The Big Book of Science Fiction

by The Big Book of Science Fiction (retail) (epub)

  And then he saw the telephone booth in the corner of the room. He went to it, dialed the well-remembered number: “2 B R 0 2 B.”

  “Federal Bureau of Termination,” said the very warm voice of a hostess.

  “How soon could I get an appointment?” he asked, speaking very carefully.

  “We could probably fit you in late this afternoon, sir,” she said. “It might even be earlier, if we get a cancellation.”

  “All right,” said the painter, “fit me in, if you please.” And he gave her his name, spelling it out.

  “Thank you, sir,” said the hostess. “Your city thanks you; your country thanks you; your planet thanks you. But the deepest thanks of all is from future generations.”

  A Modest Genius

  VADIM SHEFNER

  Translated by Matthew J. O’Connell

  Vadim Sergeevich Shefner (1915–2002) was a Soviet-era Russian writer known mostly for his poetry (from 1940 on) and mainstream fiction. He did, however, publish a small number of quite clever and effective speculative fiction tales, most of which display an adroit eye for detail and for the subtleties of human interaction. Shefner’s full-length novel, Latchuga dolzhnika (1981; A Debtor’s Hovel), is a mature literary work, combining elements of science fiction with those of philosophical prose. He received the Russian Aelita Award in 2000.

  In addition, two short novels, Čelovek s pjatio “Ne” (1967; translated as The Unman) and Devushka u obryva ili zapiski Kovrigina (1964; translated as Kovrigin’s Chronicles), were published together as The Unman; Kovrigin’s Chronicles (1980). Both are poetical and ironic or sardonic almost-fantasies, almost urban fairy tales. Other work of note includes the collections Imia dlia ptitsy (1976; The Name for the Bird), Kruglaia taina (1977; The Round Mystery), and Skazki dlia unmykh (1985; Fairy Tales for Smart Ones).

  “A Modest Genius,” or “Skromny genni,” is a classic—deceptive due to its surface charm and seeming lightness. A near-perfect tale of invention and love, it was reprinted more than once in year’s-best volumes and other reprint anthologies after initial publication in View from Another Shore (1973), an anthology of international fiction compiled by the influential editor and agent Franz Rottensteiner.

  A MODEST GENIUS

  Vadim Shefner

  Translated by Matthew J. O’Connell

  1

  Sergei Kladesev was born on Vasilyevski Island, Leningrad. He was a strange boy. While other children were making sand pies and building castles, he was drawing sections of odd-looking machines on the sand. In the second grade he built a portable machine, powered by a pocket flashlight battery, which told each pupil how many good marks he would receive during the coming week. Grown-ups considered the machine uneducational and took it away from him.

  After leaving grammar school Sergei attended the Technical School for Electrochemistry. He paid no attention to the many pretty girls he met there—perhaps because he saw them every day.

  One fine June day he rented a boat and sailed down the Little Neva to the Gulf of Finland. Near Volny Island he came upon a skiff with two girls in it, strangers to him. They had run onto a sandbar and, in attempting to float their boat, had broken the rudder. Sergei introduced himself and helped them back to the dock where they had rented the boat. After that he visited them frequently; the two friends lived, like Sergei, on Vasilyevski Island, Svetlana on Sixth Street, Liussia on Eleventh.

  Liussia was attending a course in typewriting at the time, but Svetlana was resting up from school; secondary school had provided all the education she wanted. Besides, her well-off parents were trying to persuade her that it was time to marry; she agreed in principle, but had no intention of taking the first acceptable fellow that came along.

  In the beginning Sergei preferred Liussia, but he knew how to behave toward her. She was so pretty, modest, and easily embarrassed that in her presence he too became embarrassed. Svetlana was quite different: gay and quick-witted; in short, a daredevil. Though naturally timid, Sergei felt happy when he was with her.

  A year later, Sergei was visiting a friend in Roshdestwenka and there met Svetlana, who was staying with relatives. A coincidence, of course, but Sergei took it as providential. Day after day he walked in the woods and by the sea with her and was soon convinced that he could not live without her.

  Svetlana did not find him especially attractive. To her he was an average fellow, and she dreamed of finding somebody unusual for her partner through life. She went walking with Sergei in the woods and by the sea only because she had to pass the time with someone.

  One evening they were standing on the shore. On the smooth surface of the water there lay, like a carpet woven by nymphs, a strip of silvery moonlight. Everything was still, except for the nightingales singing in the wild elders on the opposite shore.

  “How beautiful and quiet!”

  “Yes, it’s pretty,” answered Svetlana. “If only we could gather some elder branches! But it’s too far for walking around on the shore. We have no boat and we can’t walk on the water!”

  They returned to the village and their respective lodgings. Sergei didn’t go to bed that night. He took pencil and paper and filled page after page with formulas and drawings. In the morning he went back to the city and stayed there two days. When he returned he had a bundle under his arm.

  Late that evening he took his bundle with him on their walk to the sea. At the water’s edge he opened it and took out two pairs of skates for traveling on the water.

  “Here, put these water skates on,” he said. “I made them just for you.”

  They both put them on and skated easily over the water to the other shore. The skates slid very nicely on the surface of the sea.

  On the other shore Svetlana and Sergei broke off elder branches and then, each with a bundle, went slowly over the sea in the moonlight.

  From then on they went skating every evening over the mirror-smooth surface of the water, the skates leaving behind them only a narrow, hardly visible trace, which immediately disappeared.

  One day Sergei stopped out on the sea. Svetlana slowly approached him.

  “Do you know something?” asked Sergei.

  “No. What’s wrong?”

  “Do you know, Svetlana, that I love you?”

  “Of course not!” she answered ironically.

  “Then you like me a little, too?”

  “I can’t say that. You’re a fine fellow, but I have a different ideal of a husband. I can only love a really extraordinary man, but to tell you the truth, you’re just a good average fellow.”

  “Well, you’re honest, anyway,” said a downcast Sergei.

  They skated back to the shore in silence, and the next day Sergei returned to the city. For a time he felt wretched. He lost weight and wandered aimlessly through the streets. He often left the city to stroll about. In the evenings he went home to his little workroom.

  One day he met Liussia walking along the river. She was glad to see him, and he noticed it immediately.

  “What are you doing here, Sergei?”

  “Nothing. Just walking. I’m on vacation.”

  “I’m just walking, too. If you’d like, perhaps we could go over to Cultural Park.” She blushed as she made the suggestion.

  They rode over to Yelagin Island and slowly walked along its avenues. Later they met several more times to stroll around the city and found that they were happy to be together.

  One day Liussia came to Sergei’s house to take him off for a trip to Pavlovsk.

  “What a disorganized room!” she exclaimed. “All these machines and flasks! What are they for?”

  “I go in for various little inventions in my free time.”

  “And I never suspected!” said Liussia in amazement. “Could you repair my typewriter? I bought it in a discount store; it’s old and the ribbon keeps getting stuck.”

  “Sure, I’ll take a look at it.”

  “What’s this?” she asked. “What an odd camera! I’ve never seen one lik
e it.”

  “It’s a very ordinary FED camera but it has an accessory that I built just recently. With it you can photograph the future. You aim the camera at a place whose future appearance you’d like to know, and take the picture. But my machine isn’t perfected yet. You can photograph things only three years ahead, no more than that as yet.”

  “Three years! That’s a lot. What a wonderful invention!”

  “Wonderful? Not at all,” said Sergei with a disdainful gesture. “It’s very imperfect.”

  “Have you taken any pictures?”

  “Yes. A short time ago I went out to the suburbs and shot some film there.” He took several prints from his desk.

  “Here I photographed a birch in a meadow, without using the accessory. Then here is the same tree in two years’ time.”

  “It’s grown a bit and has more branches.”

  “And here it is three years from now.”

  “But there’s nothing there!” cried the astonished Liussia. “Just a stump and next to it a pit, like a shell hole. And over there are a pair of soldiers running along stooped. What strange uniforms they’re wearing! I can’t understand the picture at all.”

  “Yes, I was surprised too, when I developed the picture. It looks to me as though there are some kind of maneuvers going on there.”

  “Sergei, you’d better burn that photo. It looks too like a military secret. That picture might fall into the hands of a foreign spy!”

  “You’re right, Liussia. I never thought of that.” He tore up the picture and threw it into the stove with a pile of other trash; then he set fire to it.

  “Now I feel better,” said Liussia, obviously relieved. “But now take my picture as I’ll be a year from now. In this chair over by the window.”

  “But the accessory will only photograph a certain sector of space and whatever is in it. So, if you’re not sitting in that chair a year from now, you won’t be in the picture.”

  “Take me anyway. Who knows, maybe I will be sitting in this chair this day and hour next year!”

  “All right,” Sergei agreed. “I still have one picture left on this roll.” He took the picture. “Come on, I’ll develop the film immediately and make some prints. The bathroom is free today; no one is doing any wash.”

  He went into the bathroom and developed the film, then brought it back to his room and hung it up near the window to dry.

  Liussia took the film by the edges and peered at the last exposure. It seemed to her that someone else was in the chair. At the same time she was secretly wishing that she might be sitting there in a year’s time. It’s probably me, she concluded, only I didn’t come out too well.

  Once the film was dry, they went into the bathroom, where the red light was still on. Sergei put the strip of film into the enlarger, turned the machine on, and projected the image onto photographic paper. He then quickly put the picture into the developer. On the paper the features of a woman appeared. She sat in the chair and was embroidering a large cat on a piece of cloth. The cat was almost finished, all but the tail.

  “That’s not me sitting there!” Liussia was disillusioned. “It’s a different woman entirely.”

  “No, it’s not you,” Sergei agreed. “I don’t know who it is; I never saw the woman before.”

  “Sergei, I think I’d better be going,” said Liussia. “You needn’t stop by; I can have the typewriter repaired at the store.”

  “But at least let me bring you home!”

  “No, Sergei, there’s no need. I don’t want to get mixed up in this business.” She left.

  My inventions bring me no luck, thought Sergei to himself. He took a hammer and smashed the accessory.

  2

  About two months later, as Sergei was walking along Bolshoi Avenue, he saw a young woman sitting on a bench and recognized her as the unknown woman of the fateful photograph.

  She turned to him: “Can you tell me the time?”

  Sergei told her and sat down next to her. They chatted about the weather and got acquainted. Sergei learned that her name was Tamara. He saw her often and soon married her. They had a son, whom Tamara named Alfred.

  Tamara proved to be a very boring wife. Nothing roused much interest from her. Day in and day out she sat in the chair by the window and embroidered cats, swans, and stags on little strips of cloth which she then hung proudly on the wall. She didn’t love Sergei; she had married him only because he had a room of his own and because after her examinations at the Horse Trainers’ Institute she didn’t want to work in the provinces. No one had authority to send a married woman away.

  Herself a boring person, she regarded Sergei too as boring, uninteresting, and insignificant. He was always spending his leisure time inventing something; she didn’t approve, and thought it a senseless waste of time. She was constantly scolding him for filling the room with his machines and apparatuses.

  To get more freedom of movement in the room, Sergei built his LEAG, or Local Effect Anti-Gravitation, machine. With the aid of this machine he could do his work on the ceiling of the room. He laid flooring on the ceiling, set his desk on it, and brought up his instruments and tools. In order not to dirty the wall on which he walked up to the ceiling, he glued a narrow strip of linoleum on it. From now on the lower part of the room belonged to his wife, and the upper became his workroom.

  Tamara was still dissatisfied: she was now afraid that the superintendent might find out about the expansion of the room space and demand double rent. Furthermore, it displeased her that Sergei should walk so nonchalantly along the ceiling. It just didn’t seem right.

  “At least have respect for my superior education and don’t walk around that way with your head hanging down,” she cried up to him from her chair. “Other women have normal husbands, but here I am, stuck with a bird of ill omen.”

  When Sergei came home from work (he worked at the Transenergy Authority as a technical control officer), he ate quickly and went off up the wall to his preserve. He frequently went for walks through the city and its environs so as not to have to listen to Tamara’s constant nagging. He became so used to hiking that he could have walked to Pavlovsk with no difficulty.

  One day he met Svetlana at the corner of Eighth Street and Sredni Avenue.

  “I’ve married an extraordinary man since we last met,” were her opening words. “My Petya is a real inventor. He’s working just now as a beginning inventor at the Everything Everyday Research Institute, but he’ll soon be promoted to the intermediate class. Petya has already invented something all by himself: Don’t Steal soap.”

  “What kind of soap is that?” asked Sergei.

  “The idea behind it is quite simple—but then every work of genius is simple, of course. Don’t Steal is an ordinary toilet soap, but its core is a piece of solidified, water-resistant, black India ink. If someone, let’s say your neighbor in the community house, steals the soap and washes with it, he dirties himself physically as well as morally.”

  “And if the soap isn’t stolen?”

  “Don’t ask silly questions!” Svetlana flashed back angrily at him “You’re just jealous of Petya!”

  “Do you ever see Liussia? How is she getting along?”

  “Oh, she’s the same as ever. I keep telling her to look for a suitable extraordinary man and marry him, but she says nothing. She seems bent on becoming an old maid.”

  Soon afterward the war began. Tamara and Alfred were evacuated; Sergei went to the front. He began the war as a second lieutenant of infantry and ended as a first lieutenant. He returned to Leningrad, exchanged his uniform for civilian clothes, and went back to his old work at the Transenergy Authority. Shortly afterward, Tamara and Alfred also returned, and life went on as before.

  3

  Years passed.

  Alfred grew up, finished school, and went through the minimal course requirements for the training of hotel personnel. Then he went south and got a job in a hotel.

  Tamara continued to embroider cats, swans,
and stags on wall hangings. She had grown duller and more quarrelsome with the years. She had also made the acquaintance of a retired director, a bachelor, and was constantly threatening Sergei that, if he didn’t finally come to his senses and give up inventing things, she would leave him and go off with the director.

  Svetlana was still quite satisfied with her Petya. Yes, he was going places. He’d been promoted to intermediate inventor and had now invented four-sided wheel spokes to replace the old-fashioned round ones! She could really be proud of him.

  Liussia still lived on Vasilyevski Island and worked as a secretary in the office of Klavers, which designed and built replacement parts for pianos. She hadn’t married and often thought of Sergei. She’d seen him once from a distance but hadn’t approached him. He was walking with his wife along Seventh Street on his way to the Baltika Cinema; Liussia immediately recognized his wife as the woman in the photograph.

  Sergei thought often of Liussia, too; he tried to distract himself by concentrating on new inventions. The things he made never seemed to him quite perfect and therefore he thought he had no right to get involved with more difficult ones. Recently he had invented a Quarrel Measurer and Ender and installed it in the kitchen of the community house where he lived. The apparatus had a scale with twenty divisions, which measured the mood of the lodger and the intensity of a quarrel that might be going on. The needle trembled at the first unfriendly word and slowly approached the red line. If it reached the line, the Quarrel Ender went into action. Soft, soothing music filled the room; an automatic atomizer emitted a cloud of valerian and White Night perfume; and on the screen of the machine appeared a fellow who leaped about in a comical way, bowed low to the viewers, and kept repeating: “Be at peace with one another, citizens!”

  Due to the machine people would make up in the early stages of a quarrel, and all the lodgers in the house were quite grateful to Sergei for his modest invention.

  Sergei had also invented a telescope by making a windowpane with 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.