n the right temple. My hands were holding a probe buried in the open chest. I was in an operating gown and white linen cap, my nose and mouth covered with a surgical mask. The people opposite me were dressed as I was. I knew none of them, but seemed to recognize the eyes of a woman standing at the patient's head. Her eyes were riveted to my hands, and were so full of alarming tension that it seemed as if a taut string were stretched between us. It rang thinly the deeper the probe went into the opening. Suddenly I remembered all that had occurred up to this moment. The squeal of brakes from the car stopping at the entrance, the granite steps wet with rain, the well-known vista of a street I had often dreamed about, and then the respectful smile of the cloakroom attendant catching my coat on the fly as I went by, the slow rise of the lift and the shining whiteness of the operating theatre where I put on my gown and scrubbed hands and arms a dreadfully long time. I remembered perfectly that it was I - yes, I - who began the operation, opening the chest with a scalpel along the line of the scar while my hands with professional, habitual skill cut, split and probed. All this flashed into my conscious mind with the speed of sound, and disappeared. I had forgotten everything. The habitual skill of my hands turned into a frightened tremble and with sudden terror I realized that I didn't know what to do next, or how to do it. Any further delay would mean murder. Without realizing what I did or why, I withdrew the probe from the wound and dropped it. It gave out a hollow tinkle. In the eyes above the muslin masks, I read one and the same question: 'What's happened?' "I can't," I almost groaned. "I'm ill." Walking on strangely cottony legs, I went to the door. Half turning round, I saw somebody's back bent over the patient in my place, and a quiet bass voice gave a command to the head nurse: "Probe!" "Run!" my thoughts raced. So that nobody would see, so that I would see nobody. No longer to read what I had managed to read in all those wide-open, surprised and accusing eyes. I could not feel my legs under me. I ran like a storm through the scrubbing surgery and into the hallway between two right-angled corridors, flinging myself down on white, shining enamelled seat. "Just now, with these very hands, I killed Oleg," I told myself. I gripped my temples with icy hands, groaned and perhaps even cried aloud. "What's wrong ... Sergei Nikolaevich?" I heard a frightened voice. The man who addressed me wore an operating gown like myself, but without the cap, revealing a bald, naked skull and he asked uneasily: "What's wrong? How did the operation go?" "I don't know," I said. "How's that?" "I threw it up ... left...." I scarcely opened my mouth. "I came over ill." "Who's operating then? Asafyev?" "No idea." "That's not possible!" "I know nothing. I don't even know who you are! Who are you, what's your name, where am I, for heaven's sake?" I screamed. He shuffled from foot to foot, staring at me with amazed eyes, empty of comprehension. Then he ran to the door through which I had just stormed. I looked after him and stood up. I tore off my gown, ripping the ties, wiped my hands and threw the gown on the floor. The cap followed. In the depths of the corridor stretching before me I saw a flash of white - a doctor or nurse-in high heels that tapped on the parquetry. She disappeared in one of the rooms. I mechanically headed in her direction, passing identically white doors. They led into consulting rooms of doctors, whose names were printed on cards framed in white plastic. 'Dr. Gromov, S. N.' I read. My office. Well then, in you go! Klenov sat by a wide Italian window behind my desk, reading a newspaper. "So soon?" he asked with restraint, but a restraint that rang with alarm and fear. I was silent. "He's alive?" "Why are you here?" I countered. "You told me to wait here, yourself!" burst out Klenov. "What's happened to Oleg?" "I don't know." He leaped up. "Why not?" "I felt bad ... almost lost consciousness." "During the operation?" "That's right." "Who is operating then?" "Don't know." I tried not to look at him. "But why are you here now? Why aren't you in the operating room at least?" screamed Klenov. "Because I'm not a surgeon, Klenov." "You're mad." He didn't push me aside, he charged me with his shoulder like a hockey-player and ran into the corridor. And I sat inanely on a chair in the middle of the room, couldn't even drag myself as far as my desk. "I'm not a surgeon," I had told Klenov. Then how could I have started the operation and conducted it to the critical moment without arousing anybody's doubts? So that was possible in dreams. Then where did the fear come from, this near terror of what had occurred? You see, Oleg, the operation, Klenov and I myself were only shades in a world of dreams, and I knew it. "And if not?" Zargaryan had asked. And if we're not! Then the desk telephone rang, but I turned away. It went on ringing. Finally I grew tired of it. "Sergei, is that, you?" came a voice. "How was it?" "Who's speaking?" I barked. "Don't yell. As if you didn't know me." "I don't. Who is this?" "But it's me, Galya! Who else?" Galya is excited, and quite rightly so, I thought. But why is she phoning? If anyone should be waiting here, she should be. Instead of Klenov. "Why are you silent?" she asked, surprised. "Was it a failure?" "Look...." I faltered. "I can't tell you anything definite. I felt bad during the operation. An assistant is finishing...." "Asafyev?" Again that Asafyev, I thought. How do I know whether it's him or not? And does it matter, since this is only a dream? "Probably," I said aloud. "I couldn't tell. They're all in masks." "But you don't trust Asafyev. Even this morning you said he's a surgeon for convalescents." "When did I say that?" "When we were having breakfast. Before the car came for you." I knew perfectly well that I hadn't had breakfast with Galya. I had been at home. I had no car. But why argue, if it was all a dream? "And what happened to you?" she continued. "What do you mean ... you felt bad?" "Weakness. Dizziness. Loss of memory." "And now?" "What about now? Are you asking about Oleg?" "No, about you!" I even marvelled. Where did Galya get such callousness from? Oleg lying on the operating table, and she asks what's wrong with me! "Complete atrophy of the memory," I said angrily. "I've forgotten everything. Where I was this morning and where I am now, who you are, who I am, and why I'm a surgeon if one look at a scalpel makes my flesh creep." Silence from the receiver. "Are you listening?" "I'll come to the hospital at once," said Galya, and hung up. Let her come. Did it matter when, where or why? Dreams are always illogical, yet for some reason I was able to think logically even in dreams. The resolve to run away, ripening from the moment I left the operating room, was finally taken. "I'll leave a note of some kind for decency's sake, and go away," I thought. On the top sheet of the pad lying on the desk above some papers I read the heading: 'Professor Sergei Nikolaevich Groinov, D. Sc. (Med.)'. This brought to mind my sheet from the notebook on which my hypothetical Mr. Hyde had scribbled the mysterious, cluo-like inscription. It had turned out to be the key to the puzzle. True, I hadn't yet solved the puzzle itself, but the key was in the lock. 'And if not?' Zargaryan had answered in reply to my query whether it was a dream. What if I were just as much of an unseen aggressor to Prof. Sergei Gromov as my Hyde of yesterday had been to me? Shouldn't I follow his example and leave a similar kind of clue or explanatory note? I was already writing on the professor's pad: You and I are doubles, though we live in different worlds, and perhaps even in different times. Unluckily, our 'meeting' happened during an operation. I couldn't finish it: in my world I have a different profession. Find the scientists in Moscow: Nikodimov and Zargaryan. They, probably, can explain to you what happened at the hospital. Without reading over what I had written, I went to the door, caught by a single impulse - to go anywhere at all, so long as it was out of this Hoffman-like devilry. Too late: the devilry was already at the door. Before I could open it, Lena entered. She was still wearing the cap and gown she had worn in the operating room, but no mask. I retreated a step and asked in the trembling tone others had applied to me: "Well, how was it?" She had scarcely aged at all since the last time I saw her after the war: that must have been ten years ago. But I was more tightly connected with the Lena of this dream, for our professions joined us. "We removed the splinter," she said, barely moving her lips. "And Oleg?" "He'll live." After a moment's silence, she added: "You counted on something different?" "Lena!" "Why did you do it?" "Because a terrible thing happened. Loss of memory. I suddenly forgot all I knew, everything I had learned. And even professional skills that were part of me. I couldn't, I didn't have the right to continue the operation." "You're lying!" Her lips were clamped together so tightly they were white. "I'm not." "You're lying. Are you improvising this on the spot or did you think it up earlier? Do you think anybody will believe your story? I shall demand a special commission of experts." "Go ahead," I answered with a sigh. "I've already talked with Klenov. We'll write a letter to the papers." "You won't. I'm not lying to anybody." "To anybody? But I know why you did it. From jealousy." I even laughed. "Jealous of whom?" "And he even laughs, the scum!" she screamed. Before I could catch her arm, she hit me in the face so hard that I almost lost balance. "You scum!" she repeated, choking with tears, and close to hysterics. "Murderer! ... If it wasn't for Volodya Asafyev, Oleg would now be dead on the operating table. Lying there dead, dead!" A sudden darkness cut short her screams. A DREAM FULL OF ANGER I seemed to be blind and deaf, and my body was pressed to the parquet floor as if paralysed. I could not even stir, and felt nothing except the coolness of the waxed floor against my temple. How many hours, or minutes, perhaps seconds, this feeling lasted I don't know. I had lost all sense of time. Suddenly the blackness before my eyes faded like Indian ink does on Whatman paper when you use it to spread a dull grey wash over an outlined space. The space here was outlined by the walls of a narrow corridor lit by a few dim electric bulbs and terminating in a steep stairway loading up to a rectangle of daylight. I was standing now, pressing my face against the waxed wall-panels, holding on to the handrail that ran the whole length of the corridor. As before, Lena was looking at me, but her expression had changed into deep sympathy. "Are you sea-sick?" she asked. "Nauseous?" I certainly felt a bit under the weather, especially when the floor, swaying like a swing, suddenly slipped from under my feet and my stomach twisted in spasms. "It's the pitching of the ship," she explained. "We're turning into the harbour." "Whereabouts are we?" I said, failing to grasp what she meant. "We've already reached Istanbul, Professor. Come and take a look." "Where?" I still could not catch on to what was happening. A new devilish metamorphosis. Out of one dream into another. A Technicolor scene from a fairy tale. "Come up on deck. You'll feel better where there's a breeze," and she pulled me after her. "Incidentally, let's see what Istanbul looks like. Though one can hardly make anything out - it's raining." The rain did not actually fall, but hung around us like a lustreless, hazy netting. Through this net, the shoreline panorama seemed made of shapeless, abstract patches with the outlines here and there of murkily gleaming minarets and cupolas, some blue and others green. Clouds teemed above it all, bunting and overtaking each other. "We'll need our raincoats," frowned Lena, with a hand above her eyes to ward off the fine wet spray. "Can't go ashore like this. What cabin are you in, seven? Wait for me by the ship's ladder or on shore. All right?" Now I knew the number of my cabin. Well then, let's go for a mackintosh. A trip through foreign seas and countries is always interesting. Even in the rain, even in a dream. Entering my cabin, I found Mikhail Sichuk busy by his bunk. He was hurriedly pocketing some papers and packets, and did not seem at all pleased with my appearance. "Is it raining?" he asked. "It is," I answered mechanically, trying to puzzle out why my dreams persistently confronted me with the very same personages. "What are you stuffing in your pockets?" This seemed to embarrass Mikhail. "Oh, that ... just souvenirs to exchange. So it's raining..." he mumbled, avoiding my eyes. "That's bad. We'll all be bunched in a group, holding on to each other. Otherwise we'll get lost...." Then I remembered what Mikhail had done in real life. In this very same Istanbul. In reality, and not in a dream. "What's the name of our ship?" I asked. "What? You've forgotten?" grinned Mikhail. "Sclerosis. Can't remember, somehow." "The Ukraine. What of it?" He looked at me with suspicion. Everything fell into place. This dream, in time, was a month ago. All the better. I could change the course of events. "Nothing special," and I even yawned to put him off the track. "It's raining. Suppose we don't go." "Not go where?" "Ashore. They'll make us walk half the day in the rain: mosques, museums.... Wishing we were home. Let's settle down in the bar over a glass of beer." "Isn't that the limit!" laughed Mikhail. "The last foreign port and we go to the bar." "Why the last? We still have Varna and Constanta to see. Very beautiful cities, by the way." "Socialist," drawled Mikhail scornfully. "And you, of course, must have capitalist towns? " "I paid good money out. I want my money's worth." "Thirty pieces of silver," I said. "Judas money." Incidentally in that other dream in the Metropole, I'd already put this to Mikhail. And all for nothing. The shot had misfired. He never got his excursion-voucher, and so never took the trip. But now I'd caught him in time. "Look, I know what you're planning," I went on. "Two words to a policeman at the first bus stop, and off in a taxi to the American Embassy. Quiet, don't deny it! And at the embassy you'll beg for political shelter." For a moment Mikhail was turned into a pillar of salt, like Lot's wife immortalized in the Bible. But only for a moment. Realizing that somebody had looked into his soul, into its secret depths, a quiet terror came and went in his eyes. He was a damned good actor. "Rubbish," he said, with a show of good-heartedness, and reached out to take his raincoat off the hanger. "I am not joking, Sichuk," I said. "What does that mean?" "It means I know the dirty thing you intended to do, and I'm going to stop it." "That's interesting, but how?" he burst out. "It's all very simple. Till we leave port, you don't go out of this cabin." "Might as well warn you, I'm not a good subject for hypnosis. So get out of my way," he declared insolently, and began putting his coat on. I sat on the edge of the bunk nearest the door. Then I wrapped my handkerchief round my left hand. I'm left-handed, and punch with my left. There's no curve to the punch, and it has all the power of my arm and shoulder muscles behind it, and the whole weight of my body. I learned this from Sazhin, the USSR boxing champion in the light-heavyweight class. That was in the late forties. I was younger then and glad of his help. I would go to him at the training gym after work, right from the editorial office. There, in a sheltered corner, I would correct his notes - he was going to turn journalist. Then I would ask him to show me a few tricks. And he did. "You'll never make a boxer, of course," he told me. "Too old, and no talent.... But if you ever get in a fight, you'll be able to take care of yourself. Only see you don't break your knuckles. Wrap your hand up." Mikhail at once noticed my manipulation and became curious. "What's that for?" "So I don't skin my knuckles." "What? You're joking?" "I've already told once I'm not joking." "One yell from me...." "You won't yell," I interrupted him. "Or it'll be the worse for you. I'll tell everything you plan doing and ... curtains, as they say." "Who's going to believe it?" "They'll believe it. Once they're tipped off, they'll start thinking out the how's and wherefore's. You won't be let ashore." "But I can accuse you of the same thing." "Then they won't let either of us go. And when we get home, it'll all be straightened out." Dressed in his hat and coat, Mikhail sat opposite me on his bunk. "You're crazy. What gave you the idea I was going to skip?" "I saw it in a dream." "I'm asking you straight." "What difference does it make? The important thing is, I'm not mistaken. I can read it in your eyes." "I'm a Soviet citizen, Sergei." "You're not. You're the scum of the earth. I found that out even at the front. Knew you were a coward, a bad lot. Only I never managed to expose you in time." Red spots came up on Mikhail's cheeks. His fingers played nervously with his coat buttons, doing them up and undoing them. He must have finally realized that his well-worked-out plan could fail. "I won't yell, of course. I don't want a row." His voice took on a tearful note. "But, honestly, this is all nonsense. Sheer nonsense." "What's in your pockets?" "I told you. All kinds of stuff: pins, badges, photos." "Show me." "Why should I?" "Then don't. Lie down on your bunk, and stay there." He got up and walked to the door. I put my back against it. "Let me out," he said through his teeth, grabbing my shoulders. He was stronger than I, but out of cowardice didn't realize it. However, without any manifest hesitation, he came straight for me. "Let me out," he repeated, pulling me toward him. I gave him the knee, and he flew back. Then, crouching, he tore at me trying to smash his head under my chin. But it didn't connect, and I let fly at his face with a straight left, landing right on his mouth. He swayed and crashed to the floor between his bunk and the wash-basin. A red trickle ran from his cut lip. He touched it with his fingers, saw blood, and screamed: "He-elp...." And broke off. "Go ahead, yell," I told him. "Yell louder. You don't scare me." His eyes narrowed, radiating spite alone. "All the same, I'll skip," he hissed. "Next time." "You be man enough to announce that at home. Officially, so that all can hear. Say it plainly, that you don't like our system, our society. Beg for a visa from some embassy or other. You think you'll be held? Oh no. We'll be glad to chuck you out. We don't need human scum like you." "So why don't you let me go now?" "Because you're crawling out quietly. By a fraud. Because you're letting everybody down who trusted you." Mikhail jumped up and rushed me again, his mouth stretched in an ugly grin. He wasn't thinking now of getting out of the cabin at any cost; he was gripped by blind anger and lost his head. I knocked him off his feet again. Sazhin's lessons came in handy after all. This time he fell on his bunk, but so hard that his head hit the wall. It looked to me as if he had lost consciousness. But he stirred and groaned. I folded a towel, wet it under the tap, and laid it on his face. There was a knock at the door. I slid a glance at Mikhail. He did not even turn round. I released the catch on the door. In came a perfect stranger wearing a wet raincoat; apparently it was raining harder. "You coming, Sergei Nikolaevich?" "No," I answered. "I'm not. My friend isn't feeling well. Sea-sick, I guess. I'll stay with him." Mikhail still did not move, nor even raise his head. I waited till the footsteps died away down the corridor. "I'm going to the bar," I warned Mikhail. "But, if you'll excuse me, I'm locking the door." I locked the door, but did not get to the bar. Again the sudden darkness, that I was so used to, returned me to the familiar chair with the helmet and pick-ups. The first thing I heard was the tail end of a conversation which clearly was not meant for my ears. "A traveller in time - that's stale. I should call it a 'walk in the fifth dimension'." "Maybe in the seventh?" "We'll formulate it. How is he?" "Unconscious, so far." "Consciousness has already returned." "And the encephalogram?" "Recorded in full." "I told you before he's a real find." "Shall I turn on the isolator?" "Turn it off, you meant to say? Give it zero three, and then zero ten. Let his eyes get used to light gradually." The blackness lifted a bit. As if a crack had opened somewhere letting in a tiny ray of light. Though invisible, it made the objects around me visible. With each passing second they grew more clear-cut, and soon I saw Zargaryan's face before me, as if on a cinema screen. "Ave, homo, amici te salutant. ( Greetings, man, friends salute you.- tr.) Do I need to translate?" "No," I answered. There was now full light. The astronaut's helmet lightly slipped from my head and lifted up. The chair-back gave me a push as if suggesting that I get up. I did. Nikodimov was already in his place at the desk, inviting me to join them both. "Did you have many experiences?" "Many. Shall I relate them?" "Not in any case. You are tired. You will tell us tomorrow. What you need now is rest, and a proper sleep. Without dreams." "But what I saw ... were they dreams?" I asked. "We'll put oft all exchange of information till tomorrow," he smiled. "Today, don't relate a thing, not even at home. The main thing is sleep, and more sleep." "But shall I fall asleep?" I doubted. "Without a doubt. After supper, take this tablet. And tomorrow we'll meet again here. Let's say at two o'clock. Ruben Zargaryan will come for you." "Now I'll have him homo in a jiffy. Swift as the wind," said Zargaryan. "And don't think about anything. Don't try to recollect anything. Don't live it over again," added Nikodimov. Urbi ot orbi, not a word. Need I translate?" "I guess not," I said. PROGRESS TOWARD THE SOLUTION I kept my word, and gave Olga only a general outline about what had taken place. I myself did not want to relive all I had seen in my artificial dreams, even in my thoughts. Nor did I ask Olga about anything that had the slightest connection with my dreams. But late at night, in bed, I could not restrain myself. "Did we ever get an invitation from the Hungarian Embassy?" "No," said Olga in surprise. "Why do you ask?" "Which of your acquaintances is called Fedor Ivanovich, and who is Raisa?" "I haven't the faintest," she answered, more surprised than ever. "I don't know any people with those names. No wait ... I remember. You know who Fedor Ivanovich is? The head of a polyclinic. Not ours, but the one I was asked to work in, the one attached to the ministry. And Raisa - that's his wife. It was she who made mo the offer. When did you get to know them?" "I'll tell you tomorrow. Right now, my mind is a muddle. Forgive me," I muttered, and fell asleep. I woke up late, after Olga had already gone leaving my breakfast on the table and coffee in the thermos. I didn't want to get up. I lay in bed, unhurriedly going over the events of yesterday. I remembered with particular clarity the dreams I had seen in Faust's laboratory - not dreams, but living, concrete reality. I remembered them in detail, down to the little things you usually don't notice in real life. And immediately I recalled even the paper pad in the hospital consulting room, the colour of the buttons on Mikhail's raincoat, the sound of the probe falling on the floor, and the taste of the apricot palinka or brandy. I recalled all the Hoffman-style confusion, compared the conversations, actions and interrelations, finally coming to strange conclusions. Very strange, though their strangeness hardly lessened their cogency. A telephone call got me out of bed. It was Klenov, who had already found out from Zoya about my meeting Zargaryan. I would have to take a hard line. "Do you know what 'taboo' means?" "Suppose I do?" "Then get this: Zargaryan is taboo, Nikodimov is also taboo, telepathy's taboo. That's the works." "I'll tear my clothes to ribbons." "Tear away! By the way, have you got a cottage in Zhavoronki?" "A garden plot, you mean to say? Only it's not in Zhavoronki. We were offered two choices: Zhavoronki or Kupavna. I chose the last." "But you could have chosen Zhavoronki?" "Naturally. Why are you interested?" "I'm interested in a lot of things. For instance, who is press-attache now at the Hungarian Embassy? Kemenes?" "You haven't got encephalitis, by any chance?" "I'm asking in all seriousness." "Kemenes is press-attache in Hungary. He hasn't been sent to Moscow." "But he might have been?" "I get it. You're writing a thesis on the subjunctive mood." In a way, Klenov almost guessed it. In my attempts to figure out the secret hovering around me, I tripped over the subjunctive mood time and again that morning. What might have happened if.... If Oleg hadn't been killed at Dunafoldvar? If it hadn't been Oleg that married Galya, but I? If I had gone in for medicine after the war instead of entering the faculty of journalism? If Olga had agreed to work at the ministry's clinic? If Tibor Kemenes hadn't gone to work in Belgrade, but had come to Moscow? If, if.... Over the subjunctive mood, this Hoffman devilry burst into rich bloom. I might have gone to a reception in the Hungarian Embassy. I might have gone on the Ukraine around Europe. I might have been a Doctor of Medical Sciences, a surgeon operating on a living Oleg. All of these things might have been in real life, if.... And another if. What if I had seen not dreams at Zargaryan's, but a hypnotic stream of life, altered here and there according to circumstances? Then the fantastic Jekyll and Hyde story would have received a lawful vote. If Gromov the journalist could be turned into a surgeon for a certain time, then why shouldn't Gromov the surgeon become journalist Gromov for a time? He had that day on Tverskoi Boulevard. In a flash, flooded with Indian ink and lilac mist. In a flash, like Hyde jumping into Jekyll's body from the foam-rubber chair in Faust's laboratory. You see, Dr. Gromov had his Nikodimov and Zargaryan who controlled the same mysterious forces. That meant that Zargaryan, Nikodimov and I, the three of us equally, had taken part in the simultaneous current of certain parallel non-intersecting lives. How many parallel lives were there? Two, five, six, a hundred, a thousand of them? What course were they following, and in what space or time? I remembered Galya's talk with Hyde about the plurality of worlds. What if it wasn't a fantastic hypothesis, but a scientific discovery - one more mystery solved about matter? But my mind refused to accept this explanation. All the more so because my mind was untrained in the exact sciences. I could only bewail the limited knowledge of our education in the humanities. I did not have enough brains to think over, to ponder upon, the problem I had brought to light, That was the state of mind I was in when Galya dropped in on her way to work. She had learned from Olga last night that I'd gone to see Zargaryan, and she was literally burning with curiosity to know if I'd found the key to the puzzle. "I found it," I said. "Only I can't turn the key in the lock: I haven't the strength." I told her about the chair in Faust's laboratory, and about my three 'dreams'. She was silent for a long time before she gave me a question. "Had he grown old?" "Who?" "Oleg." "What did you expect? Twenty years have gone by." She fell silent again, lost in thought. I was afraid that her personal curiosity overshadowed that of a scientist. But I was mistaken. "Something else interests me," she said, breaking the silence. "The fact that you saw him grown older. With wrinkles. With a scar that never existed. It's impossible!" "Why?" "Because you've never read Pavlov. You cannot see in a dream what you've never seen in real life. The blind from birth do not see dreams. And what was Oleg like when you knew him? A boy, a youth. Where did the wrinkles of a forty-year-old man come from, and the scar on the temple?" "But if it's not a dream?" "You've already got an explanation?" Galya shot back. I got the idea that she had guessed exactly what explanation I thought the most likely, and the most frightening. "So far it's only an attempt at an explanation," I reminded her hesitantly. "I keep trying to compare my adventure with these dreams.... If Hyde could play such a joke on Jekyll, then why couldn't they both exchange roles?" "Mysticism." "But don't you remember your talk with Hyde about the plurality of worlds? Parallel worlds, parallel lives?" "Rubbish," objected Galya. "You simply don't want to take it seriously," I reproached her. "It's easy enough to say 'rubbish'. They said the same thing about the Copernicus hypothesis." I didn't make her give in by this remark but at least forced her to think about my own thesis. "Parallel worlds? Why parallel?" "Because they don't intersect anywhere." Galya laughed, openly scornful. "Don't try writing science fiction: that's my advice. You wouldn't get anywhere. Non-intersecting worlds?" She snorted. "So Nikodimov and Zargaryan have found a point of intersection? A window into an anti-world?" "Who knows?" I said. I found out the answer to that two hours later in Faust's laboratory. OPEN, SESAME! To tell the truth, I went there as if to an examination, with the same inner trepidation and fear before the unknown. Again and again I ran over the dreams I recalled, the visions I'd seen during the experiment. I called them 'dreams' from habit, though I had come to the final conclusion that they weren't dreams at all. I compared all details suggesting such a comparison, and systematized my conclusions. "Have you got it well rehearsed?" asked Zargaryan merrily when he met me. "Rehearsed what?" I muttered, embarrassed. "Your story, of course." He saw through me. But rising anger made me overcome my embarrassment. "I don't much like your attitude." He only laughed in answer. "Do all the complaining you like. The tape-recorder isn't turned on yet." "What tape-recorder?" "The 'Yauza-10'. For purity of sound, it's wonderful." I hadn't expected to make a tape-recording. It's one thing to tell a story, bat quite another to tape-record. I shook my head, almost refusing. "Sit down and begin," Nikodimov encouraged me. "You'll make your mark in science. Pretend you're dictating to a pretty stenographer." "Only no hunter's tales," added Zargaryan with sly humour. "The tape's supersensitive, with Munchausen tuning.... I'm switching on." Childishly, I stuck my tongue out at him, and my shyness disappeared at once. I began my story without any prologue, quite freely, and the more I talked the more colourful it became. I did not simply relate it: I explained and compared, looking into the past; compared the vision with reality and my experiences with my subsequent views. All Zargaryan's irony disappeared like smoke: he listened greedily, stopping me only to reverse the tape. I resurrected for them all the impressions I had in the lab chair: Lena's anger in the hospital, Sichuk's face convulsed with evil, and the lifeless smile of Oleg on the operating table, everything that I recalled and that had staggered me, that even shocked me now while I tape-recorded my still vivid recollections. The tape reel was still turning when I finished: Zargaryan did not immediately turn it off, and it recorded the whole minute of silence that reigned in the room. "So you didn't see the department store arcade," he observed bitterly. "Nor the road to the lake. A pity." "Wait, Ruben," Nikodimov stopped him. "That's not the point. You see. the phases are almost identical. The same time, the same people." "Not quite." "Only infinitesimal deviations." "But they are there," said Zargaryan, "Not mathematically." "And the difference in the signs?" "Does such a difference change a man? Time changes, perhaps. If it's a minus phase, then it's possibly time coining from an opposite direction - counter-time." "Don't be so sure. Perhaps it's only a different system of counting time," said Zargaryan. "All the same, everybody will call it fantasy! And reason?" "If you don't violate reason, you won't get anywhere in general. Who said that? Einstein." The conversation didn't get any clearer. And I coughed. "Excuse me," said Nikodimov, embarrassed. "We got carried away. Your dreams don't give us any peace." "But are they dreams?" I expressed my doubts. "You doubt it? So you've been thinking, have you? Maybe we'll start off the explanations with yours?" I remembered all Galya's sneers, but I was not afraid of hearing the same again. So I stubbornly repeated the myth of Jekyll and Hyde, who met on the crossroads of space and time. If this was an anti-world, plurality, mysticism, the ravings of a mad dog - so be it! But I had no other theories to explain it with. However, Nikodimov did not even smile. "Have you studied physics?" he asked suddenly. "Through a school textbook," I admitted, and thought: 'Now he'll start!' But Nikodimov did not mock me, he merely stroked his beard. "A rich training. But how, with the help of a school textbook can you define a plurality of worlds? Let's say, in Cartesian co-ordinates?" Searching my memory, I found the Wellsian Utopia that Mr. Barnstaple got into, without turning off an ordinary highway. "Excellent," agreed Nikodimov. "We'll begin with that. What did Wells compare our three-dimensional world to? To a book whose every page was a two-dimensional world. So, one might suppose that in multi-dimensional space there might also be neighbouring three-dimensional worlds, moving in time along nearly parallel routes. That's according to Wells. When he wrote his novel after the First World War, the genius Dirac was still a youth, and his theory received popular acclaim only in the thirties. You can, of course, picture up what Dirac's 'vacuum' is?" "Approximately," I said carefully. "Generally speaking, it is not a void, but something like a neutrino-antineutrino pulp. Like plankton in the ocean." "Picturesque, but not lacking sense," agreed Nikodimov again. "And this very same plankton from elementary particles, the neutrino-antineutrino gas, constitutes a border between worlds with a plus sign and those with a minus sign. There are scientists who look for anti-worlds in other galaxies, but I prefer seeking them right next door. And not only a symmetrical system - world and anti-world, but the infinity of this symmetry. As we have an infinite number of combinations in a game of chess, so even here there are infinite combinations of worlds and anti-worlds, adjacent to each other. You ask how I picture this adjacency? As a stable, geometrically isolated existence? No, on the contrary. In a simplified form this is the idea of the inexhaustibility of matter, of its perpetual motion generating these worlds along certain new, still unknown co-ordinates. To be more exact, along certain phase-like trajectories. "Well, but what about ordinary motion then?" I interrupted, perplexed. "I'm also a particle of matter, but I move through space independent of your quasi-motion." "Why 'quasi'? One is simply independent of the other. You are moving through space independent of your moving through time. Whether you sit at home or travel somewhere - you get equally older. So it is here: in one world you might, let's say, be travelling by sea; in the other, at the very same time, you are playing chess or having dinner at home. More than that: in the infinite repetition of worlds you may travel, be ill, or work; while in other infinite plurality of similar worlds, you don't actually exist, perhaps through an unfortunate accident or suicide, or you were simply never born at all because your parents never met. I hope I make myself clear?" "Quite clear." "He's shamming," said Zargaryan. "What he needs right now is a vivid example - that's clear at a glance. Look here, imagine an unusual reel of film. In one frame you are flying in an aeroplane, in another you are shooting, in a third you are killed. In one frame a tree is growing, in another it is cut down. In one, the Pushkin monument stands on Tverskoi Boulevard, in another in the centre of the square. In a word, life shown in separate frames, moving, let us say, vertically from below upward or from above downward. And now picture the same life in separate frames, but moving horizontally from every frame, from left to right or vice versa. There you have an approximate model of matter in multi-dimensional space. Now what do you think is the most essential difference between this model and the simulated object?" I didn't answer. What was the use of guessing? "The difference is that there are no identical frames, but identical worlds exist." "Similar," I countered. "Not only," Nikodimov interrupted. "We still don't know the law by which matter moves in these dimensions. Take the simplest law: the sinusoidal. With the ordinary sinusoid, the slightest change in the argument brings about a corresponding change of function, and that means another world. But in a period, we get the same value of the sine and consequently the same world. And so on into eternity." "That means I might also find myself in a world like ours? Exactly the same?" "You wouldn't even notice any difference," said Zargaryan. "And how do you explain what happened to me on the boulevard?" "The same as you do. Jekyll and Hyde." "A Gromov from another world who looks the same as me?" "Precisely. A certain Nikodimov and a Zargaryan in that world transferred the conscious mind of your double. This did not occur momentarily, not all at once. Your own mind protested, argued: that explains the dualism during the first few minutes. But afterwards it gave in to the aggressor." I suggested the proposition that my trying episode in the hospital was an exchange visit, but Nikodimov doubted it. "It's possible, of course, but scarcely likely. It would be closer to the truth to suppose that it was a Gromov mor