent ours. I'm  sure  of  success.
Absolutely!" The last he  cried  so that it echoed through the near-by grove
of trees. "And I'm silent because one is sparing of words before the battle.
Got that, Sergei?"
     "Absolutely, Ruben."
     We shook hands on it, and were silent till we  reached  the laboratory.
Nothing had  changed  since my last  visit.  There was  the same  soft-toned
plastic,  the  golden  gleaming copper, shining  nickel, the  smoke-coloured
glass panels reminiscent of television screens only several times larger. My
chair  stood in its usual place  in  the network of  coloured lead-in wires,
both  thick and thin, some as tiny as spider-webs. The spider was in  ambush
awaiting his victim. But the soft, comfortable chair, lit from the window by
an  unexpectedly  appearing  sun, did  not  incite  alarm or  suspicion.  It
reminded me more of a heart set in a nest of blood vessels. As yet the heart
did not beat: I was not sitting there.
     Nikodimov met me in his stiffly  starched white gown, and  with a smile
that was just as stiff and starched.
     "I  should  be glad,  of  course,  only  glad  that  you've  agreed  to
participate in  this risky  experiment," he told  me after  an  exchange  of
friendly  compliments.  "For me, as a scientist, this may be  the  final and
decisive step toward my goal. But I must ask you  to  consider your decision
once  more,  weigh all  the pros and cons before  we  begin this  particular
test."
     "But it's already decided," I said.
     "Wait. Think it over. What urges you to agree to it? Curiosity? To tell
the truth, that's not a very admirable stimulus."
     "And scientific interest?"
     "You have none."
     "What drives  journalists  to go, let us say,  to the Antarctic or into
the jungles?" I parried. "They don't have scientific interests either."
     "So, it's inquisitiveness. I agree. And a love for sensation, which all
reporters have in common to some degree, even in the best sense of the word.
Stanley  was chasing sensation when he went to Africa to search for the lost
Livingston, and as a result  won equal  fame. Perhaps that's what is turning
your head, I don't know. I can imagine how Ruben talked  with you,"  laughed
Nikodimov, continuing in Zargaryan's voice: '"Yes, d'you  see, it's a daring
feat  -  one never  yet  seen  in the  annals of  science!  The  glory  of a
globetrotter in time, equal to that of the first man to fly into space!' I'm
sure he called it just that, didn't he? Globetrotter in time?"
     I  glanced sidewise at  Zargaryan who was listening, not at all put out
and even smiling. Nikodimov caught my glance.
     "Of course he said it! That's what I thought. A barrel of  honey. And I
will now add to it my spoonful of tar. I cannot, my dear fellow, promise you
either the fame of a time-globetrotter or  a ceremonial  meeting on  the Red
Square. I  don't even promise  there'll be a special article in your honour.
In the best case, you will return home with a fund of  sharp sensations, and
with the knowledge that your part  in the experiment has been of some use to
science."
     "And is that so little?" I asked.
     "It depends.  You  see,  only  we three  will  know  of  your  valuable
contribution. Your oral  testimonial  is  still not  proof where  science is
concerned.  You will always find sceptics who might declare it  a hoax, arid
they probably will.  The same goes  for  apparatus  which could describe and
reproduce the visual images arising in your conscious mind -  to our sorrow,
we have nothing like that as yet."
     "It's possible to obtain another form of evidence," put in Zargaryan.
     Nikodimov pondered. I impatiently awaited his answer. What evidence did
Zargaryan have  in mind?  All the  material evidence of my being in adjacent
worlds remained there: the probe I had dropped during the operation, my note
on the hospital writing pad, and Mikhail's split  lip. I had brought nothing
back but memories.
     "Now I'll  explain  to you  what  Ruben  means,"  pronounced  Nikodimov
slowly, as if to stress each word he said. "He has in mind  the  possibility
of your penetrating a world far ahead of us in time and development. If such
a possibility happens and you can make use  of it, then your  conscious mind
might  take  images  of  not merely  visual  objects  but  abstract  ones  -
mathematical ones, let us say. For example, the formula of a physical law or
an equation expressing in conventional mathematical symbols something as yet
unknown to us in cognition of  the surrounding world.  But all this is  pure
supposition,   only   theory.   No   better   than  telling   fortunes  from
tea-leaves....  We shall try  to  transmit  your  conscious  mind  somewhere
farther  than the immediate worlds bordering our  three-dimensional one, but
we  cannot even  tell  you what  this  'farther'  means. Distance  in  these
measurements is not counted in microns, or kilometres or even par-sees. Some
other  system  of  measuring  distance  acts  here,  and  so far we have  no
knowledge  of  it. But  most important,  we don't  know  what  you  risk  by
undergoing  this  experiment.  Before, we did not  lose sight of your energy
field,  but  is there any guarantee we won't lose it this time? In a word, I
won't at all be offended if you say 'let's put off the test'."
     I smiled. Now  Nikodimov awaited an answer. Not one wrinkle on his face
deepened,  not one hair of his long, poetical locks stirred,  not one crease
in his gown moved. How different he was from Zargaryan!  Here was true prose
and poetry, ice and flame. And the flame behind me  was already flaring up -
the chair fell over as Zargaryan stood up.
     "Well  then,  let's  put off..." I  spoke  slowly, deliberately,  slyly
glancing at Nikodimov. "Let's put off ... all this talk  about risk till the
experiment's over."
     All that  happened afterwards was condensed into a few minutes, perhaps
seconds....  I  don't  remember. The chair,  the  helmet,  the pick-ups, the
darkness, the scraps of conversation about scales,  visuality,  the  certain
ciphers accompanied  by familiar  Greek letters  - perhaps pi or  psi -  and
finally Boundlessness, blackness, and the coloured mist swirling upward.

        A DAY IN THE PAST

     The swirling stopped, the mist acquired a transparency and dullish grey
shade  resembling a spring  rather  than  a  winter morning.  I  could see a
cluttered yard all in  puddles that were sheeted with  bluish ice,  also the
dirty-red  crust on the melting snow by a fence and  a dark green van  right
beside me. The back doors were wide open.
     A  heavy  blow  on  the  back  knocked  me to the ground. I fell into a
puddle, the  ice crackled, and the left sleeve of my quilted jacket was  wet
through.
     "Aufstehen!" came a cry from behind.
     I  got up with difficulty, hardly keeping my legs, and  before  I could
look  behind  me  another  blow  on  the spine  threw  me  against the  van.
Somebody's hand reached  out  from its  dark maw,  caught  me  and pulled me
inside. The doors were immediately clapped to, and the heavy bolts clanged.
     Then I heard the purr of a motor, the metallic creaking of the van, and
the crunch of ice  under its  wheels. As it  turned sharply, I fell over and
hit my head on a bench. I groaned.
     And again the familiar hands  reached  for me, raised me  and sat me on
the bench. In the  semi-darkness around us, I  couldn't make out the face of
the man sitting opposite.
     "Hold on to the bench," he warned. "The road here is God knows what."
     "Where are we?" I asked, in  what seemed to me  to be  a strange voice,
hollow and hoarse.
     "Perfectly clear  where. In the  death car." My neighbour  sniffed  the
air.  "No-o-o....  It  seems  there's  no  smell.  So they're  taking  us to
confession."
     "Where are we?" I asked again. "What town?"
     "Kolpinsk.  Regional  centre  before. Look  out  the small window - and
you'll see."
     I  stretched  up toward the little square  opening, unpaned, with three
iron  bars  across it. Past the  small opening  flashed by  a water-pump, an
entrance path to the gap in a fence,  one-storey squat cottages, a sign on a
second-hand store printed in  black  on a yellow matting, then naked poplars
by the curb of a muddy pavement.
     The deserted little street stretched  out, long and unsightly. The rare
passers-by, it seemed, were in no hurry.
     "You'll  have  to   excuse  me,"  I   told  my  companion,  "apparently
something's happened to my memory."
     "Not only the memory  suffers  here - they kill the  soul,"  he replied
briskly.
     "I can't remember a thing. What year it is,  or the month, the  day....
Don't be afraid, I'm not crazy."
     "I'm  not afraid  of anything now. Besides, it's easier  dealing with a
lunatic  than a Judas. This is  a hard year  -  forty-three. It's either the
very end of January or the beginning of February. There's no use remembering
what day it  is, it's all one for  we won't  live  till morning. What's your
cell number?"
     "I don't know," I answered.
     "Six,  probably. Yesterday they brought in a pilot that  was shot down.
Right from  the town hospital.  Patched him up and brought him in. Was  that
you?"
     I was silent. Now  I remembered how it was, or rather how it might have
been. In January of forty-three,  I  was flying home from  the Skripkin pine
forest in  the  partisan area  north-west  of  the Dnieper.  Somewhere  near
Kolpinsk we had run into heavy flak from a German anti-aircraft battery. The
plane broke out of it almost by a miracle and made home base safely.  But in
this phase  of  space-time,  we  probably hadn't  got  through. And  it  was
probably the  wounded passenger who was  taken to the town hospital  and not
the pilot.  From the hospital to cell six, and from there to 'confession' as
my companion called it. What he meant needed no exact definition.
     We  didn't talk any more, and only  when the van stopped and  the bolts
clattered on the doors did he whisper something in my ear, but what it was I
couldn't make out and  never managed to ask.  He had already jumped onto the
road and, pushing aside the convoy,  helped me down. A blow on the back from
a gun stock threw him toward  the  entrance. I  followed him, and the German
soldiers hurried along beside us screaming shrilly: "Schnell! Schnell!"
     We were separated on the ground floor. My companion - I  never even got
a look at his face -  was led  off somewhere down the  corridor. And  I  was
dragged upstairs  to the first floor, literally dragged, because  every kick
was  for  me a  knockdown. So it went  on till I  got  to a room  with  blue
wallpaper where a fat blond officer sat behind a desk, his boyish blue  eyes
matching  the  paper.  His black  SS-jacket fitted  him like  a  schoolboy's
uniform,  and  he himself was like the plump  schoolboy  pictured  in German
confectionery shop advertisements.
     "You have the  right to  sit  down. Right here.  Here,"  he repeated in
German and pointed at  a plush chair by  the table. The chair must have been
requisitioned  from  the local town theatre. My  legs were  shaking, my head
spinning, and I  sat down without  concealing my  relief which  was at  once
noticed.
     "You are completely recovered. Very good.
     And  now tell the truth. Wahrheit!" said  the  boyish SS-man,  and fell
into an expectant silence.
     I was silent too. I had no fear. I was saved  from that  by the feeling
that all  this was illusory; I felt remote from all that was  going on. This
wasn't,  you see, happening  in my life and not to me; this  puny, emaciated
body in a dirty quilted  jacket and broken  army boots did  not belong to me
but  to  another Sergei  Gromov living in  another  time and  space.  Thus I
comforted  myself  with  the  help  of  physics  and  logic, but  physiology
painfully refuted them with every breath I drew, with every movement I made.
For now this body was mine and it had to take what was  destined  for it.  I
asked myself in alarm  whether I had,  in  the long run, enough strength and
will, enough endurance, courage and inner pride.
     In  the war  days  it had been easier. We were all  prepared for such a
contingency by all the conditions of  the war years,  by the way of life, by
the  spirit  of the times - severe and hard as they were. I  was ready then,
and probably so was the  Sergei Gromov  whose place I  now occupied in  this
room. But was I  ready now? I felt chilled for an instant and, I'm afraid to
confess it, terribly frightened.
     "You understand me?" asked the SS-man.
     "Perfectly," I nodded.
     "Then  talk. Wieviel  Soldaten  hat  er?  Stolbikov?  What  detachment?
Soldier, partisan? Number of men?"
     "I don't know," I said.
     I was  not lying. I  honestly didn't know the  strength of all partisan
formations under  Stolbikov's  command. It continually changed. Now a number
of groups would go scouting deep in the rear and not return for weeks, now a
detachment  would  be  reinforced by  formations operating  in  neighbouring
sections. Besides, my Stolbikov had one complement of men, but the Stolbikov
living in this space-time might have another, either more or less. If I told
all  I knew, it would  be interesting to know whether it would coincide with
the reality the SS-man was interested in. Judging by his insignia, he was an
Obersturmfuhrer.
     "Tell the truth," he repeated severely. "It's better that way. Wahrheit
ist besser."
     "But I honestly don't know."
     His blue eyes became noticeably blood-shot.
     "Where are your documents? Here," he cried, and threw my wallet  on the
desk. I wasn't sure it was mine, but I presumed it was. "We know everything.
Alles."
     "If you already know, then why ask?" I said quietly.
     Before he could answer, the field-telephone buzzed on the desk. With an
agility that surprised me, he grabbed the receiver  and  stood at attention.
His face  was transformed into  a mixture of servility  and delight. He kept
repeating 'Ja,  Ja', in  German and clicked his heels. Then he put my wallet
into a drawer and pushed a buzzer.
     "They will take you away now," he told me in bad  Russian. "Keine Zeit.
Three hours in a cell."
     He indicated where with his thumb.
     "Think, remember, and we'll talk some more.  Otherwise, it will  be the
worse for you. Zehr schlecht."
     I was taken into  the cellar  and pushed into a barn-like room with  no
window. I felt the walls and the floor. The first were of stone, sticky with
mould,  and the  Door was  covered with wet  mud. My  legs  would  no longer
support me, but  I  did  not risk lying down.  I sat against  the wall on my
hands, just the same it was drier.
     The  reprieve I got aroused the  hope of a safe way out. The experiment
might end, and the lucky Hyde abandon the Jekyll buried here in the mud. But
I was immediately  ashamed of my thoughts.... Both  Galya and  Klenov  would
have called  me  a  coward without blinking an eye. Zargaryan and  Nikodimov
wouldn't have said it, but would have  thought it. Maybe,  somewhere in  the
depths of her soul, Olga would as well. Thank goodness I had thought of this
in  time. I began to think of a lot of things. About the fact that now I had
to answer for  two  -  for him  and me. How he would  have  behaved, I could
guess: I might even say I knew. You see, he was myself, the same particle of
material in one of the  forms  of its existence beyond our three-dimensional
world. Chance might change his lot, but not his  character, not his line  of
conduct.  So it was all clear: I had no choice, not even the right to desert
with the help of  Nikodimov's wizardry. If I  were returned now, I would beg
Nikodimov to send me back to this hole.
     I must have  fallen  asleep there,  despite  the damp and cold, because
dreams overtook me. His dreams.  A bearded  Stolbikov in  a sheepskin hat, a
middle-aged  woman in  a  padded  jacket  with a tommy-gun  slung  from  her
shoulder who was slicing  or  shredding  a  round loaf  of  rye bread. Naked
children were on the bank of pond covered with green duckweed. I immediately
recognized the pond with  the crooked pines on the shore, could see the road
between  steep  clay cliffs  leading  down  to  it.  It  was my  dream, long
remembered and always incomprehensible. Now I knew where it came from.
     The dreams shortened my reprieve. Again  the  boyish SS-man demanded my
presence. This time he was not smiling.
     "Well?" he shot out. "Are we going to talk?"
     "No," I said.
     "Schade," he drawled. "A pity. Put your hand on the table. Your fingers
so." He snowed me  how  with  his  puffy palm and  wide-spread  sausage-like
fingers.
     I  obeyed. Not without fear, I admit; but going  to the dentist is also
terrifying at times.
     Fatty pulled from  beneath the  table a  piece of wood  with a  handle,
something like an ordinary joiner's wooden hammer, and cried:
     "Ruig!"
     The wooden hammer smashed deliberately  down  on my little  finger. The
bone crunched and a savage pain  shot  up my arm  to the  shoulder.  I could
barely restrain a scream.
     "Ve-ry  good?"  he  asked, stressing  the syllables with  satisfaction.
"Will you talk or not?"
     "No," I repeated.
     Again the hammer was raised, but I involuntarily pulled back my hand.
     Fatty laughed.
     "You can  save your hand, but not your  face," he  said, and  instantly
slashed me across the face.
     I lost consciousness, but  came to almost at once. Somewhere close by I
heard Nikodimov and Zargaryan talking.
     "There's no field."
     "None at all?"
     "No."
     "Try another screen."
     "The same thing."
     "And if we try more power?"
     Silence.  Then Zargaryan answered: "Got  it.  But  very weak visuality.
Maybe he's sleeping?"
     "No. We registered the activity of the hypno-genetic system a half hour
ago. Then he woke up."
     "And now?"
     "I can't see it."
     "I'll give more power."
     I couldn't interfere. I  could not feel  my body. Where was it? In  the
lab chair or the torture chamber?
     "Got the field," said Zargaryan.
     I opened my  eyes,  or rather I partly opened them.  Even the slightest
movement  of  my eyelids aroused a sharp, piercing agony. Something warm and
salty trickled from my lips. My hand seemed to be burning over a fire.
     The whole room, from floor to ceiling, seemed full of turbid, quivering
water  through  which  I could dimly make out two figures in black uniforms.
One was my fat man, the other looked slender and more symmetrically built.
     They were talking abruptly and fast, in German. My German is poor, so I
didn't  listen. But I thought  the conversation was  about me. First I heard
Stolbikov's name mentioned and then mine.
     "Sergei Gromov?" repeated the thin one in surprise,  and said something
to the other.
     Then he  ran over to me and carefully wiped my face with a handkerchief
that smelled of perfume and sweat. I did not stir.
     "Gromov ... Sergei..." repeated the second SS-man  in pure Russian, and
bent over me. "Don't you know me?"
     I looked at him and  recognized the man's face; though older, it  still
retained the long-remembered features of my former classmate, Genya Muller.
     "M tiller," I whispered, and lost consciousness again.

        COUNT SAINT GERMAIN

     I woke up in a  different room in someone's dwelling. Not  a cosy room,
but one  furnished  with  the pretentiousness of  vulgar chic.  A potbellied
cabinet filled with crystal glasses, a redwood buffet, plush sofa with round
bolsters,  branching  deer-horns  over the door, and  a  copy of  Murrillo's
Madonna in a large gilded  frame.  All this  had either been  accumulated by
some local official or brought here from various flats by requisition of the
Hauptsturmfiihrer to make a quiet little nest for top brass.
     The Hauptsturmfiihrer himself, in an opened jacket, was sprawled lazily
on the sofa looking  at an illustrated magazine, and I  stole  a look at him
from the morocco leather chair  in  which  I  sat  beside a table  laid  for
supper. My bandaged hand was no longer painful. But I was devilishly hungry.
However, I kept silent and did not stir,  hoping to avoid showing  it in the
presence of my former classmate.
     I had known Genya Muller from the age of seven. Together we entered the
same school situated in a  quiet  Arbat side-street, and  had shared all our
joys and troubles  right  through  to  the  ninth  form.  Muller  senior,  a
specialist in weaving looms, had come to Moscow from Germany  soon after the
Treaty of Rapallo. He had first worked in the Altman Concession and later on
somewhere in the Mostrikotazh,  the Moscow Weaving Mills. Genya  was born in
Moscow  and in school nobody counted him  a foreigner.  He  spoke Russian as
well as we  did, studied the same things, read the same books, sang the same
songs.  He was  not liked in school, and I  hadn't liked his  arrogance  and
boastfulness either. But  we  lived in  the same block  of flats, sat at the
same desk, and were considered friends.  With the years  our  friendship had
dwindled  away through a rising difference in  viewpoint and interests.  And
when the Hitlerites had occupied Poland, the Muller family moved to Germany,
and Genya even forgot to say goodbye to me when he left.
     True, my Genya  Muller wasn't this  Muller who now lay on the sofa with
his  boots off. and  I also  wasn't this  Gromov, all  in bandages,  who sat
opposite  him in the red morocco  chair. But  as  the experiments had shown,
phases  of  adjacent  existences  do  not  change  a  man's  temperament  or
character. So even  my  Genya Miiller  had  all the grounds to grow  up into
Heinz Muller, Hauptsturmfuhrer  in  the Nazi stormtroopers  and chief of the
Kolpinsk  Gestapo.  And,  as  a  result,  I  could conduct  myself  with him
accordingly.
     He lowered the magazine and our eyes met.
     "So you've woken up at last," he said.
     "Regained consciousness, rather."
     "Don't  put  on. After our  sorcerer and magician Dr.  Getsch amputated
your finger and did  a good job  of  cosmetic  stitching, you slept for  two
hours. Like a log."
     "But what for?"
     "What d'you mean - what for?"
     "Why the cosmetic stitching?"
     "To  fix your  face. Kreiman overdid it  with his hammer.  Well, so now
you're a good-looking fellow again."
     "Maybe Herr Muller has a fiancee he wants to marry off. If so, he's too
late."
     "Gut out the Herr business. Here  it's Genya Muller and Sergei  Gromov.
Somehow they ought to be able to get together."
     "But why, I'd like to know?" I asked.
     Muller got up and stretched.
     "Isn't that enough of your 'why's and wherefore's'? I pulled you out of
the grave today. And you still can ask 'why'?"
     "Then I  won't ask. You want to make me an informer, or some other kind
of rat. I'm no good for that."
     "You're good for the grave."
     "So are you," I  parried. "We'll still  make  it. And now I could eat a
horse."
     He laughed. "You sure hit  the  nail -  we'll still make  the grave all
right."
     He sat at the table and poured cognac for us both.
     "Our  vodka's  junk,  but  the  cognac's excellent. Right  from  Paris.
Martel. What'll we drink to?"
     "Victory," I said.
     He laughed even louder.  "You amuse me, Sergei. A clever toast. I drink
to it." He  drank,  and added with  a crooked smile, "And next I'll drink to
getting out of this dirty hole fast. I've  got  an uncle in  Berlin, who has
connections. Promised me  a transfer  this  summer.  To Paris,  or Athens. A
little farther from the firing line."
     "So they're bothering you?"
     "Of course they are.  Any minute some skunk  may throw  a grenade  from
round a corner! They got my predecessor. And sentenced me."
     "So you won't live long," I observed indifferently.
     Without taking a bite, he again filled the  glasses.  His  hands shook.
"That's  why I'm hurrying up my transfer. If only  they don't drag  it  out,
I'll be sitting there in Paris and, before I can look round, the war will be
over."
     "We'll still keep fighting," I said. "You'll have to wait for two and a
half years."
     His hand holding the glass froze in mid-air above the table.
     "To be  precise," I explained, "two and a half years from now on May 8,
1945,  an agreement of unconditional surrender will be signed. And  wouldn't
you like to  know who will surrender? The  Germans, friend, the Germans. And
where do you think this will happen? Right in Berlin, almost on the ruins of
your imperial chancellery."
     Without  tasting his cognac, Muller  slowly put his  glass back  on the
table.  At  first he was  amazed, then frightened.  I intercepted his glance
directed  at the small  table  by the sofa  where  his  Walther pistol  lay.
Probably he thought I'd gone crazy and immediately remembered his gun.
     Before  he  could  reply,  the  buzzer  of  the intercom-phone went. He
grabbed  the  receiver, gave his  name,  listened and said something fast in
German.  I caught one word:  Stalingrad. Then I remembered what my companion
had said  in the  Gestapo's  dark-green 'Black Maria' - 'now it's either the
very end of January or the beginning of February'. And it was.
     Muller returned to the table with a gloomy face.
     "Stalingrad?" I inquired.
     "Do you understand German?"
     "No, I merely guessed. Your Paulus is done for. Kaput."
     He tapped his knife cautiously on the plate.
     "Don't talk nonsense. Paulus has just been made a General Fieldmarshal.
And Mannstein has already reached Kotelnikov."
     "Your  Mannstein  has been defeated.  Smashed  and  thrown back. As for
Paulus - it's the end. What's the date today?"
     "February 2."
     I laughed. How wonderful to know the future!
     "Well then, this is the day that Paulus  capitulated at Stalingrad, and
your Sixth Army, or  what's left of it,  have  become prisoners with  'Heil,
Hitler' on their lips."
     "Shut  up!" he  screamed, and took his pistol from  the table. "I won't
forgive anybody who makes such jokes as that!"
     "But I'm  not  joking,"  I said, putting a  piece of tinned  ham in  my
mouth. "Can you check it somewhere? Go ahead, call up."
     Muller thoughtfully played with his gun.
     "All right. I'll  check. I'll call von Hennert-he should know. Only get
this: if it's a hoax, I'll shoot you personally, and right now."
     He went to the telephone, took a long time getting connected, and asked
something, standing as straight as if on review as he listened. Then he hung
up and tossed the pistol onto the sofa without deigning to glance at me.
     "Well, was I right?"
     "How did you know?" he asked, approaching me. His face was a picture of
astonishment and perplexity. He looked at me as if asking whether I was I or
a representative of the High Command in my person.
     "Von Hennert was  quite surprised that  I knew. I  had to do some quick
thinking  on  that  score.  It  hasn't been proclaimed  officially  yet, but
Hennert knows."
     "And  did he say  that Hitler  had already ordered general mourning for
the Sixth Army?"
     "You know that too?"
     He  continued to stand,  not taking his eyes off me, puzzled and unable
to  figure it out. "Come now, where did  you get  it from? You couldn't have
known yesterday, that's for sure. But today.... Who could have told you? You
were brought here with somebody else, I believe?"
     "That was this  morning," I said.  "At that time, your Paulus was still
kicking back."
     He blinked his eyes.
     "Somebody might have picked up a Moscow broadcast?"
     "Where?" I laughed. "In the Gestapo?"
     "I don't get  it." He spread his hands in a gesture of despair. "Nobody
knows about it yet in town. I'm convinced of that."
     Suddenly I had an idea. It struck me that I might still save my unlucky
Jekyll. Nothing threatened him till morning, but he would  meet the  morning
fully conscious and free of my aggression. Then his life wouldn't be worth a
cent.  Muller  wouldn't  stand  on  ceremony  with  him, the more  so if  he
explained that he remembered nothing of today's  business.  I  had to think.
The play would be tough.
     "Don't try guessing,  Genya,"  I said. "You won't  figure  it out. It's
simply that I'm not the ordinary fellow you think I am."
     "What do you mean by that?"
     "Did you ever  hear that in one of our scientific research institutes,"
I began, improvising  as  if  inspired, "a research group was  liquidated in
1940? There was a lot of fuss about it abroad. Putting it broadly, it was  a
group of telepathists."
     "No," he replied vaguely. "Never heard of it."
     "But you know what telepathy is?"
     "Something like transmitting thoughts at a distance?"
     "Approximately,  yes. It's  not a new thing, even Sinclair wrote  about
it. Only idealistically, with all kinds of other-world nonsense. But we made
experiments  on  specifically scientific  grounds. The  brain,  you see,  is
looked  upon  as  a microwave  radio-set,  picking  up  idea-signals at  any
distance like  ultra-long wavelengths. A bit less than  a  micron. Everybody
has this inherent  possibility, but in rudimentary  form. However, it can be
developed if you find a precipient brain, that is, one specially tuned in to
inner induction. Many were tested, I among them. Well, so I turned out to be
an exceptional precipient."
     Muller sat down and rubbed his eyes.
     "Am I dreaming, or what? I don't get it."
     I  could already  see  by his face  that I'd won  the  game:  he almost
believed. Now I had to erase the 'almost'.
     "Have you  ever read about Gagliostro or St.  Germain?" I asked. Noting
his naive and empty eyes I realized he hadn't.
     "History  cannot  explain them,  especially St. Germain,"  I continued.
"The count lived in  the eighteenth century,  and he  could relate events of
the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centimes as if he had witnessed them.
He was considered a  wizard, an astrologer, an Agaspherus, European monarchs
vied with each other in inviting him to their courts. He foretold the future
too, incidentally,  and  rather  successfully.  But nobody's  been  able  to
explain what kind of man he was, not  so far. Historians ignore him, or call
him a charlatan. But  they  should have used the term telepathist. That's it
in  a nutshell. He received ideas from the past and the  future. Just  as  I
do."
     Muller  was  silent. I could not imagine what he was thinking of. Maybe
he guessed that I was a fake?  But for all that, I  had one irrefutable  and
invincible trump - Stalingrad.
     "The  future?"  he repeated thoughtfully.  "So  you  can  foretell  the
future?"
     "I mustn't  go too far," I mused  silently. "Muller's no fool and  he's
used to down-to-earth thinking." And that was what I played on.
     "It's not hard to foretell yours," I said aloud,  no less craftily than
his  sly question.  "You know yourself that after Stalingrad the underground
and  partisans will  be  more active everywhere. You won't live till summer,
Muller. You haven't a chance."
     His mouth curved in an ironical smile, as  if  saying 'all the same I'm
master of the situation'.
     "I can also foretell your future," he snapped at me aloud, "and without
telepathy. Tit for tat."
     "Man to man," I laughed. "But we can change the future. You mine, and I
- yours."
     He raised his brows, again not getting the drift. "Okay then, let's lay
down the cards."
     "You  send   me  to  the  partisans  today.  And  I'll  guarantee  your
immortality  to the end  of the  month. Not a  bullet or grenade will  touch
you."
     He was silent.
     "You  don't lose  much. You grant  me  life, and  you  win  the kitty -
yours."
     "To the end of the month," he laughed.
     "I'm not God almighty."
     "And the guarantee?"
     "My word and my documents. You saw them. And you must have guessed that
I can do something."
     He pondered  a long time, his eyes roaming silently  and vaguely around
the room. Then he poured the rest of the cognac  into our glasses. He hadn't
eaten, and the drink was already taking effect. His hands shook even more.
     "All right, then," he ground out. "One for the road?"
     "I'm not drinking," I said. "I'll  need  a clear head  and a firm hand.
You give me a gun, even if it's only your Walther, and tie my hands  loosely
so I can free them quickly."
     "And what tale am I to use to send you off? I've got a boss, you know."
     "So you're sending me to the top brass. Along some forest road."
     "There'll have to be a driver and a convoy. Can you handle them?"
     "I hope you won't regret the loss of the convoy?"
     "I'll regret, the loss of the car," he frowned.
     "So I'll return you the car and the driver. Agreed?"
     He went to the telephone and began making calls. I was surprised at the
speed with which he carried everything out. In about half an hour, a Gestapo
Opel-Kapitan was already ploughing its way through the village all  powdered
with snow. Beside me  sat an evil-looking Fritz with a tommy-gun  across his
knees. Let him stew in his bad temper. That didn't worry me any more than my
promise to Muller did. You see, / had promised, and not the Gromov who would
finally take my place. Only when would this happen and where? If in the car,
then I must do all I could so that my ill-starred  Jekyll would quickly  get
the hang of things. I stretched the slack bonds that tied my  arms behind my
back. They loosened at once. Another jerk and I could put my free hand in my
jacket  pocket and grip the butt of the blue-steel pistol. Now I had only to
wait.  With a sixth or  maybe sixteenth sense, I could  feel the approach of
that strange lightness of  my body, the head-spinning and  the mist that put
out everything - light, sounds and thoughts.
     And so  it was.  I woke up when  I  felt  Zargaryan's hand removing the
pick-ups.
     "Where were you?" he asked, still invisible.
     "In the past, Ruben. Too bad."
     He let out a loud and mournful sigh. Nikodimov was already  holding the
tape against the light to observe it, pulling it from the container.
     "Did you  follow the  time, Sergei Nikolaevich?" asked Nikodimov. "That
is, when you entered and left the phase?"
     "Morning and evening. One day."
     "It's twenty minutes to twelve midnight now. Does that agree  with your
count?"
     "Approximately."
     "A trivial lag behind our time."
     "Trivial?" I laughed. "More than twenty years."
     "On a scale of a thousand years, that's almost nothing."
     But I  wasn't worried about  thousand-year scales. I was anxious  about
the fate of Sergei Gromov whom I'd left about twenty-five years  ago in  the
suburbs of Kolpinsk. I think, by the way, he did not waste any time.

        TWENTY YEARS AFTER

     The new experiment  had become as humdrum as a visit to the polyclinic.
Now I didn't gather  friends  together before leaving, Zargaryan didn't come
for me, and  nobody accompanied me in  the morning. I took the  bus  to  the
institute  and  Nikodimov at  once  sat me in the chair without  testing the
degree of my good will and readiness for the test.
     He  only  asked: "When  did you  get  into  difficulties  in  the  last
experiment? Was it toward evening, in the late afternoon?"
     "About then. It was already dark outside."
     "The apparatus focused the sleep period, then there was  an increase of
nervous strain, and finally a state of shock...."
     "That's quite correct."
     "I think  we  can now  anticipate  such  a complication,  if it  should
arise," he said. "And bring your psyche back."
     "That's exactly what I don't want. You already know..." I broke in.
     "No, this time we aren't taking any risks."
     "What  risk? Who's talking about  risk?" thundered Zargaryan, appearing
like a phantom, all in white against the background of the white doors.
     He had been in the next room, checking the power generator.
     "I'd give a  year of my life  for  one minute of your journey," he went
on.  "It isn't a  science,  as  Nikodimov thinks. It's poetry. Do  you  like
Voznesensky? "
     "More or less," I answered.
     He recited:

     In autumn time when leaves are dying
     Within a dawn-lit perilous wood,
     Someone's fate and name come flying
     Like seeds - and in our minds intrude.

     He broke off and asked: "What words stick in your memory?"
     "Dawn-lit and perilous," I told him.
     I could not see  him  now, and his voice came  from the  darkness. "The
main thing is 'dawn-lit'. So let's be solemn. Remember that  you are  at the
gateway to the future."
     "You're sure of that?" came Nikodimov's voice.
     "Absolutely."
     I heard no more. Sounds died out until the dead silence was broken by a
monotonous, rumbling roar.
     Now there was no  silence, no mist. I found myself in a soft chair by a
wide, slightly  concave window. Strangers  sat  in similar chairs beside and
opposite me. The surroundings reminded me of the interior of  an airliner or
the  coach of a suburban train  where people sit in threes across from  each
other, with a passageway running from door to door. This passageway or aisle
was  probably  about forty  metres long. I  tried  to orient  myself without
looking at my neighbours, slipping sidelong glances from under lowered lids.
My  attention was drawn first to my hands - large, oddly white,  with a  dry
clean skin such as occurs after frequent and hard scrubbing. The significant
thing was that they were the hands of an old man. "How  old am I  and what's
my profession?" I pondered.  "A lab man, doctor, scientist?" The suit I wore
provided no direct answer - it was not new but neither was it much worn, and
it was made  of a smooth material  with an unusual pattern. There was no use
trying to guess.
     I looked  out the  window. No, it wasn't  an airliner because  we  were
flying too low for  an aeroplane of  this size,  lower  than  flight at zero
altitude as  they  call  it. But it wasn't a  train either, because we  were
flying over the earth, over homes and small groves, almost scraping the tops
of the  pine  and  fir  trees and,  incidentally, flying  so  fast that  the
landscape outside the window ran together  into a sickening  blur. From want
of habit, it hurt to look at it.
     I got a handkerchief from my pocket and wiped my eyes.
     "Do they hurt?"  grinned a  passenger sitting opposite.  He was  a thin
grey-haired man  wearing gold-framed glasses without ear-pieces - no knowing
how they stayed on. "We  forget when we're older that  we shouldn't look out
the window. It's not the fifties now. Gall it an observation car!"
     "What, you don't  like it?" asked a young fellow challengingly from  an
aisle seat.
     "Of  course I do. And why not? Who wouldn't like it? An hour and a half
from Leningrad to Moscow. Bit of a novelty."
     "Why a novelty?" said  the  young  man with a shrug. "Even twenty years
ago  they were talking of monorail roads.  It's only modernization.  And why
look out the window? Turn on the TV," he told me.
     I felt confused, not having the faintest idea where the television  was
or how  to  turn  it  on.  I  was anticipated  by my  grey-haired  neighbour
opposite. He  pressed some  kind of lever  at the side, and  the  window was
covered by the  familiar frosty screen.  The picture arose somewhere in  its
depths, so  that it could easily be seen by those sitting sidewise to it, as
I was.  It was in  stereo-colour and depicted a  huge, multi-storey building
beautifully ornamented with  grey and red tiles. A helicopter was landing on
its flat roof out of a pure blue sky.
     "We bring you  the latest news,"  said an unseen announcer.  "Party and
Government leaders visit  the  three-hundredth  housing-commune in the  Kiev
district of the capital."
     A  group  of well-dressed  middle-aged  people  left the cabin  of  the
helicopter  and disappeared under  a cupola of plexiglas. Express  lifts and
escalators flashed by. The eye of  the camera was aimed down at the gleaming
windows of the ground floor.
     "This floor is occupied by a large department  store,  repair shops and
dining-rooms to serve the building's occupants."
     Now  the  guests  strolled  slowly from  floor to floor,  through rooms
furnished and decorated in shapes and colours quite new to me.
     "One turn  of the plastic lover and the bed goes into the wall, and out
comes a concealed  book-case. And this couch may  be widened  or lengthened:
its metal supports and the foam-rubber surface expand to double the size."
     There followed an open vista of public foyers with giant television and
cinema screens.
     "This  floor is wholly given over  to  young  people  who prefer living
separately," commented the announcer, sliding walls  apart for us to see the
unusually-furnished rooms.
     "I can't understand it.  Why do they  do all this?" broke  in one lady,
knitting away and giving a scornful sniff as she gave me a sidelong glance.
     I looked at the young man on the aisle seat, awaiting his remark, and I
wasn't left disappointed. How like he was to the young people I knew! He had
caught  from  them  the torch  of enthusiasm,  almost boyish  vehemence,  an
uncompromising attitude to everyone who wasn't in step with the times.
     "House-communes weren't just  built today ... they're  not new  ... yet
you still don't know why..." he said.
     "I certainly  don't  know!" insisted  the lady. "Glory  to  God,  we no
sooner get rid of shared flats, and they're back again!"
     "What's 'back again'?"
     "Your house-communes. We're resurrecting living in shared flats."
     "Don't talk nonsense. People are not leaving separate, private flats to
go  into communal flats - whatever they are,  I certainly don't  know.  They
leave to go into  house-communes! You're looking at them now. They provide a
new, wider capacity of living conveniences!"
     The lady with  the knitting fell silent. Nobody supported  her.  And on
the  screen smoked the oil derricks conquering a leaden garnet  sky over fir
and larch trees.
     "We are with you in Third Baku," continued the announcer, "at the newly
opened section of the Yakutsk oil region in Siberia."
     A Third  Baku! In my time, I had only known two of them. How many years
had gone by? I gave the same silent question to the white-gowned surgeons on
the  screen  who  were demonstrating a bloodless operation  using  a  pencil
neutron-ray and  to the  inventors  of  a  compound  for sealing  wounds.  I
addressed  my silent  question to the announcer himself who finally appeared
before  the viewers. "In  conclusion, I  want to remind our audiences of the
deficit of specialists  in occupations which our economy is much in need of.
As before, we need adjusters for automatically  operated shops,  controllers
for tele-guided mines, operators for atomic electric stations, assemblers of
multi-purpose electronic computers. "
     The screen blanked out, and from somewhere overhead came  a  voice that
slowly  announced: "We are  arriving in  Moscow. The  warning lights are on.
With the green light, the escalator will be turned on."
     Above  the  door  in  front there was  a  flicker  of  red lights. They
darkened to blue and changed  to  a bright green.  Entering  the aisle,  the
passengers were carried along on a  moving floor. I joined them,  so I never
noticed the monorail station. Nor did I see it  from outside. The  escalator
road,  moving fast, swept us  into the  lobby  of a  Metro station. I didn't
recognize  it and, to speak honestly, never had a chance to get a  good look
at it. We were moving at almost  hydrofoil speed, slowing  down only  at the
escalator stairs which took us  down to  the platform. "Where's  the  ticket
booth?" I wondered. "Can the  Metro be free  of  charge?" This was  answered
affirmatively by the stream  of passengers pushing into the open doors of an
incoming train.
     I  got off  at  Revolution  Square, which I  recognized at  once: below
ground where I came  across  the familiar bronze pieces of sculpture in  the
arcade, and above  where  the yellow columns of the  Bolshoi Theatre  looked
down at me from a distance across the green sweep of the square.
     And Marx's monument  stood in the same spot, but in place of the  Grand
Hotel  there  towered  a  gigantic  white  building  with flashing  ribs  of
stainless steel; and, instead of the side wing of the Metropole Hotel and to
the right,  ran  a vista  of noisy, multi-layered  streets.  But the  street
movement  seemed as  familiar  as  of old, almost unchanged. Along the  wide
pavement, as tightly-packed and unhurried as always,  went  the varicoloured
droplets  of the human current,  more colourful  than  ever  under the  high
summer sun. And along the  asphalted  canal road,  skirted by  buildings and
squares, rumbled another  current  of motor cars, also colourful. By careful
observation,  I could easily make  out the diversities. Different styles and
trends in clothing, the changed lines and shapes of cars. Most of the latter
rode on air-cushions rather than  wheels,  and reminded  you of the  bulging
brows of whales  or dolphins  as they  moved soundlessly on a violet haze of
air. "How  many years have  passed?" I asked myself, and again could find no
answer. Impossible to cross the square: an iron tracery of grilles ran along
the pavement, openings  for passengers  were  only at stops of  cigar-shaped
buses. I walked down toward the Alexandrovsky Gardens, passed the Historical
Museum, glanced fleetingly at the Red  Square. Nothing there was  changed  -
the same  tooth-tipped ancient red walls, the clock on  the Spasskaya Tower,
the   severe  monolithic  block   of  the  Mausoleum  and  that  miracle  of
architecture -  the cathedral of Vasily Blazhenny. But the huge hotel we had
built in Zaryadye wasn't there at all.  A bit farther  on, across the Moskva
River, rose unknown tall buildings behind the cathedral.
     I went into the gardens and sat on  a  bench.  And though the town  was
tumultuous with its full-blooded impetuous life, in  the morning hours here,
as  in  our world, the park was almost deserted.  To tell the  truth, I  was
feeling a bit lost. Where should I go, and what for? Where was my  home? Who
was I? And what experiences lay before me this day in  my new life? I felt a
wallet in my pocket, very plump  and compact,  made of flexible, transparent
plastic.  Without taking out  the identification card, I could read my name,
profession  and  address through  the  plastic.  Again I was  a  servant  of
Hippocrates,  some kind  of  director in a surgical clinic,  and probably an
eminent man  because the wallet contained congratulations from three foreign
scientific societies sent to Professor Gromov on his sixtieth birthday.
     So twenty years had passed! For me, it was already old age; for science
- 'seven-league boots.'  D'Artagnan, on his way to meet Aramis and Athos was
tormented by  doubts: would it  be  a bitter experience to  see  his friends
grown  old? His  doubts  had been dispersed,  but would  mine? In  my mind I
imagined myself calling at the address on the card. Probably  the door would
be opened  by Olga, twenty years older. And what  if  it wouldn't be Olga? I
certainly did not want to complicate the situation.  I mechanically  thumbed
through the pack of money in the wallet. It was  probably enough for one day
in the future. So what should I do? Perhaps simply  walk along  the streets,
travel around town, see it a little  more,  breathe the air of the future in
the  literal  sense?  Was  that such  a  little  thing?  For  Zargaryan  and
Nikodimov, it was. What material affirmation  could  I  bring them from  the
future? Go to the Lenin  Library - it probably existed here - dig into index
files and interest myself in topics found in  scientific journals? Suppose I
even managed to find something close to the work  of my scientific  friends.
Let's suppose. But how would I be able  to grasp anything from the  articles
of scientists of  the eighties, if sometimes even the attempts  of Zargaryan
to  express things in an  elementary and  popular form had been hopeless  to
overcome my  mathematical  ignorance! Memorize some kind of formula?  But  I
would forget  it at once! And if they were in a series? And if I came across
absolutely  unknown mathematical symbols? No,  no, it was nonsense - nothing
would come of it.
     Wrapped  in such thoughts,  I made my  way to a taxi stand. Ahead of me
stood  a  woman,  apparently  in  a  hurry  for  she  kept  looking  at  her
wrist-watch.
     "I've been waiting ten minutes, and not one car," she said. "Of course,
the bus is simpler and costs nothing. But the auto-taxi is more amusing."
     "The auto-taxi?" I repeated.
     "You're new here, of course," and she smiled. "That's what we call \the
driverless taxis, with automatic controls. Simply lovely to ride in!"
     But  the first  auto-taxi gave me the shivers. There was something wild
and  unnatural  in  this  snub-nosed  car  without  wheels  or  driver  that
soundlessly floated up to us and discharged four spider-legs as it came to a
stop. The invisible man behind the wheel opened the door, the  passenger got
in and said something into a microphone. The legs vanished as noiselessly as
they had appeared, the doors closed, and the car disappeared round a corner.
I  probably stared  after  it  rather  long and stupidly,  asking  myself in
perplexity: 'What do you say into the microphone, and  how do you pay if you
haven't enough change?' I was already thinking of taking flight when another
passenger approached the stop. There  was something  uniquely  elegant about
his  accentuated  leanness  and  pepper-and-salt  hair,  even  the carefully
trimmed spade-like beard gave him a sort of challenging look.
     "I'm in a hurry," he admitted, impatiently  looking round  the  square.
"Here's one coming, I think."
     A snubby auto-taxi had floated up and come to a stop.
     "I'll be glad to give you my turn," I said. "I'm in no hurry."
     "Why? Let's  go  together,  if you've  nothing against it.  First we'll
deliver you, and then me."
     Something familiar flashed in his dark  eyes. And he had the same high,
sloping and  pure forehead,  the  same  piercing and amused glance. Only the
beard transformed his face almost beyond recognition.

        AN OLDER ZARGARYAN

     I looked into his eyes again, questioningly.  It was he.  My Zargaryan,
twenty years older.
     But I didn't let on I knew him.
     "Where do you want to go?" he asked.
     I  merely shrugged.  Did it  matter where a man goes  who  hasn't  seen
Moscow for twenty years?
     "Then off we go. Don't object, mind you. I'll be a wonderful guide.  By
the way, where are you  having dinner? Would you  like  to  go to the Sofia?
With me? Honestly, I hate having dinner alone."
     Even nearing fifty,  he  hadn't lost his boyish ardour.  And he entered
hotly into the role of guide at once.
     "We  won't  go  along Gorky.  It's hardly changed.  We'll take Pushkin,
quite a new street. You won't know it. That will be our programming."
     He  fed the  programme  into  the microphone, adding where to  turn and
where to  stop.  The  taxi, soundlessly closing its doors, floated  off  and
skirted the square.
     "And how do you pay?" I inquired.
     "Put the money here  in  this  small box." He pointed to a slot  in the
panel under the windshield.
     "But if you've no change?"
     "We'll see that we get change."
     The  taxi had already  turned onto Pushkin,  as much  like  the Pushkin
Street of  my days as  the Palace of  Congresses is  like a  factory club. ,
Perhaps it was  outwardly  different  even in the sixties - you see, similar
worlds do riot mean they are identical - but now it was different on a gra