“He probably wouldn't even get a reprimand for not completing an order in time. It's not like insulting a professor,” Krivoshein laughed drily. “And you can't accuse him of anything more than that.”
“The only way was to remove the crown from Val's head,” Victor continued. “I jumped up on the steps, put my hands in the liquid — and I got an electric shock through both arms. Judging by the effect, I'd say four hundred or five hundred volts. There had never been potentials like that in the liquid before. Well, you know, the hands jerk away involuntarily in cases like that. I ran to the shelves, got rubber gloves, and tried again, but Val was deep inside, and the gloves weren't long enough. The shock was so strong that this time I fell to the floor. I had to turn over the tank. I couldn't let him dissolve into the liquid before my very eyes like… like you had.” Kravets looked over at Adam. “I was him, Krivoshein, when he was dissolving you. [Adam's face tensed.] And he was still alive. His face had dissolved, too. There was only the crown on his skull, but he was jumping about, so that meant his muscles were working. I grabbed the edge of the tank and started shaking it. The edges are flexible and slippery but finally I pulled it down, almost on me. I just got out in time — but the liquid splashed on my face and neck and I got a third shock from that. I don't remember the rest. I came to on the stretcher.”
He was silent. The others said nothing. Krivoshein stood up and paced the room in thought.
“There was nothing wrong with the way you set up the experiment. It was thought through. No evildoing, no fatal accident, not even a gross miscalculation… killed a man according to all the rules, as they say! If you hadn't turned over the tank he would have dissolved, since the liquid that had permeated him was no longer the organizing liquid circuit. It's too bad he kept the crown on, though. Once he was plugged into the liquid he could control it without the crown.”
“So that's how it is.” Kravets looked up.
“Yes. That stupid cap was only necessary to plug into the computer — womb — and nothing else. From there the brain commands the nerves directly, and not through wires and circuits. And when the uncontrolled autovacillations began, it was the crown that destroyed him. A foreign body in the living liquid — it's as irritating as a slingshot to a bear!”
“Yes, but why did the vacillations start?” Adam interrupted. He turned to Kravets. “Tell me, did you investigate any further the process after the rabbits and… me?”
“No. In the last experiments we didn't touch on it. All the transformations were going smoothly directed only by sensations. I told you that. I can't imagine how he lost control of himself! Did he panic? That process is sort of like confusion… but why was he confused?”
“The switch from quantity to quality,” Adam said. “As long as you were immersing only an arm or a leg into the liquid, there were only a few 'hotbeds of uncorrection' which you used to control and direct the penetration of the body with the liquid. It was like talking to one or two people at the same time. But once he put in his whole body, there were naturally many more places like that in his whole body than in just parts of it, and — “
“And instead of a decent conversation there was the incomprehensible babble of a crowd,” Krivoshein added. “And he grew confused. That's quite possible.”
“Listen, you self — taught experts!” Kravets glared at them. “There are always a lot of people ready to explain why something went wrong, to make themselves look bigger. 'I warned you. I told you so! If there's nuclear war, I'm sure there will be people who, before turning into cinders, will have time to exclaim joyously: 'I told you so! Are you so sure that the experiment failed precisely for those reasons, that you would get into the tank if the corrections were made?”
“No, Victor Kravets,” Krivoshein said, “not that sure. And not one of us will get into the tank just to prove that he's right or that someone else is wrong — that's not our work. We will have to get in, and more than once — the idea was sound. But we will do it with minimal risk and maximum benefit. And there's no point in your getting so excited. You two made the experiment. An experiment like that! And you almost ruined the lab and the whole project. You had everything — great ideas, heroics, discoveries, meditations, high — level effort — except one thing: reasonable caution! Of course, maybe it's not for me to reproach you. I did pretty much the same thing in one very serious experiment and almost killed myself. But tell me, why couldn't you have called me back from Moscow to participate in this one?”
Kravets looked at him ironically.
“How would you have helped? You were way behind in this work.”
The graduate student sighed: to hear that after all his labors!
“You're a louse, Vitya,” he said with unbelievable meekness. “It's terrible to have to say this to someone so close to you, but you are simply a son of a bitch. I'm good enough to be used as a decoy with the police while you get off scot — free from criminal culpability? But not good enough to be a researcher on this project?” He turned away from the window.
“What does culpability have to do with this?” Kravets muttered in confusion. “Someone had to save the project….”
Suddenly he jumped up in terror: Onisimov was coming toward him from the window! Adam shuddered, too, and looked around in panic.
“You wouldn't have saved anything, suspect Kravets,” Onisimov said in an unpleasant voice, “if the head of your department hadn't learned a thing or two in Moscow. You'd be in the defendant's chair right now, comrade pseudo — Kravets. I've managed to put people behind bars with less evidence than this. Do you see?”
This time Krivoshein got his own face back in ten seconds; the practice was paying off.
“You mean, that was you? You let me out? Wait… how do you do that?”
“Using biology?” Adam asked.
“Biology and systemology.” Krivoshein massaged his cheeks calmly. “You see, unlike you two, I remember what it was like being part of the computer — womb.”
“Tell us how you do it,” Kravets nagged.
“I'll tell you, don't worry, all in good time. We'll set up a seminar. Now we're going to use this knowledge in conjunction with our work on the computer — womb. But applying it to life will have to be done very carefully.” He looked at his watch and turned to Kravets and Adam. “It's time. Let's go to the lab. We'll reconstruct your experiment.”
“Hah.. those crazy scientists!” the chief of police laughed and shook his head when Matvei Apollonovich reported the final clearing up of the events at the Institute of Systemology. “You mean, while you were gathering evidence and talking to the academician, the 'corpse' crawled out from under the oilcloth and went to the shower?”
“Yes, exactly. He wasn't himself after the blow to his head, comrade colonel.”
“Naturally! It can take less than that. And the skeleton right next to him. Hah! That's what comes of not studying the scene of the incident carefully enough, comrade Onisimov,” and Aleksei Ignatyevich raised his forefinger didactically. “You didn't take the specifics of the place into account. This isn't going out to see a highway accident or a drowning — it's a scientific laboratory! They've always got a hellish amount of stuff going on. That's science. You were careless, Matvei Apollonovich!”
“Should I tell him how it really was?” Onisimov thought glumly. “No, he wouldn't believe it.”
“But how did that first — aid doctor make such a mistake, declaring a live person dead?” thought the colonel aloud. “Oh, I have a feeling their rate of success isn't very high. She looked at him, saw that the man was poorly, figured he'd die in the clinic anyway, and this way their statistics would look better if he was DO A.”
“Maybe she just made a mistake, Aleksei Ignatyevich,” Onisimov defended her generously. “He was in shock, deep faint, and wounded. And so she — “
“Perhaps. Too bad that Zubato wasn't there. He always goes on the pattern of spots and marks on the body. He's never wrong. Hm… of course, it would have been nice to have called this a solved case — the end of the quarter is coming up, and it would have looked good — but to hell with the statistics. The important thing is that everyone is alive and well. Yet,” he looked at Onisimov, “there's still the discrepancy with Kravets's papers. What about that?”
“Our expert couldn't find any evidence of tampering at all, Aleksei Ignatyevich. They're papers like any papers. Maybe the Kharkov police made a mistake.”
“Well, that's a problem for the passport people, not us. The man didn't commit any crimes — and the case is closed. But what about you, Matvei Apollonovich?” Aleksei Ignatyevich wrinkled up his face merrily and leaned back in his chair. “You wanted to turn the case over to the security organizations. We would really have looked wonderful if we had! Didn't I tell you: the most seemingly confused cases are always the simplest.”
