Noon: 22nd Century

by Arkady Strugatsky

  “Stanislav hasn’t come back yet!” someone shouted.

  “That spells trouble!” Rudak said, and climbed down from the platform.

  “Does Professor Lomba know about all this?” a slim maiden with a boyish hair cut asked timidly.

  “Professor Lomba will find out,” Rudak said grandly. “But just where is Stanislav?”

  The ground in the clearing in front of the acacias bulged and cracked. Evgeny jumped a full yard. It seemed to him that the pale, tooth-filled maw of a dinosaur was poking up from the grass.

  “At last!” said Rudak. “I had already started worrying-his oxygen ran out a minute ago. Or two minutes, actually.”

  A ringed metallic body half a yard thick drew itself out of the ground slowly and clumsily, like a giant earthworm. It kept crawling and crawling, and it was still unclear how many rings might yet be hidden underground, when its front part started turning rapidly, screwed itself off, and fell into the grass. A damp, scarlet face with a wide-gaping mouth stuck out of the black aperture.

  “Aha!” Rudak roared. “Took you long enough, Stanislav!”

  The face hung over the edge, spat, and declared in a strong voice, “It’s got a whole damn arsenal down there. Entire armadas of crawling disks. Get me out of this thing.”

  The ringed worm kept crawling and crawling out of the ground, and rays of the red setting sun played on its metal sides.

  “Let’s get going,” Rudak declared, and again climbed onto the platform. He smoothed his beard out on the left and on the right, made faces at the girls who had crowded below, and with a pianist’s gesture lay his hands on the board. The board blazed with indicator lights.

  Then everything in the clearing went quiet. Evgeny, picking up his movie camera, noted worriedly that several people had scrambled into an acacia and were sitting on the branches, while the girls crowded more closely toward the platform. Just in case, Evgeny moved closer himself.

  “Strong and Joy, get ready!” Rudak thundered.

  “Ready!” two voices shouted.

  “I’ll start warbling on the main frequency. You sing on the flanks. And let’s have a lot of noise.”

  Evgeny expected everyone to begin singing and drumming, but it got even quieter. A minute went by.

  “Turn up the voltage,” Rudak ordered softly.

  Another minute went by. The sun set, and the brighter stars appeared in the sky. Somewhere an emu cried sleepily. A girl standing next to Evgeny sighed heavily. Suddenly there was movement up above, on the acacia branch, and someone’s voice, trembling with excitement, shouted, “There they are! There, in the clearing! You’re looking in the wrong direction!”

  Evgeny did not understand where he ought to look, nor did he know who “they” might be, or what one might expect of them. He picked up the movie camera and moved back a little more, crowding the girls toward the platform, and suddenly he saw them. At first he thought it was an illusion, that it was simply spots swimming before his tired eyes. The black starlit savanna began to stir. Indistinct gray shadows rose up on it, unspeaking and ominous; the grass rustled, something squeaked, and he could hear a solid tapping, jingling, crackling. In an instant the quiet was filled with deep indistinct rustlings.

  “Light!” bellowed Rudak. “The enemy cometh!”

  A joyful howl rang out from the acacia. Dry leaves and twigs rained down. In the same instant a blinding light flashed over the clearing.

  Over the savanna marched the army of the Great CODD. Marched to surrender. Evgeny had never seen such a parade of mechanical monsters in his life. Obviously the servants of the Great CODD were seeing them for the first time too. Homeric laughter shook the acacia. The designers, those experienced warriors in the cause of mechanical perfection, were enraged. They toppled from the branch in bunches, and dashed into the clearing.

  “No, look. You just look!”

  “The seventeenth century! Watt’s linkage!”

  “Where’s Robinson? Robinson, were you the one who figured that CODD was smarter than you?”

  “Let’s hear it for Robinson! Yea, Robinson!”

  “Guys, get a load of these wheels! They won’t even make it all the way to us!”

  “Guys! Guys! Look! A steam engine!”

  “Author! Author!”

  Horrible scarecrows moved into the clearing. Lopsided steam-tricycles. Dish-like rattling contrivances that sparked and gave off a burning smell. The familiar tortoises, furiously kicking their famous single hind legs. Spider-shaped mechanisms on extremely long wire legs on which, now and then, they lowered themselves to the ground. In back, mournfully wobbling, came the poles on wheels with the wilted mirrors on the tips. All these dragged themselves onward, limping, pushing, knocking, breaking down on the way, and emitting steam and sparks. Evgeny aimed the movie camera like a zombie.

  “I’m not a servant any longer!” yelled someone in the acacia.

  “Me neither!”

  “Look at those hind legs!”

  The front ranks of mechanical monsters reached the clearing and stopped. The ones in back piled into them and they all collapsed into a heap, tangling up, their outlandish articulations spread wide. Above, the poles on wheels toppled over with a dull thud, breaking in two. One wheel, its springs ringing, rolled up to the platform, circled around, and fell down at Evgeny’s feet. Then Evgeny looked at Rudak. Rudak was standing on the platform, his hands resting against his sides. His beard was waving.

  “There we are, guys,” he said. “I give all this to you for pillage and looting. Now we’ll find out how and why they tick—probably.”

  The conquerers threw themselves upon the defeated army.

  “You can’t really mean the Great CODD built all this to study the behavior of Buridan’s sheep, can you?” Evgeny asked in horror.

  “And why not?” said Rudak. “It could very well be. It probably is.” He winked with unusual slyness. “Anyhow, it’s certainly clear that something is out of kilter here.”

  Two strapping designers dragged a small metal beetle by its rear leg. Just opposite the platform the leg broke off, and the designers fell into the grass.

  “Monsters,” muttered Rudak.

  “I already told you it wasn’t fastened on well,” said Evgeny.

  A sharp elderly voice roared through the merry noise: “Just what is going on here?”

  Silence set in instantly. “Oh, boy,” Rudak said in a whisper, and climbed down from the platform.

  It seemed to Evgeny that Rudak had suddenly shriveled.

  An old gray-haired black in a white lab coat approached the platform, limping. Evgeny recognized him-it was Professor Lomba. “Where is my Paul?” he asked in an ominously affectionate voice. “Children, who can tell me where my deputy is?”

  Rudak remained silent. Lomba walked straight toward him. Rudak stepped backward, knocked his back against the platform, and stopped.

  “So, Paul my dear boy, just what’s going on here?” Lomba asked, looming close.

  Rudak answered sheepishly, “We seized control from CODD—and rounded up all the monsters into one pile.”

  “The monsters, eh?” Lomba said tersely. “An important problem! Where does the seventh leg come from? An important problem, my children! A very important problem!”

  Suddenly he grabbed Rudak by the beard and dragged him through the crowd, which opened in his path, to the middle of the clearing. “Look at him, children!” he snouted ceremoniously. “We are astounded! We rack our brains! We fall into despair! We imagine that CODD has outsmarted us!” With each “we” he pulled Rudak’s beard, as if ringing a bell. Rudak’s head swung submissively.

  “What happened, teacher?” a girl asked timidly. From her face it was obvious that she felt very sorry for Rudak.

  “What happened, my dear little girl?” Lomba at last let go of Rudak. “Old Lomba goes to the center. He drags the best specialists away from their work. And what does he find out? Oh, the shame! What does he find out, you redheaded villain?” H
e again grabbed Rudak by the beard, and Evgeny hurriedly aimed his camera. “They’re laughing at old Lomba! Old Lomba has become the laughingstock of every last cyberneticist! They’re already telling jokes about old Lomba!” He let go of the beard and stuck a bony fist in Rudak’s broad chest. “I’ll get you! How many legs does an ordinary Australian merino sheep have? Or perhaps you’ve forgotten?”

  Evgeny suddenly noticed that upon these words a few young men started moving back with the clear intention of losing themselves in the crowd.

  “Don’t let the programmers get away,” Lomba ordered without turning his head.

  There was a noise in the crowd, and the young men were pushed into the center of the circle.

  “What do these intellectual pirates do?” inquired Lomba, turning sharply towards them. “They indicate in the program that a sheep has seven legs.”

  The crowd began to grow noisy.

  “They deprive the sheep of a cerebellum.”

  Laughter—approving, as it seemed to Evgeny—spread through the crowd.

  “Poor, nice, well-meaning CODD!” Lomba raised his arms to the heavens. “It piles absurdity upon absurdity! Could it suppose that its red-bearded hooligan of a master would give it a problem about a five-sided triangle?”

  Rudak muttered miserably, “I won’t do it again. Honest I won’t.”

  The crowd, laughing, thrashed the programmers on their resonant backs.

  Evgeny spent the night at Rudak’s. Rudak bedded him down in the study, then went back to the acacias, brushing his beard carefully. An enormous orange moon, gridded with the gray squares of D-spaceports, looked into the open window. Evgeny looked at it and laughed happily, going over the events of the day in his mind.

  He very much liked days like this, ones that did not go by for nothing-days when he had managed to meet new, good or merry or simply nice people. People like thoughtful Parncalas, or magnificent Rudak, or Lomba the Thunderer. I’ll have to write about this, he thought. Absolutely! About how intelligent young men, at their own risk, inserted a notoriously nonsensical program into an unusually complicated and capable machine, to see how the machine would react. And how it reacted, carefully trying to create a consistent model of a sheep with seven legs and no cerebellum. And how an army of these monster-models marched over the warm black savanna in order to surrender to a red-bearded intellectual pirate. And how the intellectual pirate got pulled by the beard—not for the first time nor, probably, for the last. Because he’s very interested in problems involving five-sided triangles and square spheres… which are detrimental to the dignity of an honest, well-intentioned computer. It could come out all right—a story about intellectual hooliganism.

  Evgeny fell asleep and woke up at dawn. Dishes were quietly crashing in the dining room, and a discussion in low tones was under way:

  “Now everything’s going smooth as silk—Papa Lomba has calmed down and gotten interested.”

  “As well he should! Such neat data on the theory of machine error!”

  “But still, guys, CODD turned out to be fairly simple-minded. I expected more inventiveness.”

  Someone suddenly laughed and said, “A seven-legged sheep without the least sign of an organ of balance! Poor CODD!”

  “Quiet—you’ll wake the correspondent!”

  After a long pause, when Evgeny had already begun to drowse, someone suddenly said with regret, “It’s a shame that it’s all over already. It was interesting! O seven-legged sheep! We’ve seen the last of thy mystery and it’s a crying shame.”

  14. Candles Before the Control Board

  At midnight it started to rain. The highway got slick and Zvantsev reduced speed. It was unusually dark and bleak—the glow of city lights had disappeared behind the black hills—and it seemed to Zvantsev as if his car were going through a desert. The white beam of the headlights danced ahead on the rough wet concrete. There were no cars going the other way. Zvantsev had seen the last one before he turned onto the highway leading to the Institute. Half a mile before the gate was a housing development, and Zvantsev saw that despite the late hour almost all the windows were lit up, and the veranda of a large cafe by the road was full of people. It seemed to Zvantsev that they were keeping quiet, waiting for something.

  Akiko looked back. “They’re all watching us,” she said.

  Zvantsev did not answer.

  “They must think we’re doctors.”

  “Probably,” said Zvantsev.

  It was the last village with lights. Beyond the gate began damp darkness.

  “There should be an appliance factory somewhere around here,” said Zvantsev. “Did you notice it?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You never notice anything.”

  “You’re the one driving, sir. If I were driving I would notice everything.”

  “Somehow I doubt that,” said Zvantsev. He braked sharply, and the car skidded. It slipped sideways across the screeching concrete. The headlights illuminated a signpost. The sign had no light, and it looked faded: NOVOSIBIRSK INSTITUTE OF BIOLOGICAL CODING—21 KM. A warped plywood board with a clumsily written notice was nailed under the sign: ATTENTION! TURN ON ALL NEUTRALIZERS. REDUCE SPEED. ROADBLOCK AHEAD. And the same thing in French and English. The letters were large, with black blotches. “Uh-huh,” muttered Zvantsev. He bent under the wheel and turned on the neutralizers.

  “What kind of roadblock?” asked Akiko.

  “I don’t know what kind,” said Zvantsev, “but it’s clear you should have stayed in town.”

  “No,” said Akiko.

  When the car had started moving again, she asked cautiously, “Do you think they’ll let us through, sir?”

  “I don’t think they’ll let you through.”

  “Then I’ll wait,” Akiko said calmly.

  The car glided slowly and noiselessly over the highway. Zvantsev, still looking forward, said, “Still, I wish they would let you through.”

  “So do I,” said Akiko. “I want very much to say good-by to him…”

  Zvantsev silently watched the road.

  “We’ve rarely seen each other lately,” Akiko continued. “But I love him very much. I don’t know anyone else like him. I never loved even my father the way I love him. I even cried…”

  Yes, she cried, thought Zvantsev. The ocean was blue-black, the sky was dark blue, and his face was blue and swollen when Kondratev and I led him carefully toward the convertiplane. The scorching coral sand crunched underfoot, and it was hard for him to walk, and he almost hung in our arms, but he wouldn’t let us carry him. His eyes were closed, and he mumbled guiltily, “Gokuro-sama, gokuro-sama—” The oceanographers went behind and to one side, but Akiko walked right next to Sergei, holding out the shabby white cap famous over the whole ocean with both her hands, like a tray, and crying bitterly. That was the first and most serious attack of the disease—six years ago on a nameless islet fifteen nautical miles to the west of Octopus Reef.

  “… I’ve known him for twenty years. Since I was a child. I very much wish to say good-by to him.”

  The gridded arch of a microweather installation swam up out of the damp darkness and passed overhead. There were no lights at the weather station. The installation’s not working, Zvantsev thought. That’s why we’re getting this crap from the sky. He looked sidelong at Akiko. She was sitting with her legs drawn up on the seat, looking straight ahead. Lights from the dashboard dials fell on her face.

  “What’s going on here?” said Zvantsev. “Some sort of quiet zone?”

  “I don’t know,” said Akiko. She turned, trying to make herself more comfortable, poked her knee against Zvantsev’s side, and suddenly froze, staring at him with eyes shimmering in the semi-darkness.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “Perhaps he is already…”

  “Nonsense,” said Zvantsev.

  “And everyone has gone to the Institute…”

  “Nonsense,” Zvantsev said decisively. “Rubbish.”
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  An uneven red light burned far ahead. It was weak and flickering, like a small star on a turbulent night. Just in case, Zvantsev again reduced speed. Now the car was moving very slowly, and they could hear the patter of rain. Three figures in shiny wet rain capes appeared in the headlight beam, standing in the middle of the highway. In front of them, a substantial-sized log lay across the road. The one standing on the right was holding a large smoking torch overhead, and slowly waving it from side to side. Zvantsev moved the car up a little closer and stopped. So here’s the roadblock, he thought. The man with the torch shouted something indistinct into the patter of the rain, and all three started quickly toward the car, moving clumsily in their enormous wet rain capes. The man with the torch once again shouted something, contorting his mouth angrily. Zvantsev turned off the headlights and opened the door. “The engine!” shouted the man. He came up close. “Turn off the engine, for God’s sake!”

  Zvantsev turned off the engine and got out onto the highway, into the drizzle. “I’m Zvantsev, the oceanographer,” he said. “I’m on my way to see Academician Okada.”

  “Put out the dome light in the car!” said the man. “And quickly, please!”

  Zvantsev turned, but the light in the passenger compartment was already out.

  “Who’s that with you?” the man with the torch asked.

  “My colleague,” Zvantsev answered shortly. “Oceanographer Kondrateva.”

  The three figures in the rain capes remained silent.

  “Can we go on?”

  “I’m Mikhailov, technician,” said the man with the torch. “I was sent to meet you and tell you that it’s impossible to see Academician Okada.”