made her so insistent that I consult a psychiatrist. But I was more inclined to follow Galya's advice. The ill-starred sheet from the notebook with the names of Zargaryan and Nikodimov gave me no peace, because I was absolutely sure I had never, under any circumstances, hoard of these particular names. As for subconsciously absorbing them from talk overheard in the underground or on the street, naturally I didn't believe that. A normal memory preserves what is overheard in the conscious mind, not in the subconscious. "All right, I'll call Zoya," Olga agreed. Zoya worked in the Institute of Scientific Information and, according to her, knew all the 'big shots'. If Nikodimov and Zargaryan belonged to this highly-attested category, in one minute I should get an earful of a good dozen anecdotes about their way of life. However, I didn't need anecdotes, but precise information as to their particular fields arid latest activities. I had to make sure that they wore my Nikodimov and Zargaryan. I decided to ring up Klenov first of all. He is head of the science department at our editorial offices. I'd known Klenov from the time we were at the front together. "I need some dope, old man. The exact whereabouts of two giants: Nikodimov and Zargaryan." Laughter came from the receiver. "Even yesterday I thought you were a bit off your rocker." "When was that?" I asked, surprised. "When I bumped into you in Pushkin square. About six o'clock. When I told you about Mikhail.." I licked my overdry lips. So Klenov had seen Hyde and talked with him. And had noticed nothing. Very interesting. "I don't remember," I said. "Don't play games. About Mikhail stopping behind, don't you remember?" "Where did he stop off?" "In Istanbul. I already told you once. He asked for political shelter at the American Embassy. " "He must be crazy!" "He's got all his buttons, the snake. They should have kept an eye on him. They say 'the human heart is a mystery'. They should have guessed his little plan before it was too late. Now we're writing a collective letter not to let him come back when he comes crawling to us on his belly. What's up with you? You honestly don't remember?" "Honestly. My mind is a complete blank about yesterday from around five in the afternoon to ten in the evening. First I fainted, and I don't remember a thing about what happened afterwards - what I did or what I said. I came to when I was being brought home. Must be a souvenir of that concussion I got near Dunafoldvar, remember?" As if Klenov didn't remember the time we forced the Danube. Oleg was with us. And Mikhail Sichuk, incidentally, was there too. Only he was foresighted enough to get into the rear: headed the editorial office of a front-line newspaper. For about a minute we were both silent. What we went through at the Danube wasn't to be forgotten. Then Klenov spoke. "You should get some advice from a professor. I can arrange a consultation, if you like. I know a few good specialists." "No need of that," I sighed. "Better if you can tell me what Nikodimov and Zargaryan are doing in science." "You hoping for a feature? You won't get anywhere. Nikodimov answers such attempts with the method of Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger. He dropped one reporter from Science and Life down the waste chute." "Don't worry yourself about my nearest future. Just give me all you know. Who is this Nikodimov? And no jokes, if you don't mind. I need it bad." "Look, he's a physicist, with a very wide range of interests. Puts out works on the physics of fields of attraction. Interested in electric magnetism in complex media. At one time, working with Zemlicka, he brought out the concept of a neutrino generator." "With whom?" "With Zemlicka. A Czech bio-physicist." "And the general idea - can you tell me?" "I'm an ignoramus here, of course, and I heard it from ignoramuses - but, in a general sense, it's something like a neutrino laser, which cuts a window into anti-worlds." "Are you serious?" "What do you think? That it looks a bit shady? That's how it was regarded, by the way." "And Zargaryan?" "What about Zargaryan?" "Is he tied up with Nikodimov right now?" "You already know that? Congratulations." "Is he a physicist too?" "No, a neurophysiologist or something like that. As a matter of fact, his field is telepathy." "What, what?" I screamed. "Te-le-pa-thy," repeated Klenov didactically. "There is such a science: mental telepathy." "I doubt it. They gave that up in the Middle Ages. No such science." "You're behind the times. It's al-read-y a science. Condensers of biological currents, and all that kind of thing. Satisfied?" "Almost," I sighed. "If you're going into the attack, I'll back you body and soul. We'll print anything you can get hold of. And I'd advise you to start off with Zargaryan. He's easier, more approachable. Just the fellow you want...." I thanked him and hung up the receiver. The information wasn't beyond Zoya's level. An anti-world, telepathy.... Should phone Galya for more accurate information. "Hello, this is me - the sleepwalker. Are you up already?" "I get up at six in the morning," Galya cut me off. "I'm interested in one little detail of your Odyssey. Why did you tell Lena you'd left your wife?" "I can't answer for Hyde's doings. I want to explain them. Listen hard, Galya. What's the essence of the idea of a neutrino generator, and how is it connected with the condensing of biological currents?" "Nikodimov and Zargaryan?" laughed Galya. "As you see, I found something out, at least." "You found out rubbish, and you're talking rubbish. Nikodimov renounced the idea of the neutrino generator long ago, that is, the way it was formulated by Zemlicka. Now he's working on the fixation of the power field set up by the activity of the brain ... something like a single complex of the electro-magnetic field that arises in the brain cells. You see, I also discovered something." "Zargaryan is a physiologist. What's his tie-up with Nikodimov?" "Their work is top secret. I don't know the inside story, nor if there's any future in what they're doing," admitted Galya. "But one way or another, it's connected with codifying the physiological neuronal state of the brain." "What?" I asked blankly. "The brain," Galya stressed, "the brain, my dear. Your Hyde connected these names with the Brain Institute, and not by chance. Though ... from what aspect to view all this.... Perhaps, it's even a problem of pure physics." She was thinking hard: the membrane in the receiver carried her heavy breathing. "The key is here, Sergei," she concluded. "The more I think about it, the surer I am. Find the scientists, and you'll find the key." The scientific research over, there was still the ordinary search. We began it with Zoya. She answered the call at once. Yes, she knew both Zargaryan and Nikodimov. The latter only by name: he was like a ground-hog who never came near receptions. But she was personally acquainted with Zargaryan. Had even danced with him at an evening social. He was very interested in dreams. "He's interested in dreams," repeated Olga to me, putting her hand over the mouthpiece. "What??" I cried, and reached for the telephone. "Zoya darling. It's me. Right you are, in person, your secret worshipper. What were you saying just now about dreams? Who's interested? It's very important." "I told Zargaryan about a strange dream I had," responded Zoya, "and he was terribly interested, asked all about the details. And what details - frightful, but utterly. And he listened, and told me I should come to him every week and be sure to relate all my dreams. He needed it for his work. But you know yourself, I'm no fool. I know what kind of work he meant." "Zoya," I groaned, "beg him to give me an appointment." "Are you mad?" cried Zoya, terrified. "He can't stand reporters." "But you won't tell him I'm from a paper. Simply say that a man who sees strange dreams wants to see him. And the strangest thing of all is that these dreams are repeated, as if tape-recorded. Repeated year after year. Zoya, try to tell him all that. If you fail, I'll try to contact him myself." She rang back in ten minutes. "Just imagine, it worked. He'll see you today after nine o'clock. Don't be late. He doesn't like it," she chattered on without a break, just as she usually did in her office at the institute. "He was interested right away, and immediately asked how clear the dreams were, what was the degree of recall, and so on. I said you would tell him about the clarity yourself. I also told him you worked with me. Don't give me away." THE KEY Zargaryan lived in the south-west of town in a new apartment building. He opened the door himself, silently listened to my explanation, and just as silently led the way into his office. Tall and lithe, black hair bristling in a crew-cut, he reminded me of the hero in an Italian neo-realistic novel. To look at, he wasn't more than thirty. "Do you mind my asking what led you to me?" His eyes pierced right through me. "Yes, of course, I know it was strange dreams and so on ... but why did you particularly ask for a consultation with me?" "When I tell you everything, the answer to that won't be necessary," I said. "Do you know anything about me?" "Until last night, I'd no idea you existed." He thought a moment and asked: "Exactly what happened last night?" "I'm sincerely glad that we begin our talk with that," I said decisively. "I did not come to you because I was worried by dreams, nor because you are a Martin Zadeka as, for instance, you are regarded by Zoya at the Institute of Information. By the way, I don't work there, I'm a journalist." I immediately noticed a grimace of dissatisfaction on Agrarian's face, and continued. "But I didn't come to you for an interview. I'm not interested in your work. To be more exact, I wasn't interested. And I repeat once more that until last night I had never even heard your name, but none the less I wrote it down in my small notebook while in a state of unconsciousness. " "What do you mean by a state of unconsciousness?" interrupted Zargaryan. "That's not exactly the right term. I was fully conscious, yet I remember nothing - what I did or what I said. I simply wasn't there, somebody else acted in my place. It was he who wrote this in my notebook." I opened the notebook and passed it to Zargaryan. He read it and looked at me rather strangely, peering from frowning brows. "Why is it written twice?" "I wrote it the second time, to compare the handwriting. As you see, the first was not written by me, that is, it's not my handwriting. And it's not the handwriting of a sleepwalker, or a lunatic, or of somebody with amnesia." "Does your wife live on Griboyedov street?" "My wife lives with me on Kutuzovsky Prospekt. And there is no house on Griboyedov street with that number. And the woman mentioned in the note is not my wife, but simply an acquaintance, a school friend. Besides, she doesn't live on Griboyedov." Once more he read the note and pondered. "And did you never hear of Professor Nikodimov either?" "No more than I heard of you. Even now I only know that he's a physicist, something like a ground-hog who is never to be found at receptions. That detail, I'll have you note, is from the Institute of Information." Zargaryan smiled, and I immediately noticed that he wasn't a severe man at all, but a good-hearted and perhaps even a gay fellow. "Along general lines the portrait bears a certain resemblance," he said. "Keep shooting." And I talked. I can tell a good story, even with a dash of humour, but he listened without any outward show of interest. However, when I reached the place about the plurality of worlds, he raised his brows. "Did you read that anywhere?" he asked quickly. "I don't remember. In passing, somewhere." "Go on, if you don't mind." I concluded my story by reminding him of Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde. "The queerest thing is that this mystical-phantom business explains everything, and I can find nothing else that makes sense." "You think that's the queerest?" he asked vaguely, once again reading the lines in the notebook. "They refused to let us bring up this problem at the Brain Institute, but it was raised all the same." I looked at him blankly. "Have you been precise in everything you have told me?" he suddenly asked, with another piercing glance. "Two worlds like similar triangles, right? With a Moscow in both, differing only in ornamentation. And hero and there you and your friends. Is that it?" "Exactly." "There you are married to a different woman, live on a different street, and in some way or other are connected with a Zargaryan and a Nikodimov, of whose existence here you were completely unaware. Right?" I nodded. He stood up and walked around the room, as if to hide his excitement. But I saw how wrought up he was. "Now tell me about your dreams. I think there's a connection between all this." I described my dreams. This time he stared with unconcealed interest. "That means another life, eh? A certain street, a road down to a river, a shopping arcade. And all very clear-cut, like in a photograph?" He spoke slowly, weighing every word, as if thinking aloud. "And you remember everything afterwards. Clearly, including all details?" "I even remember the mosaic on the pavement." "And it is all uncannily familiar, even to trivial things? It seems you've been there a hundred times and probably lived there, but in real life there was nothing of the kind?" "In real life, nothing of the kind," I repeated. "What do the doctors say? You must have sought advice." It seemed to me that he said this with a shade of cunning. "What do the doctors say..." I spoke scornfully. "Stimulation ... inhibition. Any fool knows that. In the daytime the cortex is in a state of excitation, at night an inhibition process sets in. Irregular, with islands. These islands keep working, paste together dreams from day-time impressions, like in a cutting room." Zargaryan laughed. "Or staging a series of attractions, like in the circus." "But I don't believe it!" I grew angry. "The devil they are! There's no staging about it, everything is unchangeably fixed down to minute trifles, to the leaf on a certain tree, to the screw in a window-frame. And all this is repeated, like showings in a cinema. Once a week I'm sure to see something I dreamed before. Yet they still insist that you dream only of what you've seen or experienced during your waking hours. And nothing else!" "Even Sechenov wrote about that. He even examined the blind, and it turned out that they dream only of what they saw when they had their sight." "But I never saw them," I repeated stubbornly. "Not in real life, nor in the cinema or in paintings. Nowhere! Is that clear? I never saw them!" "But what if you did?" laughed Zargaryan. "Where?" I cried. He did not answer. He silently took out a cigarette, lit it, and suddenly recollected me. "Oh, excuse me. I didn't offer one to you. Do you smoke?" "You haven't answered me," I said. "I will answer you. We have ahead of us a long, interesting talk. You can't even imagine what a find this meeting is for Nikodimov and me. Scientists wait for years for such moments. But I'm lucky: I only waited four years. Can you give me another couple of hours?" "Of course," I agreed, confused and still in the dark. A sudden change came over Zargaryan. His excited, undisguised interest slightly embarrassed me. What was there special in what I had told him? Perhaps Galya was right, and the key to the puzzle of all that had happened was right here? But Zargaryan was already telephoning somebody. "Pavel Nikitich? It's me. Do you intend staying much longer at the institute? Wonderful. I'm going to bring a certain person over, right away. He's with me now. Who? You'd never guess. The one we've been dreaming about all these years. What he's told me confirms all our ideas. And I stress that. Everything! And even more. It's hard to take it all in - my head spins. No, I'm not drunk, but a drink is called for. Later on. We're on our way, so wait for us." He hung up and turned to me. "D'you realize what a refractor is for an astronomer? Or an electronic microscope for a virologist? And for me, that's the kind of valuable instrument you are. For Nikodimov and me. I'll give Zoya a royal present for this.... After all, it was she who gave you to me. Let's go." I was as much in the dark as before. "I hope you're not going to give mo injections or cut me up? Will it hurt?" I asked, sounding like a patient on his way to see a surgeon. Zargaryan burst into laughter, as pleased as punch. "Why should it hurt, my dear man?" ho said, adopting the accent of an oriental trader. "You'll sit in a chair, fall asleep for half an hour or so, look at dreams. Like in the cinema." Dropping the accent, he added: "Come, Sergei Nikolaevich, I'll drive you to the institute." FAUST'S LABORATORY The institute was off the highway in an oak grove which, in the dark of this starless night, looked to me like an enchanted wood out of a fairy tale. The gnome-like hushes, trees with clawing branches, black tree-stumps peering out of the grass like wild animals from across the roadside ditch - all seemed to be luring me into a romantic yet sinister gloom. But in place of the tumbledown hut perched on chicken-legs - the typical witch's abode in Russian fairy tales - there rose at the end of the alley a round ten-storey building with the occasional lighted window. Some of them blinked, flashing in spurts as if gigantic Jupiter lights in a film studio were being switched on and off. "Valery Mlechin casting spells over wireless light-transmission," said Zargaryan, catching my glance. "You think that's us up there? No. Our labs are up under the very roof on the opposite side." An express lift whisked us to the tenth floor, and we stepped out into a circular corridor with a moving passage that carried us with it. It moved softly, soundlessly, at about escalator-speed. "It works automatically as soon as you step on it," explained Zargaryan, "and is stopped by putting your foot on one of these frosted, illuminated regulators." Slightly convex milky-white transparent tiles were set every two metres, one after another, along the plastic ribbon of the corridor. We floated past white, sliding doors bearing large numbers. Opposite room 220, Zargaryan stepped on the regulator. We stopped, and the door slid open instantly revealing the entrance to a large, brightly lit room. Zargaryan nudged me towards a chair. "Amuse yourself for ten minutes while I talk with Nikodimov. First, it will save you from repeating your story; second, I can put it more professionally." He approached the opposite wall: it slid open and immediately closed behind him. "Photoelectric cell," I thought to myself. The equipment in this institute answered the most up-to-date demands of scientific design for working comfort. A description of the corridor alone would have sent Klenov into ecstasy: it wasn't for nothing he had promised to back me 'soul and body'. However, except for the sliding walls, the room where I waited held nothing very remarkable. A modern desk of clear plexiglas on nickel-plated steel legs; an open wall safe resembling an electric oven; concealed lighting, and a foam-rubber sofa-bed with cushions. Here you could spend the night in comfort if you were delayed. Along one wall I saw a monstrous pile of yellow, semi-transparent tape-ribbons along which thick, jagged lines ran: something like those on cardiograms. The coloured plastic floor, with its extravagant designs, made the room seem elegant, but the ascetic book-stands and the wall diagrams, also of plastic, returned it to the realm of the strictly serious. There was one diagram of the cortex of both cerebral hemispheres, marked with metal arrows crowned with coded inscriptions in Greek and Latin letters. Another that hit the eye had only a mass of strange metallic lines flanked by a handwritten inscription: Biocurrents of Sleeping Brain. Sheets of paper were pinned up bearing the typed text: Length and Depth of Sleep - laboratory observations at Chicago University. The books on the stands were in complete disorder, piled on top of one another, lying open on telescopic shelves. These, apparently, were in constant use. I picked one up: it was a work by Sorokhtin on the atony of the nerve centre. There were piles of books and brochures in foreign languages and, it seemed to me, they all dealt with some kind of irradiation following stimulation or inhibition. I found one book by Nikodimov, in an English edition, whose title was The Principles of Codifying Impulses Distributed Through the Cortex and Subcortex of the Brain. Whether I got it right or not, I don't know, but I immediately regretted that we journalists lacked the training necessary to at least come close to understanding the processes taking place on the peaks of modern science. At this moment the wall slid open, and Zargaryan called me: "You can come in now." The room I found myself in was the acme of laboratories, gleaming with stainless steel and nickel plating. But I had no chance to get a good look at it. Zargaryan was already introducing me to an elderly man with a chestnut-coloured beard touched with silver, and hair to match worn longer than was usual among scientists - more suitable for a professor of music. His aquiline nose related him to the hawk, but somehow he reminded me of the Faust I had seen during my youth in an opera staged by a company on tour from some remote country district. "Nikodimov," he said, smiling as he caught my roving eye. "There's no use looking. You won't understand anything in any case, and explanations would be lengthy. Besides, there's nothing very remarkable here - anything of interest is in the floor beneath us: the condenser and operational controls. And here is a screen by which we fixate the fields, in various phases, of course. As you see, an elementary jumble of electric plugs, switches and levers. Like something out of Mayakovsky, right?" I cast a sidelong glance at the chair behind the screen, over which hung a helmet resembling an astronaut's but with coloured wires attached to it. "He's scared," said Nikodimov, winking at Zargaryan. "What's so terrifying about it? Surely a chair...." "Wait," interrupted Zargaryan cheerfully. "Don't explain: let him guess for himself. See, old fellow, it's like a barber's chair, but no mirror. Or maybe a dentist's chair? But no drill. Where can you find such a chair? In the theatre, the cinema? No again. Perhaps in the pilot's cabin of an aeroplane? Then where's the joystick or wheel?" "Looks more like an electric chair," I said. "Naturally. An exact copy." "And you'll put the helmet on me, too?" "What do you think? Death in two minutes!" His eyes twinkled. "Clinical death. Then we resurrect you." "Don't frighten him," laughed Nikodimov, and turned to me. "You're a journalist?" I nodded. "Then I beg you ... no write-ups. Everything you'll find out here is not ripe for printing yet. Besides, the experiment might prove a failure. You might see nothing and we'll have to write it off as a loss. Well ... but when it is ready, the story will certainly be yours. I promise you that." Poor Klenov. His hopes for an article vanished like a dream. "Do your experiments have a direct relation to my story?" I dared to ask. "Geometrically direct," interrupted Zargaryan. "That's only Pavel Nikodimov's cautiousness, but I tell you straight: there's no possibility of failure. The proofs are too clear." "Ye-es," drawled Nikodimov, thoughtfully. "Pretty good proofs. So Stevenson's story happened to you? Is that how you explain it? Jekyll and Hyde?" "Of course not. I don't believe in reincarnation, or transformed bodies." "But even so?" "I don't know. I'm looking for an explanation. From you." "Wise of you." "So there is an explanation?" "That's right." I jumped to my feet. "Sit down," said Zargaryan. "No, go and sit in the chair you're so scared of. Believe me, it's much more comfortable than Voltaire's." To put it mildly, I was rather hesitant. That devilish chair positively terrified me. "All explanations only after the experiment," continued Zargaryan. "Sit here. Come, where's your nerve gone? We won't pull any teeth." I sank deep into the chair, as if in a feather bed. A feeling of special lightness came over me, almost like weightlessness. "Put out your feet," said Zargaryan. Apparently he was the one directing the experiment. The soles of my feet rested on rubber clamps. On my head I felt the soundlessly lowered helmet. It gripped my forehead lightly, and was unexpectedly comfortable, like a soft, felt hat. "Is it too loose?" "Yes, a bit." "Make yourself comfortable. We shall now regulate it." The helmet became tighter. But I felt no pressure: its supple lining seemed to fuse with my skin. I had the feeling that an evening breeze had stolen through the window and was pleasantly cooling my forehead and ruffling my hair. Yet I knew the window was closed and my head was enveloped in the helmet. Suddenly the light went out. I was surrounded by a warm, impenetrable darkness. "What's up?" I asked. "It's all right. We are isolating you from light." How were they isolating me? With a wall, a cowling, a hood of some kind? I touched my eyelids: the helmet did not cover my eyes. Stretching out my hand, I could feel nothing. "Drop your arm. Sit still. You will sleep now." I settled more easily in the chair, relaxed my muscles. And truly, I felt sleep coming over me, an imminent Nirvana drowning all my thoughts, recollections, intruding words. For some reason, I remembered a four-line stanza: But sleep is only a shadow-creation, An unstable dissimulation, Illusion of live animation - Yet not a bad prevarication. What kind of illusory dreams would sleep bring me this time, good ones or evil? The thought flashed and died away. There was a slight ringing in my ears, as if a mosquito were buzzing on a very high note somewhere close by. Now voices, very clear, reached my ears, though I could not place their whereabouts. "Is anything coming through?" "There's some interference." "And now?" "The same." "Try the second scale." "Got it." "And brightness?" "Excellent." "I'll turn it on full power." The voices disappeared. I fell into a soundless, untroubled state of non-existence, pregnant with unusual expectancy. THE DREAM WITH A MIRACLE I half opened my eyes and blinked. Everything swirled round in a rosy mist. The lights of the chandelier on the ceiling were arched out in a shining parabola. I was surrounded by a circle of women all in matching black dresses, all with matching washed-out faces. They cried out to me in Olga's voice. "What's the matter? Are you ill?" I forced open my eyelids as wide as I could. The mist melted away. The chandelier was at first tripled, then doubled, and finally became its normal self. The women shrank into a single figure with Olga's voice and smile. "Where are we?" I asked. "At the reception." "What reception?" "Can you have forgotten? At the Hungarian Embassy's reception. At the Metropole Hotel." "What are we doing here?" "Good lord, the tickets were sent to us this morning! I just managed to get my dress from the dressmaker. You seem to have forgotten everything! " I was certain no tickets had been sent to us that morning. Perhaps they'd come the evening before, on my return from Nikodimov? Did this mean I'd lost my memory again? "But what happened to me?" "The reception room was terribly stuffy and you suggested we go out for some fresh air. When we got to the foyer here, you suddenly felt bad." "Strange." "Nothing strange about it. It was impossible to breathe in there, and your heart isn't too good. Would you like something to drink?" "I really don't know." Olga seemed almost like a stranger to me in the new dress she had mentioned. It was the first time I'd heard about it. When did she go to the dressmaker's if I'd been home all day? "Wait a minute, I'll go and bring you some Narzan mineral water." She disappeared into the reception room, and I continued to look vaguely about at the familiar foyer of the restaurant. I recognized it, but that didn't ease my position. I couldn't at all understand when the Hungarians had sent the tickets, arid why they'd sent them. I had no title of honour, I wasn't an academician or a master of sport. Yet Olga accepted it as a matter of course, as something quite usual in our way of life. I was still standing there motionless when Olga returned with the Narzan. I got the impression that she wanted to return to the reception. "Have you met anyone you know?" "All the chiefs are there," said Olga, brightening. "Fedor Ivanovich and Raisa, even the deputy minister." I was not acquainted with either a Fedor Ivanovich or a Raisa, let alone a deputy minister. But I didn't want to risk admitting it, and merely asked: "Why the deputy minister?" "It was he who fixed it so we could all come. After all, our clinic is attached to the ministry. He gave the tickets to Fedor, who passed some on to Raisa. Probably there were a few extra tickets." Olga did not work at a ministerial clinic, but at a very ordinary district polyclinic. I knew that for a fact. Once she had actually been invited to work at the clinic for the Ministry of Communications, but she had refused. "You go on back," I said. "I'll take a little stroll for a breath of fresh air." I went outside, stood at the entrance and lit a cigarette. The yellow light from the street lamps was swimming in the wet asphalt pavement. Two-decker buses, as red as those in London, splashed by me. I had never seen such buses before. Between the upper and lower deck windows ran an advertising strip with the painted sign: SEE THE NEW FRENCH FILM CHILD OF MONTPARNASSE. I'd never heard of it. What was wrong with my memory? It was full of gaps. In the distance, to the left of the Bolshoi Theatre, a gigantic neon oblong burned against the sky. Flickering letters raced round it: 'Earthquake in Delhi.... Soviet doctors flew to India.' The latest news in lights. I couldn't recall when it was put up. "Getting some air?" I heard a well-known voice, turned, and saw Klenov. He had just come out of the restaurant. "I'm leaving," he said. "There's lots of liquor, but I don't drink. Ulcers. I've paid my respects, and now for home." "Between ourselves, how come you're paying respects?" "Well, d'you see, Kemenes invited us. He's press-attache now." Tibor Kemenes, a Russian-speaking Hungarian student, had been our guide in Budapest. I was just out of hospital, and we had wandered for hours around the city, so new to us. But when had Kemenes become press-attache at their embassy in Moscow? And how was it I only found out now? "Yes, people go up the ladder. But you and I got stuck somehow, old fellow. We are the ones who keep the wheels turning." "Speaking of turning the wheels, there won't be any article, incidentally," I told him. "What article?" asked Klenov in surprise. "About Zargaryan and Nikodimov." He laughed so hard, passers-by turned back to stare. "You certainly picked an eccentric for a subject. That Nikodimov keeps a panther on a chain at his cottage instead of a dog. And in Moscow he drops reporters down the waste chute." "You already told me that." "When?" "This morning." Klenov gripped my shoulders and looked me in the eye. "What have you been drinking, Tokay or palinka?" "I've not taken a drop." "That's easy to see. Why, Saturday night I went to my cottage at Zhavoronki, and only returned today at five in the afternoon. You must have been talking with me in your dreams." Klenov waved good-bye and went off, but I stood there, deeply shaken by his last words: 'talking with me in your dreams'. No, it was now I was talking with him in a dream. In a dream too real to be true. Immediately I recalled the conversation in Faust's laboratory, the chair with the various lead-in wires. And Zargaryan's warning from the darkness: 'Sit still. You will sleep now.' Some kind of electronic sleep with artificially aroused dreams. It all seemed as if I were awake, only this real life for some reason was turned upside down. Then why should I be surprised? It was as plain as day. I went back inside. A turbid haze of smoke hung over the tables, like steam, mixing with the electric light. People were dancing. I searched in vain for Olga, then entered the adjoining room. The long tables, littered with half-demolished food and drink, were witnesses that the guests had recently been feasting here. They had been served European buffet style, and ate standing holding their plates, or sat on the window-sills covered with folds of the draperies. Now only the latecomers remained, searching the tables for drinks and snacks still untouched. Somebody, who was playing a lone hand at the end of a large table, turned and called out to me. "Over here, Sergei. Tuck in. Palinka, just like in Budapest." It was Mikhail Sichuk who, according to another version I knew, had already managed to skip the country. Perhaps in this dream he'd managed to return. Through a hole in space or on a flying-carpet. I didn't bother my head over it, nor did I react to the miracle. I simply poured myself a glass of palinka from Mikhail's bottle, and drank. I was beginning to like dreams that contained even real sensations of taste. "To our friends and comrades," toasted Mikhail, also drinking. "How did you get here?" I asked, diplomatically. "The same as you. As a hero of the liberation of Hungary." "Oh, you're a hero?" "We're all heroes." Mikhail drained his glass and grunted. "It's heroism to have survived such a war!" I grew angry. "Only to be a traitor, afterwards?" Mikhail put his glass down and pricked up his ears. "What are you getting at?" I realized, of course, that I wasn't being logical, that it was senseless to accuse under the circumstances, but I got carried away. "You went off on the Ukraine in real style. On a Soviet excursion-voucher, you scum!" "How did you guess?" asked Mikhail in a whisper. "That you skipped?" "That I wanted to travel, and went to a lot of trouble to get a voucher...." "If they'd known, you wouldn't have got it." "But they didn't give it to me." As chairman of the trade-union committee, I myself had arranged for Mikhail's voucher. But in this dream everything was topsy-turvy. Perhaps I had gone in his place? I had also wanted to go, but there hadn't been an extra voucher. But what if there had been? My dream tossed me around like a chip of wood in the ocean. "Sit down, Sergei. Are you avoiding me?" Somebody caught my arm as I was threading my way between the tables in the banquet room. I looked into his face and was frozen dumb. And I was really scared. "Sit down, won't you? Let's drink Tokay. After all, it's the best in Europe." My legs gave way and I fell, rather than sat, in a chair by the table. Sad eyes that I knew so well stared at me. The last time I'd seen them - not both, but one - was in '44 on the Danube highway. Oleg lay on his back, his face covered with blood trickling down from where his right eye had been a moment earlier. Fright and grief had frozen in the other. Now they both looked at me. A curved, reddish scar stretched from the right eye up across the temple. "What are you staring like that for, Sergei? Do I look so much older?" "I was remembering forty-four. When you ... you...." "When I what?" "When you were killed, Oleg." He smiled. "Bullet was a bit off. Only the scar's left. Had it hit a fraction more to the right - curtains. Neither my eyes nor I would be here." He sighed. "Funny. I wasn't afraid then, but I am now." "Of what?" "The operation. A splinter was left somewhere in my chest, memorial of one other wound. So far I've lived with that splinter all right, but now they say I mustn't any longer. Have to have an operation." His familiar eyes with the long, almost feminine lashes were smiling. The forehead angled back into the receding hairline at the temples, so that it looked higher than before. Deep lines nestled close to the corners of his lips. And yet there was something about this dear and familiar face that struck me as strange. The imprint of time, perhaps. So Oleg would have looked, if he had lived. But in this artificial world of dreams be was alive. If Faust had created this model, then he was a god, and I was already beginning to doubt which of the two worlds was real. A treacherous thought struck me: what if something broke down in Faust's laboratory and I was stuck here for good! Should I be sorry? I didn't know. I pinched my arm hard. "What for?" Oleg looked his surprise. "For a minute I thought this was a dream." Oleg laughed, and suddenly faded away into a lilac mist. That familiar mist. It lapped up everything, and went black. Zargaryan's voice asked me out of the dark: "Are you alive?" "Of course, I am." "Raise your arm. Can you move it freely?" I moved my arm in the dark. "Roll up your sleeve and loosen your collar." He pressed something cold to my chest, then to my wrist. "Don't be frightened. It's only a stethoscope. We'll check your heart. Don't talk." How could he see in the dark through which not one speck of light penetrated? But he saw. "All right," he pronounced in a satisfied voice. "Only the pulse is a bit fast." "Maybe we'll break off the test?" The voice of an invisible Nikodimov came from somewhere. "Whatever for? Sergei Nikolaevich has the nerves of an athlete. Now we'll show him another dream." "So it was a dream?" I asked, feeling relief. "Who knows?" Zargaryan slyly called out of the dark. "And if not?" I didn't have time to answer. The darkness swallowed me up like the sea. A DREAM CULMINATING IN HYSTERICS Out of the darkness burst a stream of light, flooding a white operating theatre. On the table lay a prostrate body covered to the waist with a white sheet. The dissected chest exposed to view the scarlet, bleeding inner tissues and the pearly whiteness of ribs. The patient's eyes were closed, his face bloodless and still. There was something familiar about the face: it seemed I'd seen only recently those deep lines at the lips and the curving, rosy scar o