“Goddamn it!” Krivoshein began, but the door opened and a young lieutenant announced:
“Moscow, Matvei Apollonovich!”
Onisimov and Krivoshein went up to the second floor to the communications room.
Vano Aleksandrovich Androsiashvili brought his face so close to the videophone screen that it seemed he wanted to peck through the tube with his hawklike, predatory nose. Yes, he recognized his graduate student Valentin Vasilyevich Krivoshein. Yes, he had seen the student daily for the last few weeks, but he couldn't give them dates of their meetings further back than that by heart. Yes, student Krivoshein had left the university for five days with his personal permission. His growling Georgian r's reverberated in the phone's speaker. He was very upset that he had been dragged away from examinations to take part in this strange proceeding. If the police — here Vano Aleksandrovich fixed his hot blue black eyes on Onisimov — stop believing the very passports that they themselves hand out, then, apparently he will have to change his profession from biologist to verifier of identity for all his graduate students, undergraduates, and relatives, as well as for all the members and corresponding members of the Academy of Sciences whom he has the honor of knowing personally! But in that case, the very natural question of his identity might come up. Wouldn't it be a good idea to have the university rector, or better yet, the president of the academy, come on the videophone to identify this suspicious professor?
Having delivered this lecture in one long breath, Vano Aleksandrovich shook his head in farewell and added, “That's not good! You have to trust people!” and disappeared from the screen. The microphones carried the sound of a slamming door all the way to Dneprovsk. The screen showed a fat man with major's bars on his blue shirt; he made a face.
“What's the matter, comrades? Couldn't get to the bottom of this yourselves? The end!”
The screen went black.
“Vano Aleksandrovich is still mad at me,” thought Krivoshein as he went down the stairs behind the angrily puffing Onisimov. “It's understandable: he feels sorry for me, and I keep my back to him, hide things. If he hadn't accepted me, none of this would have happened. I barely made it in the exams, like a first — year student. I was okay in philosophy and foreign languages, but in my specialty…. But how could a quick reading of textbooks hide the absence of systematic knowledge?”
That had been a year ago. After the entrance exams in biology, Androsiashvili invited him into his office, sat him down in a leather chair, stood by the window and looked at him, his large, balding head tilted to the right. “How old are you?” “Thirty — four.”
“On the edge. Next year you'll celebrate your thirty — fifth birthday among friends and kiss full — time schooling good — bye. Of course, there's correspondence graduate school. And of course, that exists not for learning, but to have a paid vacation. We won't even talk about it. I read your thesis synopsis. It's a good one, mature, with interesting parallels between the work of the nervous centers and electronic circuits. I gave it an 'excellent. But…” the professor picked up a report and glanced at it,”… you did not pass the exams, my boy! I mean, you got a 'satisfactory' but we do not take students with a 'C in their major.”
Krivoshein's expression must have changed drastically, because Vano Aleksandrovich's voice became sympathetic:
“Listen, why do you need this? Moving into graduate study? I've familiarized myself with your background — you work in an interesting institute, with a good position. You're a cyberneticist?”
“A systemology technologist.”
“It's all the same to me. Then why?”
Krivoshein was prepared for that question.
“Precisely because I am a systemologist and a systemology technologist. Man is the most complex and most highly organized system known. I want to figure it out completely — how things are constructed in the human organism, what influences it. To understand the interrelationship of the parts, to put it roughly.”
“To use these principles to create new electronic circuits?” Androsiashvili screwed up his mouth ironically.
“Not only that… and not even so much that. You see… it wasn't always like this. Once man was up against heat and frost; exertion from a hunt or from running away from danger, hunger or rough, unsanitary food like raw meat; heavy mechanical overloads in work; fights which tested the durability of the skull with an oak staff — in a word, once upon a time the physical environment made the same demands on man that… well, that today's military customers make on rockets. (Vano Aleksandrovich harrumphed, but said nothing.) That environment over the millennia formed homo sapiens — the reasoning vertebrate mammal. But in the last two hundred years, if you start from the invention of the steam engine, everything changed. We created an artificial environment out of electric motors, explosives, pharmaceuticals, conveyors, communal service systems, computers, immunization, transport, increased radiation in the atmosphere, paved roads, carbon monoxide, narrow specialization in work — you know, contemporary life. As an engineer, I with others am furthering this artificial environment that determines ninety percent of the life of homo sapiens and soon will determine it one hundred percent. Nature will exist only for Sunday outings. But as a human being, I am somewhat uneasy.” He took a breath and continued.
“This artificial environment frees man of many of the qualities and functions he developed in ancient evolution. Strength, agility, and endurance are now cultivated only in sports, while logical thought, the pride of the Greeks, has been taken over by machines. But man is not developing any new qualities — the environment is changing too fast and biological organisms can't keep up. Technological progress is accompanied by soothing, but poorly substantiated babble that man will always be on top. Nevertheless — if you talk not about man, but about people, the many and the varied — then that is not true even now, and it will only get worse. Many, many do not have the inherent capabilities to be masters of contemporary life: to know a lot, know how to do a lot, learn new things quickly, to work creatively, and structure one's behavior optimally.”
“And how do you want to help?”
“Help — I don't know if I can, but I would like to study the question of the untapped resources of man's organism. For example, the obsolescent functions, like our common ancestor's ability to leap from tree to tree or to sleep in the branches. Now that is no longer necessary, but the cells are still there. Or take the 'goose bump' phenomenon — it happens on skin that has almost no hair now. It is created by a vast nervous network. Perhaps these old reflexes can be restructured, reprogrammed to meet new needs?”
“So! You dream of modernizing and rationalizing man?” Androsiashvili stretched out his neck. “Instead of homo sapiens we'll have homo modernus rationalis, hm? Don't you think, my dear systemology technologist, that a rational path might lead to a man who is no more than a suitcase with a single appendage to push buttons? You could probably manage without that appended arm, if you use brain waves.
“If you want to be truly rational, you can manage without the suitcase,” Krivoshein noted.
“That's true!” Vano Aleksandrovich tilted his head to the other shoulder and looked at Krivoshein curiously.
They obviously liked each other.
“Not rationalizing, but enriching — that's what I'm thinking about.”
“Finally!” The professor paced his office. “Finally that broad mass of technological workers, conquerors of inorganic matter, creators of an artificial environment are beginning to see that they too are people! Not supermen who can overcome anything with their intellect, but simply people. Just think of what we're trying to study and comprehend: elemental particles, the vacuum, cosmic rays, antiworlds, the secrets of Atlantis…. The only things we don't study and wish to comprehend are ourselves! It's, you see, too hard, uninteresting, not easy to handle. Hah, the world could perish if people only worked on things that were easy to handle.” His voice was even more guttural than usual. “Man feels a biological interest in himself only when he has to go to the hospital… and you're right, if things go on this way, we'll be able to manage without the suitcase. As the students say: 'Machines will lick us before we can say boo! “ He stopped in front of Krivoshein, bent his head, and snorted. “But you're still a dilettante, my systemology technologist. You make it sound so easy: reprogram old reflexes. If it were as easy as reprogramming a computer! Hm, but on the other hand, you are a research engineer, with ideas, with a fresh viewpoint that differs from our purely biological one. What am I saying! Why am I building up hope, as though something will come of you?” He walked over to the window. “You're not going to write and defend a dissertation, are you? You have different goals, right?”
“Right,” Krivoshein admitted.
“There you see. You'll return to your systemology and I'll hear from the rector about not training scientific personnel. Heh, I'll take you!” Androsiashvili concluded without any change in tone. He approached Krivoshein. “But
