The Big Book of Science Fiction

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

  Most of his inventions had no practical value. But one did save him the expense of buying matches. He had succeeded in extracting benzene from water, and, since he smoked a good deal, he now lit his cigarettes from a lighter filled with his own benzene. 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 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 can come out on top.”

  “What was he director of? A hotel?”

  “He was a cemetery director, and he’s a serious 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 went to bed but forgot to set the alarm, and he 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 said, trying 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 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 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 toward 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 gotten 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 claimed 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 thoughtfully. “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 bachelors 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.”

  “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 rubles.”

  “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 center of town—on Nevski Prospekt, for example. There they’ll build the UCCOC—United City Can Opening Center. 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 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 gray 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 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 at 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 only 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 two hundred twenty volts.”

  “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 windowsill 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 street lamps were turned on. Liussia’s room was now completely black, except for a bluish light along the cord 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 colors and became new again. The elderly gray 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 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 gray hairs are changing back to their original color. 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.

  Liussia stood up and laughed as she looked at herself in the mirror. “Come on, Sergei, let’s go for a walk—maybe to Yelagin Island.”

  Sergei picked up his bundle of skates, took Liussia’s arm, and went down the stairs into the street with her. They rode the streetcar to Cultural Park, where they strolled about for a long time, rode the merry-go-round, and ate two meals in a restaurant.

  When the still white night had descended and the park was deserted, they went to the seashore. The sea was completely calm, without even the smallest wave, and in the distance, near Volny Island, the sails of the yachts hung motionless in the moonlight.

  “Just the right kind of weather,” said Sergei as he unwrapped the water skates. He helped Liussia tie hers and then put his own on.

  Liussia ran onto the water and skated lightly across it; Sergei followed. They came to the yachts, whose owners were waiting for a breeze; waved to them; and skated on past Volny Island to the open sea. They glided
over the water for a long time, then Sergei suddenly slowed down; Liussia stopped and skated back to him.

  “Liussia, do you know what I’d like to say to you?” Sergei began, somewhat unsure of himself.

  “I know,” Liussia replied, “and I love you too. From now we’ll stay together for good.”

  They embraced and kissed, then turned back to the shore. Meanwhile the wind had risen and was forming waves. It was becoming difficult to skate.

  “Suppose I stumble and fall down into the water?” said Liussia.

  “I’ll take precautions right now so that we won’t drown,” answered Sergei with a laugh. He took the atomizer and bottle of MSST from his pocket and sprayed his and Liussia’s clothing with the liquid.

  “Now we can even ride the waves,” he said to her.

  They sat down, close together, on a wave, as though it were a crystal bench, and the wave carried them back to the shore.

  Day of Wrath

  SEVER GANSOVSKY

  Translated by James Womack

  Sever Feliksovich Gansovsky (1918–1990) was a prominent Soviet writer of fiction, including science fiction. He wrote some of the best short stories of his generation, several of them collected in English in Macmillan’s Best of Soviet Science Fiction anthologies in the 1980s. He received the Russian Aelita Award in 1989.

  During his lifetime, Gansovsky held a number of jobs—sailor, electrician, teacher, postman, and, during World War II, sniper and scout. Severely wounded during the war, Gansovsky was presumed dead, returning home only after his family had already held a funeral for him.

  His first published work appeared in 1950, and he graduated from Leningrad State University in 1951 (philology). Soon thereafter, Gansovsky began to win awards for his writing. Because he was also a talented illustrator, his career intersected with that of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky when he created the artwork for their short novel The Snail on the Slope (1972), among others.