local town theatre. My  legs were  shaking, my head
spinning, and I  sat down without  concealing my  relief which  was at  once
noticed.
     "You are completely recovered. Very good.
     And  now tell the truth. Wahrheit!" said  the  boyish SS-man,  and fell
into an expectant silence.
     I was silent too. I had no fear. I was saved  from that  by the feeling
that all  this was illusory; I felt remote from all that was  going on. This
wasn't,  you see, happening  in my life and not to me; this  puny, emaciated
body in a dirty quilted  jacket and broken  army boots did  not belong to me
but  to  another Sergei  Gromov living in  another  time and  space.  Thus I
comforted  myself  with  the  help  of  physics  and  logic, but  physiology
painfully refuted them with every breath I drew, with every movement I made.
For now this body was mine and it had to take what was  destined  for it.  I
asked myself in alarm  whether I had,  in  the long run, enough strength and
will, enough endurance, courage and inner pride.
     In  the war  days  it had been easier. We were all  prepared for such a
contingency by all the conditions of  the war years,  by the way of life, by
the  spirit  of the times - severe and hard as they were. I  was ready then,
and probably so was the  Sergei Gromov  whose place I  now occupied in  this
room. But was I  ready now? I felt chilled for an instant and, I'm afraid to
confess it, terribly frightened.
     "You understand me?" asked the SS-man.
     "Perfectly," I nodded.
     "Then  talk. Wieviel  Soldaten  hat  er?  Stolbikov?  What  detachment?
Soldier, partisan? Number of men?"
     "I don't know," I said.
     I was  not lying. I  honestly didn't know the  strength of all partisan
formations under  Stolbikov's  command. It continually changed. Now a number
of groups would go scouting deep in the rear and not return for weeks, now a
detachment  would  be  reinforced by  formations operating  in  neighbouring
sections. Besides, my Stolbikov had one complement of men, but the Stolbikov
living in this space-time might have another, either more or less. If I told
all  I knew, it would  be interesting to know whether it would coincide with
the reality the SS-man was interested in. Judging by his insignia, he was an
Obersturmfuhrer.
     "Tell the truth," he repeated severely. "It's better that way. Wahrheit
ist besser."
     "But I honestly don't know."
     His blue eyes became noticeably blood-shot.
     "Where are your documents? Here," he cried, and threw my wallet  on the
desk. I wasn't sure it was mine, but I presumed it was. "We know everything.
Alles."
     "If you already know, then why ask?" I said quietly.
     Before he could answer, the field-telephone buzzed on the desk. With an
agility that surprised me, he grabbed the receiver  and  stood at attention.
His face  was transformed into  a mixture of servility  and delight. He kept
repeating 'Ja,  Ja', in  German and clicked his heels. Then he put my wallet
into a drawer and pushed a buzzer.
     "They will take you away now," he told me in bad  Russian. "Keine Zeit.
Three hours in a cell."
     He indicated where with his thumb.
     "Think, remember, and we'll talk some more.  Otherwise, it will  be the
worse for you. Zehr schlecht."
     I was taken into  the cellar  and pushed into a barn-like room with  no
window. I felt the walls and the floor. The first were of stone, sticky with
mould,  and the  Door was  covered with wet  mud. My  legs  would  no longer
support me, but  I  did  not risk lying down.  I sat against  the wall on my
hands, just the same it was drier.
     The  reprieve I got aroused the  hope of a safe way out. The experiment
might end, and the lucky Hyde abandon the Jekyll buried here in the mud. But
I was immediately  ashamed of my thoughts.... Both  Galya and  Klenov  would
have called  me  a  coward without blinking an eye. Zargaryan and  Nikodimov
wouldn't have said it, but would have  thought it. Maybe,  somewhere in  the
depths of her soul, Olga would as well. Thank goodness I had thought of this
in  time. I began to think of a lot of things. About the fact that now I had
to answer for  two  -  for him  and me. How he would  have  behaved, I could
guess: I might even say I knew. You see, he was myself, the same particle of
material in one of the  forms  of its existence beyond our three-dimensional
world. Chance might change his lot, but not his  character, not his line  of
conduct.  So it was all clear: I had no choice, not even the right to desert
with the help of  Nikodimov's wizardry. If I  were returned now, I would beg
Nikodimov to send me back to this hole.
     I must have  fallen  asleep there,  despite  the damp and cold, because
dreams overtook me. His dreams.  A bearded  Stolbikov in  a sheepskin hat, a
middle-aged  woman in  a  padded  jacket  with a tommy-gun  slung  from  her
shoulder who was slicing  or  shredding  a  round loaf  of  rye bread. Naked
children were on the bank of pond covered with green duckweed. I immediately
recognized the pond with  the crooked pines on the shore, could see the road
between  steep  clay cliffs  leading  down  to  it.  It  was my  dream, long
remembered and always incomprehensible. Now I knew where it came from.
     The dreams shortened my reprieve. Again  the  boyish SS-man demanded my
presence. This time he was not smiling.
     "Well?" he shot out. "Are we going to talk?"
     "No," I said.
     "Schade," he drawled. "A pity. Put your hand on the table. Your fingers
so." He snowed me  how  with  his  puffy palm and  wide-spread  sausage-like
fingers.
     I  obeyed. Not without fear, I admit; but going  to the dentist is also
terrifying at times.
     Fatty pulled from  beneath the  table a  piece of wood  with a  handle,
something like an ordinary joiner's wooden hammer, and cried:
     "Ruig!"
     The wooden hammer smashed deliberately  down  on my little  finger. The
bone crunched and a savage pain  shot  up my arm  to the  shoulder.  I could
barely restrain a scream.
     "Ve-ry  good?"  he  asked, stressing  the syllables with  satisfaction.
"Will you talk or not?"
     "No," I repeated.
     Again the hammer was raised, but I involuntarily pulled back my hand.
     Fatty laughed.
     "You can  save your hand, but not your  face," he  said, and  instantly
slashed me across the face.
     I lost consciousness, but  came to almost at once. Somewhere close by I
heard Nikodimov and Zargaryan talking.
     "There's no field."
     "None at all?"
     "No."
     "Try another screen."
     "The same thing."
     "And if we try more power?"
     Silence.  Then Zargaryan answered: "Got  it.  But  very weak visuality.
Maybe he's sleeping?"
     "No. We registered the activity of the hypno-genetic system a half hour
ago. Then he woke up."
     "And now?"
     "I can't see it."
     "I'll give more power."
     I couldn't interfere. I  could not feel  my body. Where was it? In  the
lab chair or the torture chamber?
     "Got the field," said Zargaryan.
     I opened my  eyes,  or rather I partly opened them.  Even the slightest
movement  of  my eyelids aroused a sharp, piercing agony. Something warm and
salty trickled from my lips. My hand seemed to be burning over a fire.
     The whole room, from floor to ceiling, seemed full of turbid, quivering
water  through  which  I could dimly make out two figures in black uniforms.
One was my fat man, the other looked slender and more symmetrically built.
     They were talking abruptly and fast, in German. My German is poor, so I
didn't  listen. But I thought  the conversation was  about me. First I heard
Stolbikov's name mentioned and then mine.
     "Sergei Gromov?" repeated the thin one in surprise,  and said something
to the other.
     Then he  ran over to me and carefully wiped my face with a handkerchief
that smelled of perfume and sweat. I did not stir.
     "Gromov ... Sergei..." repeated the second SS-man  in pure Russian, and
bent over me. "Don't you know me?"
     I looked at him and  recognized the man's face; though older, it  still
retained the long-remembered features of my former classmate, Genya Muller.
     "M tiller," I whispered, and lost consciousness again.

        COUNT SAINT GERMAIN

     I woke up in a  different room in someone's dwelling. Not  a cosy room,
but one  furnished  with  the pretentiousness of  vulgar chic.  A potbellied
cabinet filled with crystal glasses, a redwood buffet, plush sofa with round
bolsters,  branching  deer-horns  over the door, and  a  copy of  Murrillo's
Madonna in a large gilded  frame.  All this  had either been  accumulated by
some local official or brought here from various flats by requisition of the
Hauptsturmfiihrer to make a quiet little nest for top brass.
     The Hauptsturmfiihrer himself, in an opened jacket, was sprawled lazily
on the sofa looking  at an illustrated magazine, and I  stole  a look at him
from the morocco leather chair  in  which  I  sat  beside a table  laid  for
supper. My bandaged hand was no longer painful. But I was devilishly hungry.
However, I kept silent and did not stir,  hoping to avoid showing  it in the
presence of my former classmate.
     I had known Genya Muller from the age of seven. Together we entered the
same school situated in a  quiet  Arbat side-street, and  had shared all our
joys and troubles  right  through  to  the  ninth  form.  Muller  senior,  a
specialist in weaving looms, had come to Moscow from Germany  soon after the
Treaty of Rapallo. He had first worked in the Altman Concession and later on
somewhere in the Mostrikotazh,  the Moscow Weaving Mills. Genya  was born in
Moscow  and in school nobody counted him  a foreigner.  He  spoke Russian as
well as we  did, studied the same things, read the same books, sang the same
songs.  He was  not liked in school, and I  hadn't liked his  arrogance  and
boastfulness either. But  we  lived in  the same block  of flats, sat at the
same desk, and were considered friends.  With the years  our  friendship had
dwindled  away through a rising difference in  viewpoint and interests.  And
when the Hitlerites had occupied Poland, the Muller family moved to Germany,
and Genya even forgot to say goodbye to me when he left.
     True, my Genya  Muller wasn't this  Muller who now lay on the sofa with
his  boots off. and  I also  wasn't this  Gromov, all  in bandages,  who sat
opposite  him in the red morocco  chair. But  as  the experiments had shown,
phases  of  adjacent  existences  do  not  change  a  man's  temperament  or
character. So even  my  Genya Miiller  had  all the grounds to grow  up into
Heinz Muller, Hauptsturmfuhrer  in  the Nazi stormtroopers  and chief of the
Kolpinsk  Gestapo.  And,  as  a  result,  I  could conduct  myself  with him
accordingly.
     He lowered the magazine and our eyes met.
     "So you've woken up at last," he said.
     "Regained consciousness, rather."
     "Don't  put  on. After our  sorcerer and magician Dr.  Getsch amputated
your finger and did  a good job  of  cosmetic  stitching, you slept for  two
hours. Like a log."
     "But what for?"
     "What d'you mean - what for?"
     "Why the cosmetic stitching?"
     "To  fix your  face. Kreiman overdid it  with his hammer.  Well, so now
you're a good-looking fellow again."
     "Maybe Herr Muller has a fiancee he wants to marry off. If so, he's too
late."
     "Gut out the Herr business. Here  it's Genya Muller and Sergei  Gromov.
Somehow they ought to be able to get together."
     "But why, I'd like to know?" I asked.
     Muller got up and stretched.
     "Isn't that enough of your 'why's and wherefore's'? I pulled you out of
the grave today. And you still can ask 'why'?"
     "Then I  won't ask. You want to make me an informer, or some other kind
of rat. I'm no good for that."
     "You're good for the grave."
     "So are you," I  parried. "We'll still  make  it. And now I could eat a
horse."
     He laughed. "You sure hit  the  nail -  we'll still make  the grave all
right."
     He sat at the table and poured cognac for us both.
     "Our  vodka's  junk,  but  the  cognac's excellent. Right  from  Paris.
Martel. What'll we drink to?"
     "Victory," I said.
     He laughed even louder.  "You amuse me, Sergei. A clever toast. I drink
to it." He  drank,  and added with  a crooked smile, "And next I'll drink to
getting out of this dirty hole fast. I've  got  an uncle in  Berlin, who has
connections. Promised me  a transfer  this  summer.  To Paris,  or Athens. A
little farther from the firing line."
     "So they're bothering you?"
     "Of course they are.  Any minute some skunk  may throw  a grenade  from
round a corner! They got my predecessor. And sentenced me."
     "So you won't live long," I observed indifferently.
     Without taking a bite, he again filled the  glasses.  His  hands shook.
"That's  why I'm hurrying up my transfer. If only  they don't drag  it  out,
I'll be sitting there in Paris and, before I can look round, the war will be
over."
     "We'll still keep fighting," I said. "You'll have to wait for two and a
half years."
     His hand holding the glass froze in mid-air above the table.
     "To be  precise," I explained, "two and a half years from now on May 8,
1945,  an agreement of unconditional surrender will be signed. And  wouldn't
you like to  know who will surrender? The  Germans, friend, the Germans. And
where do you think this will happen? Right in Berlin, almost on the ruins of
your imperial chancellery."
     Without  tasting his cognac, Muller  slowly put his  glass back  on the
table.  At  first he was  amazed, then frightened.  I intercepted his glance
directed  at the small  table  by the sofa  where  his  Walther pistol  lay.
Probably he thought I'd gone crazy and immediately remembered his gun.
     Before  he  could  reply,  the  buzzer  of  the intercom-phone went. He
grabbed  the  receiver, gave his  name,  listened and said something fast in
German.  I caught one word:  Stalingrad. Then I remembered what my companion
had said  in the  Gestapo's  dark-green 'Black Maria' - 'now it's either the
very end of January or the beginning of February'. And it was.
     Muller returned to the table with a gloomy face.
     "Stalingrad?" I inquired.
     "Do you understand German?"
     "No, I merely guessed. Your Paulus is done for. Kaput."
     He tapped his knife cautiously on the plate.
     "Don't talk nonsense. Paulus has just been made a General Fieldmarshal.
And Mannstein has already reached Kotelnikov."
     "Your  Mannstein  has been defeated.  Smashed  and  thrown back. As for
Paulus - it's the end. What's the date today?"
     "February 2."
     I laughed. How wonderful to know the future!
     "Well then, this is the day that Paulus  capitulated at Stalingrad, and
your Sixth Army, or  what's left of it,  have  become prisoners with  'Heil,
Hitler' on their lips."
     "Shut  up!" he  screamed, and took his pistol from  the table. "I won't
forgive anybody who makes such jokes as that!"
     "But I'm  not  joking,"  I said, putting a  piece of tinned  ham in  my
mouth. "Can you check it somewhere? Go ahead, call up."
     Muller thoughtfully played with his gun.
     "All right. I'll  check. I'll call von Hennert-he should know. Only get
this: if it's a hoax, I'll shoot you personally, and right now."
     He went to the telephone, took a long time getting connected, and asked
something, standing as straight as if on review as he listened. Then he hung
up and tossed the pistol onto the sofa without deigning to glance at me.
     "Well, was I right?"
     "How did you know?" he asked, approaching me. His face was a picture of
astonishment and perplexity. He looked at me as if asking whether I was I or
a representative of the High Command in my person.
     "Von Hennert was  quite surprised that  I knew. I  had to do some quick
thinking  on  that  score.  It  hasn't been proclaimed  officially  yet, but
Hennert knows."
     "And  did he say  that Hitler  had already ordered general mourning for
the Sixth Army?"
     "You know that too?"
     He  continued to stand,  not taking his eyes off me, puzzled and unable
to  figure it out. "Come now, where did  you get  it from? You couldn't have
known yesterday, that's for sure. But today.... Who could have told you? You
were brought here with somebody else, I believe?"
     "That was this  morning," I said.  "At that time, your Paulus was still
kicking back."
     He blinked his eyes.
     "Somebody might have picked up a Moscow broadcast?"
     "Where?" I laughed. "In the Gestapo?"
     "I don't get  it." He spread his hands in a gesture of despair. "Nobody
knows about it yet in town. I'm convinced of that."
     Suddenly I had an idea. It struck me that I might still save my unlucky
Jekyll. Nothing threatened him till morning, but he would  meet the  morning
fully conscious and free of my aggression. Then his life wouldn't be worth a
cent.  Muller  wouldn't  stand  on  ceremony  with  him, the more  so if  he
explained that he remembered nothing of today's  business.  I  had to think.
The play would be tough.
     "Don't try guessing,  Genya,"  I said. "You won't  figure  it out. It's
simply that I'm not the ordinary fellow you think I am."
     "What do you mean by that?"
     "Did you ever  hear that in one of our scientific research institutes,"
I began, improvising  as  if  inspired, "a research group was  liquidated in
1940? There was a lot of fuss about it abroad. Putting it broadly, it was  a
group of telepathists."
     "No," he replied vaguely. "Never heard of it."
     "But you know what telepathy is?"
     "Something like transmitting thoughts at a distance?"
     "Approximately,  yes. It's  not a new thing, even Sinclair wrote  about
it. Only idealistically, with all kinds of other-world nonsense. But we made
experiments  on  specifically scientific  grounds. The  brain,  you see,  is
looked  upon  as  a microwave  radio-set,  picking  up  idea-signals at  any
distance like  ultra-long wavelengths. A bit less than  a  micron. Everybody
has this inherent  possibility, but in rudimentary  form. However, it can be
developed if you find a precipient brain, that is, one specially tuned in to
inner induction. Many were tested, I among them. Well, so I turned out to be
an exceptional precipient."
     Muller sat down and rubbed his eyes.
     "Am I dreaming, or what? I don't get it."
     I  could already  see  by his face  that I'd won  the  game:  he almost
believed. Now I had to erase the 'almost'.
     "Have you  ever read about Gagliostro or St.  Germain?" I asked. Noting
his naive and empty eyes I realized he hadn't.
     "History  cannot  explain them,  especially St. Germain,"  I continued.
"The count lived in  the eighteenth century,  and he  could relate events of
the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centimes as if he had witnessed them.
He was considered a  wizard, an astrologer, an Agaspherus, European monarchs
vied with each other in inviting him to their courts. He foretold the future
too, incidentally,  and  rather  successfully.  But nobody's  been  able  to
explain what kind of man he was, not  so far. Historians ignore him, or call
him a charlatan. But  they  should have used the term telepathist. That's it
in  a nutshell. He received ideas from the past and the  future. Just  as  I
do."
     Muller  was  silent. I could not imagine what he was thinking of. Maybe
he guessed that I was a fake?  But for all that, I  had one irrefutable  and
invincible trump - Stalingrad.
     "The  future?"  he repeated thoughtfully.  "So  you  can  foretell  the
future?"
     "I mustn't  go too far," I mused  silently. "Muller's no fool and  he's
used to down-to-earth thinking." And that was what I played on.
     "It's not hard to foretell yours," I said aloud,  no less craftily than
his  sly question.  "You know yourself that after Stalingrad the underground
and  partisans will  be  more active everywhere. You won't live till summer,
Muller. You haven't a chance."
     His mouth curved in an ironical smile, as  if  saying 'all the same I'm
master of the situation'.
     "I can also foretell your future," he snapped at me aloud, "and without
telepathy. Tit for tat."
     "Man to man," I laughed. "But we can change the future. You mine, and I
- yours."
     He raised his brows, again not getting the drift. "Okay then, let's lay
down the cards."
     "You  send   me  to  the  partisans  today.  And  I'll  guarantee  your
immortality  to the end  of the  month. Not a  bullet or grenade will  touch
you."
     He was silent.
     "You  don't lose  much. You grant  me  life, and  you  win  the kitty -
yours."
     "To the end of the month," he laughed.
     "I'm not God almighty."
     "And the guarantee?"
     "My word and my documents. You saw them. And you must have guessed that
I can do something."
     He pondered  a long time, his eyes roaming silently  and vaguely around
the room. Then he poured the rest of the cognac  into our glasses. He hadn't
eaten, and the drink was already taking effect. His hands shook even more.
     "All right, then," he ground out. "One for the road?"
     "I'm not drinking," I said. "I'll  need  a clear head  and a firm hand.
You give me a gun, even if it's only your Walther, and tie my hands  loosely
so I can free them quickly."
     "And what tale am I to use to send you off? I've got a boss, you know."
     "So you're sending me to the top brass. Along some forest road."
     "There'll have to be a driver and a convoy. Can you handle them?"
     "I hope you won't regret the loss of the convoy?"
     "I'll regret, the loss of the car," he frowned.
     "So I'll return you the car and the driver. Agreed?"
     He went to the telephone and began making calls. I was surprised at the
speed with which he carried everything out. In about half an hour, a Gestapo
Opel-Kapitan was already ploughing its way through the village all  powdered
with snow. Beside me  sat an evil-looking Fritz with a tommy-gun  across his
knees. Let him stew in his bad temper. That didn't worry me any more than my
promise to Muller did. You see, / had promised, and not the Gromov who would
finally take my place. Only when would this happen and where? If in the car,
then I must do all I could so that my ill-starred  Jekyll would quickly  get
the hang of things. I stretched the slack bonds that tied my  arms behind my
back. They loosened at once. Another jerk and I could put my free hand in my
jacket  pocket and grip the butt of the blue-steel pistol. Now I had only to
wait.  With a sixth or  maybe sixteenth sense, I could  feel the approach of
that strange lightness of  my body, the head-spinning and  the mist that put
out everything - light, sounds and thoughts.
     And so  it was.  I woke up when  I  felt  Zargaryan's hand removing the
pick-ups.
     "Where were you?" he asked, still invisible.
     "In the past, Ruben. Too bad."
     He let out a loud and mournful sigh. Nikodimov was already  holding the
tape against the light to observe it, pulling it from the container.
     "Did you  follow the  time, Sergei Nikolaevich?" asked Nikodimov. "That
is, when you entered and left the phase?"
     "Morning and evening. One day."
     "It's twenty minutes to twelve midnight now. Does that agree  with your
count?"
     "Approximately."
     "A trivial lag behind our time."
     "Trivial?" I laughed. "More than twenty years."
     "On a scale of a thousand years, that's almost nothing."
     But I  wasn't worried about  thousand-year scales. I was anxious  about
the fate of Sergei Gromov whom I'd left about twenty-five years  ago in  the
suburbs of Kolpinsk. I think, by the way, he did not waste any time.

        TWENTY YEARS AFTER

     The new experiment  had become as humdrum as a visit to the polyclinic.
Now I didn't gather  friends  together before leaving, Zargaryan didn't come
for me, and  nobody accompanied me in  the morning. I took the  bus  to  the
institute  and  Nikodimov at  once  sat me in the chair without  testing the
degree of my good will and readiness for the test.
     He  only  asked: "When  did you  get  into  difficulties  in  the  last
experiment? Was it toward evening, in the late afternoon?"
     "About then. It was already dark outside."
     "The apparatus focused the sleep period, then there was  an increase of
nervous strain, and finally a state of shock...."
     "That's quite correct."
     "I think  we  can now  anticipate  such  a complication,  if it  should
arise," he said. "And bring your psyche back."
     "That's exactly what I don't want. You already know..." I broke in.
     "No, this time we aren't taking any risks."
     "What  risk? Who's talking about  risk?" thundered Zargaryan, appearing
like a phantom, all in white against the background of the white doors.
     He had been in the next room, checking the power generator.
     "I'd give a  year of my life  for  one minute of your journey," he went
on.  "It isn't a  science,  as  Nikodimov thinks. It's poetry. Do  you  like
Voznesensky? "
     "More or less," I answered.
     He recited:

     In autumn time when leaves are dying
     Within a dawn-lit perilous wood,
     Someone's fate and name come flying
     Like seeds - and in our minds intrude.

     He broke off and asked: "What words stick in your memory?"
     "Dawn-lit and perilous," I told him.
     I could not see  him  now, and his voice came  from the  darkness. "The
main thing is 'dawn-lit'. So let's be solemn. Remember that  you are  at the
gateway to the future."
     "You're sure of that?" came Nikodimov's voice.
     "Absolutely."
     I heard no more. Sounds died out until the dead silence was broken by a
monotonous, rumbling roar.
     Now there was no  silence, no mist. I found myself in a soft chair by a
wide, slightly  concave window. Strangers  sat  in similar chairs beside and
opposite me. The surroundings reminded me of the interior of  an airliner or
the  coach of a suburban train  where people sit in threes across from  each
other, with a passageway running from door to door. This passageway or aisle
was  probably  about forty  metres long. I  tried  to orient  myself without
looking at my neighbours, slipping sidelong glances from under lowered lids.
My  attention was drawn first to my hands - large, oddly white,  with a  dry
clean skin such as occurs after frequent and hard scrubbing. The significant
thing was that they were the hands of an old man. "How  old am I  and what's
my profession?" I pondered.  "A lab man, doctor, scientist?" The suit I wore
provided no direct answer - it was not new but neither was it much worn, and
it was made  of a smooth material  with an unusual pattern. There was no use
trying to guess.
     I looked  out the  window. No, it wasn't  an airliner because  we  were
flying too low for  an aeroplane of  this size,  lower  than  flight at zero
altitude as  they  call  it. But it wasn't a  train either, because we  were
flying over the earth, over homes and small groves, almost scraping the tops
of the  pine  and  fir  trees and,  incidentally, flying  so  fast that  the
landscape outside the window ran together  into a sickening  blur. From want
of habit, it hurt to look at it.
     I got a handkerchief from my pocket and wiped my eyes.
     "Do they hurt?"  grinned a  passenger sitting opposite.  He was  a thin
grey-haired man  wearing gold-framed glasses without ear-pieces - no knowing
how they stayed on. "We  forget when we're older that  we shouldn't look out
the window. It's not the fifties now. Gall it an observation car!"
     "What, you don't  like it?" asked a young fellow challengingly from  an
aisle seat.
     "Of  course I do. And why not? Who wouldn't like it? An hour and a half
from Leningrad to Moscow. Bit of a novelty."
     "Why a novelty?" said  the  young  man with a shrug. "Even twenty years
ago  they were talking of monorail roads.  It's only modernization.  And why
look out the window? Turn on the TV," he told me.
     I felt confused, not having the faintest idea where the television  was
or how  to  turn  it  on.  I  was anticipated  by my  grey-haired  neighbour
opposite. He  pressed some  kind of lever  at the side, and  the  window was
covered by the  familiar frosty screen.  The picture arose somewhere in  its
depths, so  that it could easily be seen by those sitting sidewise to it, as
I was.  It was in  stereo-colour and depicted a  huge, multi-storey building
beautifully ornamented with  grey and red tiles. A helicopter was landing on
its flat roof out of a pure blue sky.
     "We bring you  the latest news,"  said an unseen announcer.  "Party and
Government leaders visit  the  three-hundredth  housing-commune in the  Kiev
district of the capital."
     A  group  of well-dressed  middle-aged  people  left the cabin  of  the
helicopter  and disappeared under  a cupola of plexiglas. Express  lifts and
escalators flashed by. The eye of  the camera was aimed down at the gleaming
windows of the ground floor.
     "This floor is occupied by a large department  store,  repair shops and
dining-rooms to serve the building's occupants."
     Now  the  guests  strolled  slowly from  floor to floor,  through rooms
furnished and decorated in shapes and colours quite new to me.
     "One turn  of the plastic lover and the bed goes into the wall, and out
comes a concealed  book-case. And this couch may  be widened  or lengthened:
its metal supports and the foam-rubber surface expand to double the size."
     There followed an open vista of public foyers with giant television and
cinema screens.
     "This  floor is wholly given over  to  young  people  who prefer living
separately," commented the announcer, sliding walls  apart for us to see the
unusually-furnished rooms.
     "I can't understand it.  Why do they  do all this?" broke  in one lady,
knitting away and giving a scornful sniff as she gave me a sidelong glance.
     I looked at the young man on the aisle seat, awaiting his remark, and I
wasn't left disappointed. How like he was to the young people I knew! He had
caught  from  them  the torch  of enthusiasm,  almost boyish  vehemence,  an
uncompromising attitude to everyone who wasn't in step with the times.
     "House-communes weren't just  built today ... they're  not new  ... yet
you still don't know why..." he said.
     "I certainly  don't  know!" insisted  the lady. "Glory  to  God,  we no
sooner get rid of shared flats, and they're back again!"
     "What's 'back again'?"
     "Your house-communes. We're resurrecting living in shared flats."
     "Don't talk nonsense. People are not leaving separate, private flats to
go  into communal flats - whatever they are,  I certainly don't  know.  They
leave to go into  house-communes! You're looking at them now. They provide a
new, wider capacity of living conveniences!"
     The lady with  the knitting fell silent. Nobody supported  her.  And on
the  screen smoked the oil derricks conquering a leaden garnet  sky over fir
and larch trees.
     "We are with you in Third Baku," continued the announcer, "at the newly
opened section of the Yakutsk oil region in Siberia."
     A Third  Baku! In my time, I had only known two of them. How many years
had gone by? I gave the same silent question to the white-gowned surgeons on
the  screen  who  were demonstrating a bloodless operation  using  a  pencil
neutron-ray and  to the  inventors  of  a  compound  for sealing  wounds.  I
addressed  my silent  question to the announcer himself who finally appeared
before  the viewers. "In  conclusion, I  want to remind our audiences of the
deficit of specialists  in occupations which our economy is much in need of.
As before, we need adjusters for automatically  operated shops,  controllers
for tele-guided mines, operators for atomic electric stations, assemblers of
multi-purpose electronic computers. "
     The screen blanked out, and from somewhere overhead came  a  voice that
slowly  announced: "We are  arriving in  Moscow. The  warning lights are on.
With the green light, the escalator will be turned on."
     Above  the  door  in  front there was  a  flicker  of  red lights. They
darkened to blue and changed  to  a bright green.  Entering  the aisle,  the
passengers were carried along on a  moving floor. I joined them,  so I never
noticed the monorail station. Nor did I see it  from outside. The  escalator
road,  moving fast, swept us  into the  lobby  of a  Metro station. I didn't
recognize  it and, to speak honestly, never had a chance to get a  good look
at it. We were moving at almost  hydrofoil speed, slowing  down only  at the
escalator stairs which took us  down to  the platform. "Where's  the  ticket
booth?" I wondered. "Can the  Metro be free  of  charge?" This was  answered
affirmatively by the stream  of passengers pushing into the open doors of an
incoming train.
     I  got off  at  Revolution  Square, which I  recognized at  once: below
ground where I came  across  the familiar bronze pieces of sculpture in  the
arcade, and above  where  the yellow columns of the  Bolshoi Theatre  looked
down at me from a distance across the green sweep of the square.
     And Marx's monument  stood in the same spot, but in place of the  Grand
Hotel  there  towered  a  gigantic  white  building  with flashing  ribs  of
stainless steel; and, instead of the side wing of the Metropole Hotel and to
the right,  ran  a vista  of noisy, multi-layered  streets.  But the  street
movement  seemed as  familiar  as  of old, almost unchanged. Along the  wide
pavement, as tightly-packed and unhurried as always,  went  the varicoloured
droplets  of the human current,  more colourful  than  ever  under the  high
summer sun. And along the  asphalted  canal road,  skirted by  buildings and
squares, rumbled another  current  of motor cars, also colourful. By careful
observation,  I could easily make  out the diversities. Different styles and
trends in clothing, the changed lines and shapes of cars. Most of the latter
rode on air-cushions rather than  wheels,  and reminded  you of the  bulging
brows of whales  or dolphins  as they  moved soundlessly on a violet haze of
air. "How  many years have  passed?" I asked myself, and again could find no
answer. Impossible to cross the square: an iron tracery of grilles ran along
the pavement, openings  for passengers  were  only at stops of  cigar-shaped
buses. I walked down toward the Alexandrovsky Gardens, passed the Historical
Museum, glanced fleetingly at the Red  Square. Nothing there was  changed  -
the same  tooth-tipped ancient red walls, the clock on  the Spasskaya Tower,
the   severe  monolithic  block   of  the  Mausoleum  and  that  miracle  of
architecture -  the cathedral of Vasily Blazhenny. But the huge hotel we had
built in Zaryadye wasn't there at all.  A bit farther  on, across the Moskva
River, rose unknown tall buildings behind the cathedral.
     I went into the gardens and sat on  a  bench.  And though the town  was
tumultuous with its full-blooded impetuous life, in  the morning hours here,
as  in  our world, the park was almost deserted.  To tell the  truth, I  was
feeling a bit lost. Where should I go, and what for? Where was my  home? Who
was I? And what experiences lay before me this day in  my new life? I felt a
wallet in my pocket, very plump  and compact,  made of flexible, transparent
plastic.  Without taking out  the identification card, I could read my name,
profession  and  address through  the  plastic.  Again I was  a  servant  of
Hippocrates,  some kind  of  director in a surgical clinic,  and probably an
eminent man  because the wallet contained congratulations from three foreign
scientific societies sent to Professor Gromov on his sixtieth birthday.
     So twenty years had passed! For me, it was already old age; for science
- 'seven-league boots.'  D'Artagnan, on his way to meet Aramis and Athos was
tormented by  doubts: would it  be  a bitter experience to  see  his friends
grown  old? His  doubts  had been dispersed,  but would  mine? In  my mind I
imagined myself calling at the address on the card. Probably  the door would
be opened  by Olga, twenty years older. And what  if  it wouldn't be Olga? I
certainly did not want to complicate the situation.  I mechanically  thumbed
through the pack of money in the wallet. It was  probably enough for one day
in the future. So what should I do? Perhaps simply  walk along  the streets,
travel around town, see it a little  more,  breathe the air of the future in
the  literal  sense?  Was  that such  a  little  thing?  For  Zargaryan  and
Nikodimov, it was. What material affirmation  could  I  bring them from  the
future? Go to the Lenin  Library - it probably existed here - dig into index
files and interest myself in topics found in  scientific journals? Suppose I
even managed to find something close to the work  of my scientific  friends.
Let's suppose. But how would I be able  to grasp anything from the  articles
of scientists of  the eighties, if sometimes even the attempts  of Zargaryan
to  express things in an  elementary and  popular form had been hopeless  to
overcome my  mathematical  ignorance! Memorize some kind of formula?  But  I
would forget  it at once! And if they were in a series? And if I came across
absolutely  unknown mathematical symbols? No,  no, it was nonsense - nothing
would come of it.
     Wrapped  in such thoughts,  I made my  way to a taxi stand. Ahead of me
stood  a  woman,  apparently  in  a  hurry  for  she  kept  looking  at  her
wrist-watch.
     "I've been waiting ten minutes, and not one car," she said. "Of course,
the bus is simpler and costs nothing. But the auto-taxi is more amusing."
     "The auto-taxi?" I repeated.
     "You're new here, of course," and she smiled. "That's what we call \the
driverless taxis, with automatic controls. Simply lovely to ride in!"
     But  the first  auto-taxi gave me the shivers. There was something wild
and  unnatural  in  this  snub-nosed  car  without  wheels  or  driver  that
soundlessly floated up to us and discharged four spider-legs as it came to a
stop. The invisible man behind the wheel opened the door, the  passenger got
in and said something into a microphone. The legs vanished as noiselessly as
they had appeared, the doors closed, and the car disappeared round a corner.
I  probably stared  after  it  rather  long and stupidly,  asking  myself in
perplexity: 'What do you say into the microphone, and  how do you pay if you
haven't enough change?' I was already thinking of taking flight when another
passenger approached the stop. There  was something  uniquely  elegant about
his  accentuated  leanness  and  pepper-and-salt  hair,  even  the carefully
trimmed spade-like beard gave him a sort of challenging look.
     "I'm in a hurry," he admitted, impatiently  looking round  the  square.
"Here's one coming, I think."
     A snubby auto-taxi had floated up and come to a stop.
     "I'll be glad to give you my turn," I said. "I'm in no hurry."
     "Why? Let's  go  together,  if you've  nothing against it.  First we'll
deliver you, and then me."
     Something familiar flashed in his dark  eyes. And he had the same high,
sloping and  pure forehead,  the  same  piercing and amused glance. Only the
beard transformed his face almost beyond recognition.

        AN OLDER ZARGARYAN

     I looked into his eyes again, questioningly.  It was he.  My Zargaryan,
twenty years older.
     But I didn't let on I knew him.
     "Where do you want to go?" he asked.
     I  merely shrugged.  Did it  matter where a man goes  who  hasn't  seen
Moscow for twenty years?
     "Then off we go. Don't object, mind you. I'll be a wonderful guide.  By
the way, where are you  having dinner? Would you  like  to  go to the Sofia?
With me? Honestly, I hate having dinner alone."
     Even nearing fifty,  he  hadn't lost his boyish ardour.  And he entered
hotly into the role of guide at once.
     "We  won't  go  along Gorky.  It's hardly changed.  We'll take Pushkin,
quite a new street. You won't know it. That will be our programming."
     He  fed the  programme  into  the microphone, adding where to  turn and
where to  stop.  The  taxi, soundlessly closing its doors, floated  off  and
skirted the square.
     "And how do you pay?" I inquired.
     "Put the money here  in  this  small box." He pointed to a slot  in the
panel under the windshield.
     "But if you've no change?"
     "We'll see that we get change."
     The  taxi had already  turned onto Pushkin,  as much  like  the Pushkin
Street of  my days as  the Palace of  Congresses is  like a  factory club. ,
Perhaps it was  outwardly  different  even in the sixties - you see, similar
worlds do riot mean they are identical - but now it was different on a gra