Sergei had also invented a telescope by making a windowpane with
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the properties of a gigantic magnifying glass. Through this window of
his room he could see the canals of Mars, the craters of the Moon and
the storms of Venus. When Tamara got on his nerves too much, he
distracted and soothed himself by gazing out into distant worlds.
Most of his inventions had no practical value. But one did save him
the expense of buying matches. He had succeeded in extracting
benzine from water, and, since he smoked a good deal, he now lit
his cigarettes from a lighter filled with his own benzine. Otherwise he
led a rather joyless life. Neither Tamara nor Alfred brought him any
happiness. When Alfred visited Leningrad, he talked mainly with
Tamara.
‘How are you getting along?’, he asked her.
‘What do you expect?’, she answered him with a question. ‘My
only pleasure is my art. Look at this stag that I’m embroidering!’
‘What a splendid animal!’, cried Alfred. ‘It’s so lifelike! And the
antlers! If I had antlers like that, I’d really get somewhere!’
‘Your father has no feeling for art. He’s only interested in inventing
things. But there’s hardly any use to what he makes.’
‘Well, at least he doesn’t drink; you ought to be grateful for that’,
was her son’s encouraging answer. ‘He’s a slow comer, but maybe he’ll
wise up a bit. When I look at the people who stop at the hotel, I’m
ashamed of Father. One guest is a head buyer, another is a foreigner,
another a scientific correspondent. A short time ago a lecturer who
wrote Pushkin’s autobiography was living in one of our luxury
apartments. He owns a country cottage and an automobile.’
‘How can I dream of a country cottage with a husband like mine?’,
Tamara asked dejectedly. ‘I’ve had enough of him. I’d like to get a
divorce.’
‘Have you hooked anyone else yet?’
‘I know a retired director, a bachelor. He has an eye for art! I made
him a gift of an embroidered swan, and he was as happy as a child
over it. With someone like that you come out on top.’
‘What was he director of? A hotel?’
‘He was a cemetery director, and he’s a serious, sensitive man.’
‘He’d have to be, in that job’, agreed her son.
4
One June evening Sergei was up on the ceiling working on a new
invention. He didn’t notice the time passing, and it grew quite late. He
A Modest Genius
241
went to bed but forgot to set the alarm, and overslept the next
morning, so that he couldn’t get to work on time. He decided not
to go in at all that day: it was the first and last time that he stayed
away from work.
‘You’re going to the dogs with your inventions’, said Tamara. ‘At
least you could have missed work for something worthwhile! But this
stuff! Clever people earn a bit extra on the side, but you produce
nothing, no more than a he-goat gives milk.’
‘Don’t be angry, Tamara’, Sergei tried to calm her. ‘Everything will
turn out all right. It’ll soon be vacation and we’ll take a boat ride on
the Volga.’
‘I don’t need your cheap boat rides’, Tamara screamed. ‘You ought
to take a ride behind your own back and listen to what people say
about you. They all consider you a perfect fool and laugh at you.’
She snatched an unfinished wall hanging from its hook and
stormed out in a rage.
Sergei was thoughtful. He reflected for a long time and then
decided to take a ride behind his own back as his wife had suggested.
Some time earlier, he had invented an Invisible Presence Machine
(IPM), which was effective up to a distance of thirty-five miles. But he
had never used the IPM to observe life in the city, thinking it
unethical to look into other people’s homes or to pry into their
private lives. Instead, he often set the machine for the woods on
the city’s outskirts and watched the birds building their nests or
listened to their songs.
Now, however, he decided to test the IPM within the city. He
turned it on, set the knob at a very close range and turned the
directional antenna towards the kitchen of the community house.
Two women were standing at the gas stove, gossiping about this and
that. Finally, one of them said: ‘Tamara’s off to the director’s again—
and not the least bit embarrassed!’
‘I’m sorry for Sergei Vladimirovich’, answered the other. ‘What a
good and clever man—and this woman is destroying him!’
‘I have to agree with you’, he could hear the first woman say. ‘He
really does seem to be a good and clever man, but he has no luck.’
Sergei next spied on his fellow workers, and they too had nothing
but good to say about him. He turned off the IPM and thought for a
while. Then Liussia came to mind and he felt a strong desire to see
her again, if only for a moment. He turned the machine on and
searched for Liussia’s room on the fifth floor of a house on Eleventh
Street. Perhaps she no longer lived there? Perhaps she had got
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married and moved away? Or just changed to another floor in the
same building?
Unfamiliar rooms and unknown people flashed on the screen.
Finally he found Liussia’s place. She wasn’t there but it was certainly
her room. The furniture was the same, and the same picture hung on
the wall as before. On a small table stood her typewriter. Liussia was
probably at work.
He next aimed the IPM at Svetlana’s house, wondering how she
was getting along. He found her rather easily in a house stuffed full of
all sorts of brand-new things; she herself had aged a bit but seemed
cheerful and content.
Suddenly her bell rang and she went to open the door. ‘Hello,
Liussia! I haven’t seen you for a long time!’, she exclaimed in a
welcoming tone.
‘I just happened by; it’s our midday break’, said Liussia, and Sergei
too could now see her. Over the years she hadn’t grown any younger,
but she was just as attractive as ever.
The two friends went into the house and chatted about all sorts of
things.
‘Aren’t you ever going to get married?’, Svetlana suddenly asked.
‘You can still get some worthwhile man in his prime.’
‘I don’t want one’, said Liussia dejectedly. ‘The man I like is long
since married.’
‘Are you still in love with Sergei?’, Svetlana persisted. ‘What do you
see in him? What’s so great about him? He’s the kind that never
amounts to much. He was a nice young fellow, of course. Once he gave
me water skates, and we used to skate together across the water. The
nightingales were singing on the shore and the people were snoring in
their cottages, but we flew across the sea and showed our skill.’
‘I never knew he invented anything like that’, Liussia said thought-
fully. ‘Did you keep them?’
‘Of course not
! Petya took them to the junk dealer long ago. He said
the whole idea was nonsense. Petya is a real inventor and knows
what’s what with inventions!’
‘Is Petya’s job going well?’
‘Excellent! A short time ago he invented MUCO-1.’
‘What’s a MUCO?’
‘A Mechanical Universal Can Opener. Now housewives and bache-
lors will be spared all the trouble they used to go to in opening cans.’
‘Have you got one?’, Liussia wanted to pursue the matter. ‘I’d like
to see it.’
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243
‘No, I haven’t and never will. It’s to weigh five tons and will require
a cement platform. Besides, it will cost four hundred thousand
roubles.’
‘What housewife can afford one, then?’, Liussia was amazed.
‘My, you’re slow!’, said Svetlana impatiently. ‘Every housewife
won’t be buying one. One will be enough for a whole city. It’ll be set
up in the centre of town—on Nevski Prospekt, for example. There
they’ll build the UCCOC—United City Can-Opening Centre. It will be
very handy. Suppose you have visitors and want to open some
sardines for them; you don’t need a tool for opening the can and
you don’t have to do a lot of work. You just take your can to UCCOC,
hand it in at the reception desk, pay five kopeks and get a receipt. At
the desk they paste a ticket on the can and put it on a conveyor belt.
You go to the waiting room, settle down in an easy chair and watch a
short film on preserves. Soon you’re called to the counter. You
present your receipt and get your opened can. Then you return
contentedly to Vasilyevski Island.’
‘And they’re really going ahead with this project?’
‘Petya very much hopes so. But recently some jealous people have
shown up and are trying to keep his inventions from being used.
They’re envious. Petya’s not jealous of anyone: he knows he’s an
extraordinary man. And he’s objective, too. For example, he has the
highest regard for another inventor—the one who invented the Drink
to the Bottom bottle cap and saw it through production.’
‘What’s a Drink to the Bottom cap?’
‘You know how vodka bottles are sealed? With a little metal cap.
You pull the tab on the cap, the metal tears and the bottle is open. But
you can’t use that cap to close it again, so you have to finish the
bottle, whether you want to or not.’
‘I prefer the water skates’, Liussia reflected. ‘I’d love to glide across the bay on skates on a white night.’
‘The skates have really caught your fancy, haven’t they?’, Svetlana
laughed. ‘Petya and I wouldn’t want them back if you paid us.’
Sergei shut off his IPM and thought for a while. Then he came to a
decision.
5
That same evening Sergei got his pair of water skates from an old
suitcase. He filled the bath with water and tested them: they didn’t
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sink but slid across the surface just as well as they had done years
before. Then he went to his retreat and worked late into the night
making a second pair of skates for Liussia.
The next day, a Sunday, Sergei put on his good grey suit and
wrapped the two pairs of skates in a newspaper. He put an atomizer
and a bottle of MSST (Multiple Strengthener of Surface Tension) in
his pocket; if a person covered his clothing with this preparation, it
would keep him afloat.
Finally, he opened the large closet in which he kept his most
significant inventions and took out his SPOSEM (Special Purpose
Optical Solar Energy Machine). He had worked very hard on this and
considered it the most important of all his inventions. It had been
finished for two years but had never been tested. Its purpose was to
restore a person’s youth to him, and Sergei had never wanted his
youth back again. If he made himself young again, he would have to
make Tamara young too and begin life with her all over again—but
one life with her was quite enough. In addition, he was frightened at
the extraordinarily high energy consumption of the machine; if he
were to turn it on, there would be cosmic consequences, and Sergei
had never regarded himself as important enough to warrant those
consequences.
But now, after thinking things out carefully and weighing all
considerations, he decided to use the machine. He put it in with the
skates and left the house.
It was a short walk to Sredni Avenue. In a store on the corner of
Fifth Street he bought a bottle of champagne and a box of chocolates
before continuing on his way. At Eleventh Street he turned off Sredni
Avenue and was soon as Liussia’s house; he climbed the steps and
rang two long and one short on the bell. Liussia answered the door.
‘Hello, Liussia! It’s been a long time since we met last.’
‘Very long. But I’ve always been expecting you to come, and here
you are.’
They entered Liussia’s room, drank champagne, and reminisced
about things that had happened years before.
‘Oh!’, cried Liussia suddenly, ‘if I were only young again and life
could begin all over!’
‘That’s in our power’, said Sergei and showed her his SPOSEM,
which was the size of a portable radio and had a rather thick cord
attached to it.
‘Do you plug it into the electrical system? Won’t it burn out? The
house was recently switched to 220 volts.’
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245
‘No, it doesn’t get plugged into the electrical system. A thousand
Dnieper powerhouses wouldn’t be enough to supply it. It gets its
energy directly from the sun. Would you open the window, please?’
She opened it, and Sergei led the cord over to it. The cord had a
small concave mirror attached to the end, and Sergei laid this on the
window sill so that it was turned directly to the sun. Then he switched
the machine on. A crackling could be heard from inside the apparatus,
and soon the sun began to look weaker, the way an incandescent bulb
does when the current drops. The room grew dusky.
Liussia went to the window and looked out. ‘Sergei, what’s going
on?’, she asked in astonishment. ‘It looks as though an eclipse is
beginning. The whole island is in dusk, and it’s getting dark in the
distance, too.’
‘It’s now dark over the whole earth and even on Mars and Venus.
The machine uses a great deal of energy.’
‘That kind of machine should never be mass-produced, then!
Otherwise, everyone would become young again but there’d be
darkness from then on.’
‘Yes’, Sergei agreed. ‘The machine should be used only once. I gave
it extra capacity for your sake. Now let’s sit down and remain quiet.’
They sat down on an old plush sofa, held hands, and waited.
Meanwhile it had become dark as night. Throughout the city light
sprang out of windows and streetlamps were turned on. Liussia’s
room was now completely black, except for a bluish light along the
co
rd of the SPOSEM. The cord twisted and turned like a tube through
which some liquid was being forced at great speed.
Suddenly the machine gave a loud crack and a square window
opened in the front; from it leaped a ray of green light, which seemed
to be chopped off at the end. The ray was like a solid object, yet it was only light. It became longer and longer and finally reached the wall
with the picture of the pig and the oak tree. The pig in the picture
suddenly changed into a piglet, and the oak with its huge branches
into a tiny sapling.
The ray moved slowly and uncertainly across the room as if blindly
seeking out Liussia and Sergei. Where it touched the wall, the old,
faded hangings took on their original colours and became new again.
The elderly grey tomcat who was dozing on the chest of drawers
changed into a young kitten and immediately began to play with its
tail. A fly, accidentally touched by the ray, changed into a larva and
fell to the floor.
Finally the ray approached Sergei and Liussia. It ranged over their
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heads, faces, legs and arms. Above their heads two shimmering half-
circles formed, like haloes.
‘Something’s tickling my head’, Liussia giggled.
‘Don’t move, stay quiet’, said Sergei. ‘That’s because the grey hairs
are changing back to their original colour. My head feels funny, too.’
‘Oh!’, cried Liussia, ‘there’s something hot in my mouth!’
‘You have some gold caps on your teeth, haven’t you?’
‘Only two.’
‘Young teeth don’t need caps, so the caps are being pulverized. Just
breathe the dust out.’
Liussia pursed her lips like an inexperienced smoker and blew out
some gold dust.
‘It feels as though the sofa were swelling under me’, she said
suddenly.
‘The springs are expanding because we’re getting lighter. We did
put on some weight over the years!’
‘You’re right, Sergei! I feel wonderfully light, the way I did at
twenty.’
‘You are twenty now. We’ve returned to our youth.’
At this moment the SPOSEM shivered, rumbled and burst into
flame. Then it was gone and only a little blue ash showed where it
had been. All around them, everything was suddenly bright again.
Motorists turned their headlights off, the street lamps went out and
the artificial light disappeared from the windows.
View from Another Shore : European Science Fiction Page 39
