“Over the fence?” Adam shrugged in embarrassment. The idea hadn't occurred to him.
“The man develops the most audacious, daring ideas but in real life… my God!” Krivoshein shook his head in disapproval and tried to explain: “You have to get rid of that lousy temerity before life, before people or we'll be lost. And the work will be lost. Well, all right.” He handed him the keys. “Go make yourself at home and get some rest. You've been hanging around all night; you need it!
“Where is… he?”
“That's what I'd like to know: where he is, and what happened to him.” The student looked worried. “I'll try to clear all that up. I'll see you later. So long.” He smiled. “It's really terriffic that you came.”
“No, a person can't be thrown off the track that easily!” Krivoshein thought as he headed for the institute. “A great project, a major idea can subjugate anything, can make you forget insults and personal goals, and imperfections. Man strives for the best: he's absolutely right!”
Overcrowded morning buses rushed past him. The student noticed Lena in one of the them: she was sitting by the window and staring abstractly into space. “Ah, Lena, Lena, how could you?” Reading the diary had a tremendous effect on him: he felt that he had spent that year in Dneprovsk. Now he was simply Krivoshein and his heart contracted with the memory of the pain that that woman had caused him (yes, him!).
I know what our research is leading up to, there's no point in kidding ourselves: I have to get into the tank. Kravets and I are performing minor educational experiments with our extremities. I even used the liquid circuit to fix up my knee tendons, torn so long ago, and now I don't limp. All this represents marvels in medicine, but we're aiming for something bigger — the transformation of an entire person! We can't putter around here, or we'll spend another twenty years around the tank. And I'm the one who has to go in, an ordinary, natural person. There's nothing more for Kravets to do in the tank.
Actually, I'll be testing myself, not the computer — womb. All our knowledge and usage of the word “good” isn't worth a thing if man won't have the will power and determination to undergo informational transformation in the liquid.
Of course, I won't come out of the bath transformed. First of all, we don't have the necessary information to make substantial changes in the organism or intellect; and secondly, we don't need that for a beginning. It's enough to experience being plugged into the computer — womb, to prove that it's possible and not dangerous — and, well, to change something in me. Make that first orbit around the earth, so to speak.
Is it possible? Is it dangerous? Will I return from the orbiting capsule, from the experiments? The computer — womb is a complicated thing. We've discovered so many new things in it, and we still don't know everything about it. I'm not too comfortable with the shining prospects of our research.
This is the very time I should get married. The hell with my careful relations with Lena; I need her. I want her to be with me, take care of me, worry about me, yell at me when I come home late, but give me dinner first. And (since everything is clear with the synthesis of doubles) let future Krivosheins appear not from the computer but as a result of good, highly moral relations between parents. And let them complicate our lives — I'm for it. I'm getting married! Why didn't I think of it before?
Of course, to get married now when we're about to do this experiment… well, at least there'll be a permanent reminder of me — a son or daughter. People used to go to war, leaving wives and children behind. Why can't I behave in the same way?
This may not be on the up and up — getting married when there is a possibility of leaving a widow behind me. But let those who have done what I'm doing condemn me. I'll accept it from them.
May 12. “Marry me, Lena. Let's live together. And we'll have children as beautiful as you and as smart as me. Hummmm?”
“Do you really think you're smart?”
“Why not?”
“If you were smart you wouldn't make suggestions like that.”
“I don't understand.”
“There, you see. And you think you'll have smart children.”
“No, tell me. What's wrong? Why won't you marry me?
She stuck the last pin into her hair and turned from the mirror to me.
“I love it when you pout. Darling Val! My lovely red — haired bear. You mean you've developed some honorable intentions? You sweetie!”
“Wait! Are you agreeing to marry me?”
“No, my love.”
“Why not?”
“Because I understand a little more than you do about family life. Because I know nothing good will come of it for us. Just think back. Have we ever talked about anything serious? We just meet, spend time…. Think. Haven't there been times when I come to see you, and you're busy with your thoughts and you're not happy, even angry, that I'm there? Of course, you make believe — you try hard, but I can tell. What will happen if we're together constantly?”
“Do you mean — you don't love me?”
“No, Val,” she looked at me sadly. “And I won't fall in love with you. I don't want to. I used to… to tell the truth, I worked at this relationship. I thought a quiet and unattractive man would love me and appreciate me. You have no idea, Val, how I needed the warmth and comfort of a relationship! But I didn't get warm near you. You don't love me very much either. You don't belong to me, I can see that. You have another love, science!” She laughed angrily. “You've invented all sorts of toys for yourselves: science, technology, politics, war. And women are just something on the side. Well, I don't want to be something on the side. It's well known: women are fools. We take everything seriously. We know no bounds in love and can't do a thing with ourselves….” Her voice trembled and she turned away. “I would have said all this to you anyway. I was wrong again!”
Actually, there's no need for details. I threw her out. I'm sitting here over my diary.
So, it was all planned. Don't love a handsome man, love a crummy one. And I wanted to create a big family….
I feel cold. Oh, so cold!
Lena's not mercenary. Then what is she? Actually, she was right: I knew that myself. And how! But this light relationship suited me before. “Will it do?” — as they ask in the store, offering you margarine instead of butter.
Nothing happens in life to no purpose. I'm the one who changed, who realized things in time, and she's still the same. I fell for a storybook illusion, what a jerk. I wanted to get warm.
And that's it. There will never be anything in my life. I'll never find anyone like Lena. I'm not willing to go in for one — night stands.
Lena didn't want to become my widow.
It's cold….
We've lost spontaneity, the ability to follow our feelings, to believe on faith because we believe, to love because we're in love. It's possible that it happened because everyone got burned more than once, or because in the theater and movies we see how those feelings are manufactured, or because life is so complicated and everything must be thought out and planned — I don't know. “Tenderness, in a Taylor series expansion….” I've been expansive enough.
Now we have to understand with our reason just how important solid, strong feelings are in human life. Who knows, maybe it's good that it has to be proven. And it will be proven. Then people will develop a new naturalness of feeling, strengthened by reason, and they'll understand that without feelings there is no life.
And for now… it's cold.
Ah, Lena, Lena, my poor frightened girl! Now, I think, I really do love you.
Investigator Onisimov reached the New Systems Laboratory at 8:30 in the morning. The guard on duty, Golovorezov, was sitting in the sun on the porch, leaning against the door with his cap over his eyes. Flies were crawling around his open mouth and on his cheeks. The guard moved his facial muscles, but didn't wake up.
“You'll get a bad burn on duty, comrade guard,” Onisimov said sternly.
The guard woke immediately, fixed his cap, and stood up.
“Everything quiet here, comrade captain. There were no incidents in the night.”
'I see. So you have the keys?”
“Yes sir.” He pulled the keys from his pocket. “You gave them to me, and I have them.”
