My old friend Zhalbek Balbekovich Pshembakov tried to find out from Harry how was it that in circuit number two… it's not worth writing about either. Hilobok didn't know how it was, but he tried to get away with some bull and babble. Then the other colleagues of the construction bureau entered the fray. The last speaker was the chief engineer, a professor and Nobel Prize winner (I won't mention his name in this context). “I had the feeling from the first that there was something wrong here,” he began.
So the first form didn't help Hilobok; they squashed his dissertation like God can squash a turtle! Harry was a pitiful sight. Everyone was going off to his office and he was taking down his magnificent displays, and the stiff oaktag rolled up and hit him in the mustache. I went over to help.
“No, thank you,” Hilobok muttered. “Are you satisfied? You don't write anything and you don't let anyone else do it, either. It's an easy life. Valentin Vasilyevich, nature has endowed you with certain gifts….”
“Sure, it's easy! My salary is half of yours, and my vacation time, too. And I'm swamped with work and responsibilities.”
“You add to your worries unnecessarily. Why did you have to get involved in this?” Harry, rolling up his displays, gave me a threatening and angry look. “You have to think about the institute, not just about yourself and me. Well, this isn't the place to talk about it.”
So that's the ticket. Well, it doesn't matter. I feel wonderful now. As though I had done something that was infinitely more valuable and meaningful than even our discovery: I squashed a viper. That means it's possible. And not as terrible as I had expected.
Now I'm not so worried about our work's future. Problems like this can be surmounted, too.
“But it did have an effect on his work,” muttered Onisimov — Krivoshein, watching the computer — womb. “Everything has an effect on the work.”
May 29. Today I was called onto Azarov's thick carpet. He has just gotten back from a trip.
“So you realize what you've done?”
“But, Arkady Arkadievich, the dissertation — “
“We're not talking about Harry Haritonovich's dissertation, but about your behavior! You've undermined the institute's prestige, and in no small way!”
“I expressed my opinion.”
“Yes, but where? How? Is it so difficult to comprehend that in another organization you are not simply an engineer trying to even a scholarly score with someone (well, Harry told his side!) but a representative of the Institute of Systemology! Why didn't you express your opinion at the preliminary defense?”
“I didn't know about it.”
“Nevertheless you could have told it to my replacement after the defense. It would have been taken into account!”
(He's talking about Voltampernov — a likely story!)
“It wouldn't have been taken into account.”
“I see we won't reach an agreement. What are your plans for the future?”
“I don't intend to resign.”
“I'm not asking you to. But it seems to me that you're not ready to head a laboratory. A scientist working in a collective must bear the good of the collective in mind and at any rate, certainly not deal it any death blows by his behavior. I imagine that you will have trouble, at the next qualifying session, passing to lab head. That's all. I won't keep you.”
So that's how it is. The whole institute is abuzz with turkey gobbles: “An engineer against a candidate! Keeping him from his doctorate!” Thanks to Harry everybody thinks that I was trying to settle a score with him. They're dragging out my old sins: the chewing out, the accident in Ivanov's lab (Matyushin, the head janitor, is planning to sue me for damages). They realized that I haven't turned in an annual report on my project, even though topic 154 isn't over until this year. They say that a commission to check on the lab's work should be set up.
My enemies shout. My friends whisper carefully, looking over their shoulders: “You really gave it to Hilobok. The jerk deserves it. Well, they'll get you now.” And they suggest where I should tranfer. “Why don't you intercede?” “Well, you see….” Even good old Fenya Zagrebnyak just spreads his hands apart. “What can I do? It's not in my field.”
A narrow specialist has a lousy life. Well — fed, secure, but lousy. All his interests are concentrated on elements of passive memory, say, and not on any old elements but only on cryotron elements, and only on film cryotrons and only on those made of lead — tin films. The worker, the farmer, the technician, the broad — based engineer, the teacher, and even the office worker can apply his knowledge and skills to many activities, enterprises, and companies, but there are only two or three institutes in the whole Soviet Union studying those damned cryotrons. What can poor Fedya do? He has to sit there and not make waves. In effect, a narrow speciality is a means of self — enslavement.
That's why it's rare among us specialists to find all for one (unless the one is Azarov). All against one is the more usual picture; that's easier. That's why passions flare up at the first sign of insubordination. “Anyone could be failed like that!” yelped Voltampernov — and it went on and on.
All right, I'll bear it. I can take it. The important thing is that it's done. I knew what I was getting into. But it's repulsive. It's unbelievably disgusting.
Onisimov put out his cigarette and stared at the computer. Something had changed slowly and imperceptibly in the distribution of the hoses. They seemed to be tensed. A shudder of contractions traveled through some of them. And — Onisimov jumped — the first drop fell loudly from the left gray hose into the tank.
Onisimov moved the stairs over to the tank and climbed up. He put his hand under the hose. In a minute it was full of the golden liquid. The lines in his skin were visible through it, as if under a magnifying glass. He concentrated, and the skin disappeared, revealing the red muscles, the white bones, the tendons…. “Ah, if they had only known how to do this,” he sighed. “The experiment wouldn't have gone like this. They didn't know. And it had an effect.”
He let the liquid splash into the tank, got back down to the floor, and washed his hand in the sink. The patter of drops from all the hoses rang merrily and springlike in the lab.
“Work! You're strong, computer,” Onisimov — Krivoshein said respectfully. “As strong as life.”
He obviously didn't want to leave the laboratory. But he glanced at his watch, put on his jacket, and hurried.
“Good morning, Matvei Apollonovich!” Hilobok greeted him rapturously. “Working already? I've been waiting for you. I wanted to report something,” he whispered, bringing his mustache close to Onisimov's ear, “Yesterday that. woman of his, Elena Ivanovna Kolomiets, came to his apartment, took something, and left. And there was someone else in there, too. The light was on all night.”
“I see. You did the right thing in telling me. As they say, jurisprudence will not forget you.”
“Oh, any time, it's my duty!”
“Duty aside,” Onisimov said in a stern voice, “aren't you motivated by other, stronger motives, comrade Hilobok?”
“What motives?”
“For instance the fact that Krivoshein ruined your doctoral dissertation defense.”
Harry Haritonovich's face sagged for a moment and then quickly took on a look of injury at the hands of humanity.
“Some people! Someone already had time to report that to you. What kind of people work here, I ask you, tsk, tsk? Don't be silly, Matvei Apollonovich. How could you doubt the sincerity of my motives! Krivoshein didn't have as tremendous an influence at the defense as you might have been told. There were more serious experts there than him, and many approved of it, but he, obviously, was jealous, and well, they suggested I make some changes, nothing terrible. I'll be up for it again soon. But, of course, if you suspect me, that's up to you. Then check things out for yourself. It was my duty to tell you, but now… good day!”
“Good day.”
Harry Haritonovich left furious: Krivoshein was getting him from the other world, too!
“You really let him have it, comrade captain!” the guard said approvingly.
Onisimov didn't hear. He was watching Hilobok leave.
It leads to one thing. But the question that comes up willy — nilly is “Is it worth it?”
