names, the child will hear. And after such an operation.
Before you're  yourself  again.  A new  heart.  Blood vessels with  cosmetic
seals! And they come to you with an ultimatum: agree, and that's all!"
     "There's no need to exaggerate," I said, feeling my way.
     "I'm not. I know all  about it. And Anna  supports it because she's all
wrapped up  in  science. She simply has no biological feelings! Julia's  not
her daughter. But she's yours. And she's my granddaughter."
     I thought that for  a father and grandmother, we were too young-looking
to have a  grown-up daughter who  was  going in  for some  kind  of  complex
scientific experiment. I remembered Ram's story and smiled.
     "And he can still smile!" cried out my companion.
     I  had  to  tell  her  the story  of  the invisible cloud,  as Ram  had
interpreted it.
     "So Anna hasn't told  her. That was wise. Now  you  can  withdraw  your
permission."
     "Why should I?"
     "And you  will  permit  them to turn  your daughter  into some  kind of
cloud? What  if it melts away? Or the atomic  structure cannot be  restored?
Let Bogomolov experiment on himself! They won't let him, d'you see. Too old,
they say,  and weak. Is it  any easier  for you and I that she is  young and
strong?" Aglaya  paced around the room  like  an  angry Brunhilda. "I  don't
understand you, Sergei. You were so hotly against it."
     "But I agreed, you see," I objected.
     "I  don't believe there was an agreement!"  she  screamed.  "And  Julia
doesn't know anything about it. You  tell her  they'll have  to  cancel  the
experiment ... she'll be  here  in a minute. A person is not the sole master
of his fate when he has a mother or father."
     I had  a flash  of hope: "Maybe the  experiment  won't take  place very
soon?"
     "It's arranged for today."
     I  thought it over. Julia,  apparently, was around twenty,  maybe a bit
younger  or older.  She was the  assistant of a professor, or something like
that. They  were going to carry out an experiment  which  to  us  would seem
utterly fantastic.  And here, too, it was apparently associated  with mortal
danger. A father had the right to interfere,  and not permit the  risk to be
taken. Now I had been handed this right. And I couldn't even  refuse to  use
it  without giving  myself away and creating a far more  critical situation.
Aglaya's eyes stared at me with unconcealed anger but I could not answer her
at  once. To  say 'no' to the  experiment and  eliminate the alarm  of those
people to whom the girl's fate  was so dear? But her place would be taken by
another, I was sure  of that. Somebody else would  just  as readily take the
risk as Julia. So how could I take away from her the right to do  this brave
act?  But to say 'yes' and perhaps deal a death blow to  the person  who was
unable now to interfere and correct me?
     "So  man  is not the sole master of  his fate when he has  a  mother or
father," I repeated thoughtfully.
     "Such is the tradition of this century," she snapped back.
     "A good tradition  when the risk is merely a foolhardy one. But if not?
If a man  or a girl takes the risk in the name of a higher interest than the
happiness or grief of his or her dear ones?"
     "Whose interests are higher?" asked Aglaya.
     "Those of one's native land, of course."
     "It is not threatened with danger."
     "Then those of science!"
     "It doesn't need human  lives. If somebody  dies, the scientists are to
blame who permit death to occur."
     "And if there's no blame, if the risk was a brave act?"
     'Brunhilda' again rose to her feet, magnificent as a monument.
     "They did not only transplant your heart."
     Without another  glance  at me, she swept through the wall which parted
before her like the obedient Red Sea in the Bible.
     "You did right," said Vera.
     I sighed. "But if not?"
     "One more talk, and then we'll take off the observation."
     The person I was to  talk with was already in the room. It is difficult
to describe her appearance, for men  usually don't  understand all the  fine
points  about hair-do and  dress. The latter was severe in cut, bright,  and
not so far in advance of our styles. The face  had something in  common with
the photographs in my family album - the Gromov look.
     I automatically studied the purity of her features, her discreet charm.
     "I'm waiting, Daddy," she said dryly.  "And they are waiting to hear at
the institute."
     "Didn't they tell you?" I asked.
     "What?"
     "That I'm no longer against it."
     She sat down and got up again. Her lips trembled.
     "Daddykins, you dear..." she sobbed, and buried her face in my sweater.
     I was aware of a faint,  strange scent. Like flowers  on a meadow after
rain when all the dust is washed away.
     "Have you a bit of time to spare?" I asked.
     "Tell  me  about  the  experiment.  After  the  shock, I seem  to  have
forgotten things."
     "I know. But it will pass."
     "Of course. But that's why I ask. Is it your discovery?"
     "Well, really," she laughed. "Naturally it's not mine,  nor Bogomolov's
either. It's  a  discovery from the future, from some  adjacent phase.  Just
picture any object in the shape of a rarefied electronic cloud. The speed of
displacement  is  terrific.  No  obstacle can withstand it, it  goes through
anything. As the experiments have shown, you can throw anything you wish for
an unlimited distance - transmit pictures, statues,  trees, houses. By  this
means  a day  or  so ago,  they  transmitted  from near Moscow a single-span
bridge right  across the Caspian  Sea,  setting  it down right  on  the spot
between Baku and Krasnovodsk. And now the experiment is  to be made  on man.
So far, only within the city limits."
     "All the same, I don't see how...."
     "Of course you wouldn't understand, Daddy, my dear old  historian. But,
roughly speaking, schematically, it's about like this: in any solid body the
atoms  are packed tight. They cannot spread  out, nor do they penetrate each
other because  of the presence  of electrostatic forces  of  attraction  and
repulsion. Now imagine that a  way has been found to reconstruct these inner
connections between the atoms and, without changing  the atomic structure of
the body, to  reduce it  to a rarefied state in which, let us say, atoms are
found  in gases. What do we get?  An  atomic-electronic cloud which one  can
again condense into the molecular-crystalline structure of a solid body."
     "But if...."
     "What 'if? The  technological process was mastered long ago." She rose.
"Wish me good luck, Daddy."
     "One question, child." I took her hand. "Do you know the phase theory?"
     "Of course. It's taught in school now."
     "Well, but I never had it. And I need  to memorize everything about it,
even if I do so mechanically."
     "There's nothing simpler.  Tell  Eric,  he's Mother's  chief hypnotist.
You've  forgotten everything, Dad. We  have a suggestion-concentrator  and a
dispersion unit." She  raised her wrist to  her face and  spoke into a  tiny
microphone on a bracelet.
     "In a minute... just a minute. Everything's  ready, and it's all right.
No,  that's not necessary, don't send for me ... I'll come by  the movement.
Of course,  it's  simpler.  And more convenient. No  rising,  no landing, no
noise or wind. I'll stand on the pavement ... and be there in two minutes."
     She  hugged me and, saying  good-bye, added:  "Only  no watching.  I've
turned off the super.  You'll be  kept  regularly informed and in good time.
And tell Eric and Dir no tricks, and not to switch into the network."
     And all in flight,  tense  and ethereal, as if skimming over waves, she
disappeared through the white swirling wall which closed after her.
     I  walked over to what looked to me like  a wall. Vera never raised her
voice. Glancing over my shoulder like a thief, I walked through the wall.
     Before me stretched a long corridor leading, apparently, to a verandah.
Through the glass door, if it  was glass, I  saw a twilight-darkened sky and
the rather distant outline of a skyscraper. When  I  came closer, there  was
neither glass nor door. I just walked through. A woman and  two men sat at a
low table. Ram  was hopping on one foot along the verandah which was guarded
by  low,  clipped bushes in  place  of a railing. They were covered by large
creamy flowers,  gleaming  with evening  dew, that  reminded  me  of  bright
Christmas tree ornaments.
     "Daddy's come," cried Ram, hanging on my neck.
     "Leave Daddy alone, Ram," said the woman severely.
     A soft light, falling from somewhere above,  slipped past  and left her
in the shadow. "Probably Anna," I thought.
     "Observation has been removed," she continued.
     "So now you've complete freedom to move about," laughed the older  man,
who must have been Eric.
     "Not complete," corrected the woman. "No farther than the verandah."
     The  younger man, Dir  apparently, jumped  up  and walked  along by the
bushes, not glancing  at me.  Long-legged, dressed in shorts that fitted his
waist snugly, he looked like an athlete in training.
     "Julia just left," I said.
     "You shouldn't have given permission," snapped Dir over his shoulder.
     "We all heard it," explained Anna.
     I was annoyed.  Everybody in this house hears and sees all. Just try to
be alone. Like living on a stage, I thought.
     "But you really have changed," smiled Anna. "Only I can't put my finger
on just what it is. Perhaps it's for the better?"
     I was silent, meeting Eric's attentive and observant glance.
     "Gromova has entered the eino-chamber," said a voice, but where it came
from I couldn't make out.
     "Do  you hear that?" Dir turned to us. "All the time  it was Julia-two,
and now she's already Gromova!"
     "Glory begins with a surname," laughed Eric.
     I  reminded him  that the super was  turned off, adding that Julia  had
asked the guests not to tune into the network.
     "WHAT did you say - guests?" asked Anna in surprise.
     "So what?" I asked guardedly.
     "There certainly is something wrong  with your memory. We  haven't used
the word 'guest' in its former meaning for half a century. Are you so buried
in history that you've forgotten?"
     "Now we  use the word 'guests'  only for visitors from other phases  of
space and time," explained Eric in a rather odd tone.
     I didn't manage to answer - the voice again interrupted.
     "Preparations for the experiment  are  proceeding in cycles," he rapped
out. "No deviations have been observed."
     "In twenty minutes," said Dir. "They won't begin earlier."
     Everybody was silent. Eric did  not take his attentive curious gaze off
me. There  was nothing unpleasant in his look, but it aroused my involuntary
alarm.
     "I heard your  request  about  formulas, when you  were  speaking  with
Julia,"  he said suddenly, with a quite benevolent intonation.  "I'd be glad
to help you. There's plenty of time, so come along."
     I got up, glancing down  past the green border.  The verandah  hung  at
skyscraper  height. Beneath  were  the  dark crowns of  trees, probably  the
corner of a city park. I went out with Eric.
     "Light!"  said Eric as  we entered  a  room,  apparently not addressing
anyone in particular. "Only on our faces and on the table."
     The  light in  the room,  as  if  compressed,  was  condensed  into  an
invisible projector that picked out of  the darkness my face and Eric's, and
a small table I found beside me.
     "Have you the formulas with you?" asked Eric. I gave him the cards from
the Mist.
     "I don't need them,"  he laughed. "This is your lesson. Put them on the
table and give them your complete attention.  Only the upper rows, the lower
ones aren't necessary. Those are calculations  which are filled  out by  the
electronic computer. Now read the upper rows line by line."
     "I shan't remember them," I protested.
     "That isn't necessary. Merely look at them."
     "For very long?"
     "Until I tell you not to."
     "Somewhere  you have  a suggestion concentrator," I  remembered Julia's
words.
     "What for?" laughed Eric.  "I work  by the old  methods. Now look at my
face."
     I saw only the pupils of the eyes, as big as burning icon-lamps.
     "Sleep!" he cried.
     Exactly what happened after that I don't remember.  I think I opened my
eyes and saw an empty table.
     "Where are the formulas?"
     "I threw them away."
     "But look here, I remember nothing."
     "It only  seems that way.  You'll remember later when you get home. You
are a guest, aren't you? Am I right?"
     "Quite right," I said decisively.
     "From what time?"
     "From the last century, in the sixties."
     He laughed softly  in  delight. "I  knew  it  from  the  results of the
medical  observations. Both  the  shock  and  loss  of  memory  looked  very
suspicious.  I  studied  you  by  videograph  when  Julia  was  speaking  to
Bogomolov. You  had such a  look on your  face,  as  if  you were  seeing  a
miracle. When she  said that she'd  go by the 'movement', I realized you had
never once stepped on  a  travelling panel-pavement. And we've had  them for
half a century. You had forgotten all that has come into being in our times,
right  up to the semantics of the  word 'guest'. You might deceive surgeons,
but not a parapsychologist."
     "All the better," I said. "Lucky for me  that I met you. I'm only sorry
I must leave without seeing anything, neither  the  houses nor  the streets,
neither  the  travelling-panels, nor  your technology,  nor even your social
system. To be on the heights of communist society - and not see anything but
a hospital room!"
     "Why on  the heights? Communism  isn't  stationary, it's  a  developing
system. We have to go far yet before we reach the heights. Now we are making
a  gigantic leap into the future  ...  with the conclusion of Julia's dream.
Your world will do the same after you take back the formulas  of our century
that are imprinted in your memory.  Although only minds meet so far, all the
same these meetings of worlds enrich us, and advance the dreams of mankind."
     I wanted to leave a remembrance behind me in this world, to a man whose
brain I had usurped.
     "May I leave a note for him?" I asked Eric.
     "Why a note? Simply tell him. It will be his voice, but your words."
     I looked around, perplexed.
     "You're looking for a tape-recorder? We  have  another and better means
of reproducing speech. Too long to explain. Simply talk."
     "I beg  you to  forgive me, Gromov, for usurping your place in life for
these  nine or ten hours," I began  hesitantly,  but  a sympathetic nod from
Eric urged me on. "I am only a guest, Gromov, and I'm leaving as suddenly as
I came. But I want to tell you that I've been very happy living  these hours
of your life. I interfered in it by giving Julia my blessing and letting her
do  this brave deed.  But I couldn't do otherwise. To refuse would have been
cowardly, and to stop her - obscurantism. I regret only one thing: I  cannot
wait for the victory of your daughter, nor for the  victory of your  science
and system. That great happiness will belong to you."
     "Sergei, Eric!" cried Dir, running in. "It's starting!"
     "Too  late," I  said,  feeling  the  familiar  approach  of  the  dark,
soundless abyss. "I'm leaving you. Good-bye."

        IN PLACE OF AN EPILOGUE

     Outside my window lies the street lashed by wind and rain. The electric
lamps in the murky rain-curtain are  like spiders  lost in their own webs. A
bus goes tearing through the gloom of the slanting shield of water. It is an
ordinary autumn evening in Moscow.
     I  have  finished the last lines of  the  essay or  memoirs, or perhaps
personal diary -  I don't  know what  to  call  it - which I shall  not risk
publishing.  But it  had  to be written. Klenov rang up early this  morning,
stating the exact number of lines for the column. By the way, he immediately
made  a reservation;  it  all  depended on the  reaction of world scientific
societies. Maybe I'd be given a whole page.
     The Academy of  Sciences  starts its  session  tomorrow  at ten in  the
morning, and nobody knows when it will end. There will be Nikodimov's report
and Zargaryan's,  then  my speech and those of  foreign scientists and ours.
According to  Klenov, more than  two hundred people  have  arrived. All  the
stars  of  our  physico-mathematical  galaxies,  not counting  visitors  and
correspondents. I  shall not cite the government's communique, for everybody
knows it. After it came out, not  only my scientific  friends  but  reporter
Sergei Gromov woke up famous.
     More than two months have  passed since my return, but it seems like it
was  only yesterday  that  I  woke up in Faust's  laboratory in the familiar
chair with its electrodes and pick-ups. I woke  up tired and  with a feeling
of bitter,  almost unbearable loss. Zargaryan was asking me something, but I
answered  unwillingly  and  uncertainly. Nikodimov  silently  looked at  me,
studying the oscillograph results.
     "We began  at 10.15," he  said suddenly,  "and at one  o'clock  we lost
you."
     "Not completely," said Zargaryan.
     "Right. Brightness  fell first to  zero, then  it revived  but was very
faint,  and rose  to  the supreme point.  Even  with a more exact  direction
sighting. To tell the truth, I was all at sea."
     "At  one o'clock,"  I repeated thoughtfully, looking at Zargaryan,  "at
exactly one or a bit earlier, I was with you in the Sofia restaurant."
     "Are you delirious?" he asked, after a moment's silence.
     "Yes, with you older by twenty years and  wearing a  'Kurchatov'  beard
that covered half  your chest. In a word, it was  Moscow at the close of the
century. In that same Sofia. By the way, it's quite different from ours. And
Mayakovsky, too. He stands taller than the Nelson column." I drew in a whole
lungful  of air, and blurted out: "And you got hold of me and threw me ahead
by  a  whole  century.  That's when  you  lost  me  ...  during  the  second
transmission."
     Now they were both looking at me, not  so  much with  distrust as  with
sharp suspicion. But I went on, not even leaving the chair for  I hadn't the
strength to rise.
     "You  don't  believe me?  It's  hard to believe, naturally.  Fantastic.
Incidentally, the screens  in their lab  are in one line forming a parabola,
and with a  mobile  control  panel.  And  on the  roof  there's  a  swimming
pool...." I swallowed, and was silent.
     "You need some doping," said  Zargaryan.  He  mixed two egg  yolks with
half a glass of cognac and gave it to me, almost spilling  it his hands were
so shaky.  The drink  revived me. Now I could  go  on....  And I talked  and
talked without stopping for breath, and they listened as if bewitched,  with
the reverence  of  habitues  of premiere performances at the  conservatoire.
Then  they  interrupted,  shooting  questions like  machine-gun bursts. They
questioned and cross-examined me. Zargaryan cried out something in Armenian,
and over and over  again I  had  to repeat  my recollections: now  about the
monorail track, now  the gold and crystal Sofia, now  the  chair without the
helmet  or  pick-ups,  now  the  white  revitalizing  room  and  the  unseen
Vera-seven, then about the Mist with its glossary and the story  of Julia in
which the mysterious image of a century was reflected as in frosted glass. I
still could  not  bring myself to describe the most important thing of all -
my meeting with Eric. And when I got to it, something suddenly erupted in my
memory like a blinding flash of magnesium.
     "Paper," I cried out hoarsely. "Quickly! And a pencil."
     Zargaryan handed me a fountain pen and pad. I closed my eyes. Now I saw
them  absolutely  clear-cut, as  if held before my eyes  -  all  the rows of
ciphers  and  letters expressing the  formulas on  the Mist's cards. I could
write them one after another without  missing a thing, without getting mixed
up, reproducing  exactly  everything  engraved  in my  memory in that  other
world, all of  which appeared  with  indelible vividness.  I  wrote blindly,
vaguely  hearing   Zargaryan's  whisper:   "Look,  look   ...  he's  writing
automatically  with  closed eyes." And  that is how I wrote, not  opening my
eyes,  not  stopping,  with  feverish  swiftness  and  clarity  until  I had
reproduced on paper the last concluding equation of mathematical symbols.
     When I opened  my  eyes, the first thing  I  saw  was  Nikodimov's face
leaning over me, whiter than the sheet of paper I'd been writing on.
     "That's all," I said, throwing down the pen.
     Nikodimov took the  pad and raised it close to his  short-sighted eyes.
Then he froze  motionless -  it was as if a cinema  reel  had suddenly  been
brought to a stop in the middle of a film showing.
     "This needs a wiser mathematician than I," he said finally, passing the
pad to Zargaryan. "And he won't  manage  without  an electronic computer. It
will have to be computed."
     It took Nikodimov  and Zargaryan one and a half to two months to do it,
working  in  Moscow and the Brain centre  in  Novosibirsk.  Academicians and
post-graduate researchers worked with them. The baffling calculation secrets
of the mathematics  of the future were  finally solved by Yuri Privalov, the
youngest Doctor of  Mathematical Science in the world. The  phase theory  of
Nikodimov-Zargaryan was now firmly established on a sound mathematical basis
proved  by  experiments  from  the  future.  The  equations translated  into
mathematical language became the Shual-Privalov equations. And tomorrow they
would be made available to all mankind.
     Olga's asleep, faintly lit by a pencil  gleam from my lamp. She doesn't
seem very content, in fact there is a slightly frightened look on  her face.
She already told Galya and me of her fear that fame and popularity, all this
sensational  excitement that  awaits  me  tomorrow,  will  become  a barrier
between us that might break up our  life together. Of course, the talk  of a
barrier  is nonsense, but  even  now  my life is beginning  to look like  an
idiotic Hollywood true story.
     Foreign  correspondents, who  earlier  sniffed out  that something  was
brewing, follow me through the streets.  The telephone rings all  day and we
have to smother it with a pillow at night, so that the  sound of its ringing
doesn't awaken us. Already a certain American publishing house has made me a
wild offer for my impressions.  And I,  parrot-like, have to repeat over and
over  that no impressions are to be printed  as yet; and when  they are they
can be  read in Soviet publications. And  Klenov chaffs me in a friendly way
that all  the  same I shall have  to  write  about my  JOURNEY  ACROSS THREE
WORLDS.
     I  don't agree  -  not three!  Many  more.  And  among  them there will
definitely be  the one that I never really  saw - that wonderful, inimitable
world of Julia and Eric.