THE SEVENTH FLOOR

BY
ARKADY LVOV

Translated from the Russian by Gladys Evans

From the compilation JOURNEY ACROSS THREE WORLDS

Mir Publishers Moscow 1973

___________________________________________________
OCR: http://home.freeuk.com/russica2

He was said to be a difficult boy. He was said to be difficult from the time
he was six, when Pop and Mum had first talked with him about school. That
had been in March. They had told him that spring and summer would soon
be over, and in September he would start school. Pop recalled his own first
days of school in a far-off Septemberthe chestnut-trees had been just as
green as in May. Mum found nothing to recall: she had merely sighed and
said time did not stand still. But he, all of a sudden, had burst out laughing
and declared he wasn't going to school. Mum's eyes grew big and round. But
Pop was very calm.
"So, you want to go on being ignorant?"
"That's right, Pop," he answered, also very calm.
And then Pop went on to explain what nonsense he was talking, that a
person could not properly judge something he knew nothing about. That he,
Grishaor Grie, as they called him at homehad no idea what school and
ignorance were. They were mere words to him, without meaning.
"Mere words," Pop repeated.
Then Grie laughed again, but Pop told him: "Stop laughing! Laughing for
no good reason...."
Pop never finished because Grie interrupted him, mincing very seriously:
"Gives you vitamins any season."
Pop said his son was a rotten verse-maker and that he, Pop that is, used to
be just as bad when he was a child but, after he took up serious things at
school, it had dropped off him like autumn bark from a plane-tree.
"Did you become creamy ivory, like the plane-tree does after shedding its
bark in autumn?"
"You guessed it, son," said Pop. "But don't forget there are different ways
of getting a colour...."
"For example," broke in Grie, merrily, "from a good box on the ears. I
guessed it again, Pop, didn't I?"
"Right," agreed Pop, without wavering. "And now let's try it out. Come
here, Grie. A bit closer, if you don't mind. I can't quite reach you."
Grie got out of his chair. Pop caught hold of his right ear and, pulling him
close, gave Grie a hard hug. Mum said she had expected this variant from
the beginning, and her son immediately gave her his support.
"And you were right, Mum."
"Grie," said Pop, "you've turned into as big a chatterbox as the electronic
fortune-teller at a Fun Fair. But I know you'll love school and study hard.
Only, please give me your word that you won't be in too much of a hurry to
make up your mind. Not till you really get to know what school's like."
"Okay, Pop," said Grie. "If you're so anxious to put off the truth, we'll do
it. But you told me yourself: you can't put off the truth for long."
"So-o," nodded Pop. And he wanted to add that if we always knew exactly
where the truth lay, the Golden Age would come back to mankind. But he
held his tongue. Later, when Grie had gone to his room, he decided it would
not do, in his son's presence, to get carried away by moralizing or making
social generalizations. Because premature maturity often meant premature
sadness.
"You should be stricter with Grie," his wife told him.
"Yes," he answered. "I can order him to be silent, but I can't order him not
to think. Even if the law permitted it."
Half an hour later, Grie knocked at his father's study door.
"Come in," said Pop. "But don't talk for about two minutes. I have to
finish writing this sentence."
Curling up in an armchair, Grie studied his father, and gradually felt
submerged from the soles of his feet to his tummy in a velvety warmth, as if
emanating from somebody's lap. He had once felt the same velvety warmth
on the beach at the sight of crabs lazing and warming themselves in the sun
inside a rock pool dammed off from the sea. Except Grie himself, nobody
had noticed how crab-shells change colour, how fountains of water churn
turbulently through the orange claws, how the look in the crabs' black,
frightened eyes seems to change. Previously, like everybody else, he had
thought that crabs' eyes always look frightened because they stick out. But
afterwards, many times, he had seen that crabs could have quite different
eyes: they still goggled, but were lifeless and even indifferent. At first he
decided that the crabs were simply ill but, suddenly, when a silvery soldier-
fish shot up alongside, one of these sick and seemingly indifferent crabs
made a despairing, spider-like leap. Landing off-balance, for ten or fifteen
seconds it had convulsively scrabbled the sand with its claws, and again was
stock-still.
One day he had shown the crabs to Pop and asked how they changed the
colour of their shells. Pop said that the crabs could not change colour, and

2
that what Grie had seen was simply a sum total of physical factorsthe
depth of the water, the angle of incidence of the sun rays, the luminescence
of the sky, air currents. All of these he had taken for a play of colour on the
shells. But why just on the shells? Well ... how could he ask why? The
reason was simply because a person focuses all his attention on the shells.
"Incidentally, you might have figured that out for yourself, Grie," his
father remarked.
Yes, Grie thought, I might have figured it out myself, but some crabs
really do change colour. They really do. How come Pop couldn't see it?
Grie was hurt when his father did not agree with him, but never for long.
One day, when his parents were talking together, keeping their voices low
for some reason, his father said that not only different generations, but even
people of the same generation often view and interpret the world differently.
And this, more than likely, was the most important requisite in
understanding the world.
"And in the final analysis," added Pop, raising his voice, "that's progress."
Three days after this episode, Grie found a book in Pop's library about
Giordano Brunoa man who was burnt alive because he did not want to
think as others did. But that was a long, long time ago, Grie comforted
himself, half a thousand years ago. And then he found another bookand
was caught by terror, because this book was only 114 years old and its
author told about the cruel tortures people inflicted on others merely because
some did not look at things or think the same as the rest. Yet always the
executioners were in the right, and always the executed were in the wrong.
Then followed new generations and new trials in court, and white was made
black, and black white. But those had been the last trials which had failed
to come up for review.
Pop finished his sentence and told Grie that it would probably be better if
they sat over by the window.
"Fine," said Grie. "I'd like to sit by the window, too."
Grie brought a picture-book, and his father reached over to the wall to pull
up a small table, but Grie stopped him.
"Don't, Pop. We can put the book on your knee. D'you mind?"
His father moved over, and now they sat together in the same chair
father and son. Pop turned over the pages silently, and Grie was silent
because he wasn't asked to explain the pictures. After going through the
whole book, Grie's father turned back to the twelfth page which showed a
jungle where a monster resembling an iguanodon was hiding. Pop asked
what country it was supposed to be.
"Selvas, the central stream of the Amazon," explained Grie. "Yesterday,
Dr. Manuel from Belo Horizonte announced on TV that he was preparing a
new expedition to the valley of the Madeira. He said that it was finally time
to dethrone the Amazonthe Princess of Mystery."
Listening to his son, Grie's father closed his eyes. Then, just barely
opening them, so that Grie could not make out whether his father could see
him or not, he said: "Dr. Manuel has the right to make any plans he pleases.
But my son should realize that in the jungles a giant like the iguanodon

3
could not last even a day, because the trees, lianas and swamps would turn
him into a helpless lump of flesh."
"Gosh, you're right, Pop. I didn't think of that."
"That's so," nodded his father. "And I'm very glad you realize it. But I'm
not worried, Grie. In school you'll be given regular knowledge so as to keep
such things straight, and take the place of the casual things you know. Then
you won't tolerate such misconceptions. As you see, everybody needs to go
to school."
The first of September, Grie went to school. The chestnut-trees were still
as green as in May. On the five-fingered leaves of the plane-tree lay the
silvery September dust, as delicate and light as pollen on the wings of a
cabbage butterfly.
Besides Grie, there were thirteen boys and girls in his form. The school
teacher, Anna Andreevna, lined them up in twos and said they
would be shown over the school, starting from the seventh floor so as not
to use the lift more than necessary.
The seventh floor was filled with a silence usually found in a museum of
entomology. Three walls of each classroom were taken up by electronic
machinesthe fourth by a huge wall-to-wall window. In the centre stood a
desk, where one boy sat. A boy sat in each room except one, the last but one,
where Grie saw a girl. But the last room had no occupant. Anna Andreevna
gave a sudden laugh. It sounded strange in the silence that reigned in this
mysterious seventh floor. Then she said that disobedient children were put
here, and the last room was reserved for some new child. It would not be
empty long. But Anna Andreevna was sure, naturally, that nobody from her
class would end up in this room.
"Right, children?" she asked cheerfully.
"Yes," answered the children, seriously, very subdued.
Various laboratories were on the sixth and fifth floors, and classrooms on
those below. In the school grounds, there were two separate one-storey
buildings. One contained manual training workshops, the other a
gymnasium. In fact, the latter had three sections: a swimming pool, a
basketball court, and a hall for indoor athletics. As for the swimming pool,
Anna Andreevna gave bathing privileges to whoever could swim. Five, it
seemed, could not. And Grie was very surprised when the teacher gathered
them near her and told them brightly that that was a mere triflethey would
learn to swim, and in six months would swim so well even a shark could not
catch them.
"Right, children?" she asked again, in a happy, ringing voice.
And the children answered as seriously as they had the first time.
"Yes, that's right."
Grie shared a desk with a girl called Ilia. Grie spent half the lesson staring
at her, but she never once looked his way. And during recess, she told him
that staring at a person was indecent and, besides, Grie's staring bothered
her.
"But," objected Grie, "a person should be able to concentrate, and then
nothing would bother him. You can't concentrate."

4
 "And you're a badly brought up boy," Ilia raised her voice just the faintest
bit. "And I'll ask the teacher to move me to another seat."
During the lesson that followed, Anna Andreevna gave Grie his first bad
conduct mark. This is what she said:
"Grie, I'm giving you your first bad conduct mark."
"Yes," Grie admitted, "it's the first." Then he informed her that he could
count to a million. Anna Andreevna looked at him long and attentively, then
said with a sudden smile: "That's very good that you can count to a million.
Children, is there anyone else who can count to a million?"
Thirteen hands shot up above the desks. Anna Andreevna told them they
could lower their hands, and Grie was permitted to resume his seat.
In his drawing book at home, Grie drew thirteen hands with eyes on the
palms, and wrote above the picture: THEY CAN COUNT TO A MILLION.
Then he drew a hippopotamus, a rhinoceros and an elephant in a terrarium
surrounded by a moat. Beneath he wrote: CAN YOU COUNT TO A
MILLION? And after a moment's thought, added: IS IT DECENT TO
LOOK AT YOU?
It was a stupid question, and Grie knew it. You see, that is what zoos are
forso people can look at the animals. But why, Grie wondered, was it
permissible to stare at animals but not at people? People looked at animals
to learn more about them. And wasn't that why he had stared at Ilia? After
all, wasn't that what people had eyes forto look, see and understand! All
the same, the teacher had taken Ilia's part, and probably Mum would have
stuck up for her, too. But Pop?
"Say, Pop! Why isn't it decent to stare at people?"
"Convention, Grie. People came to an unwritten agreement about it. As
for whether it's necessary..." Pop shrugged his shoulders. "I think it's one of
those things of the past that people simply haven't got round to
reconsidering."
The first half year, from September to March, dragged out interminably.
Grie had a strange feelingas if this half year had lasted five times longer
than the whole of his preschool life. Each day, at every lesson, Anna
Andreevna would say: "And now, children, we'll go on further." But, for
some reason, Grie failed to feel that they were advancing further. On the
contrary, he often had the firm belief that they were moving backward,
going back over roads already travelled and were, for no clear reason,
getting all tangled up in them. It was as if, in the middle of an algebra
lesson, they suddenly began drawing a row of strokes to learn how to count.
Yet Ilia, after almost every lesson, told her friend Lana: "Now that lesson
was very interesting."
And Lana answered with importance: "Yes, it really was. Anna
Andreevna knows everything, everything in the world."
Then they talked about foolish children of the past who still studied
arithmetic in the fifth form, though arithmetic was nothing but a small part
of algebra.
One day, Grie could not restrain himself, and he told the girls that not one
person had yet been able to establish the difference between boasting and

5
stupidity.
"To listen to you, it's quite clear there's no difference at all."
The girls tattled to the teacher. Anna Andreevna made Grie apologize.
Standing by the teacher's desk, Grie said he was sorry. But, on returning to
his seat, suddenly said: "Just the same, you see, an apology won't help
them."
That night Grie had a talk with his father, because the teacher had phoned
him at the institute. Pop said that Grie grieved him very much. Grie sat in
the chair opposite and, looking his father straight in the eye, patiently waited
until he got more to the point. Finally, Pop sighed and said that he, Grie, was
not absolutely wrong, but people lived in a society and, as this was so, they
had to submit to social conventions, because without them there would be
no society.
"Does that mean," asked Grie, "that I hadn't the right to tell those girls the
truth?"
"Not exactly, Grie. You not only may but must tell the truth. But, in
addition, you are obliged to respect the opinion of the other person, no
matter what you think of it."
"And they," Grie kept looking his father in the eye, "can say whatever
comes into their heads because the people they speak badly of are already
dead and can't talk back?"
"No," smiled Pop, "they shouldn't talk that way either. But you can't
apologize to the dead. And if you do, then it's simply because there are
people alive who have taken upon themselves the right to speak for the
dead."
"Very well," said Grie. "I get it, Pop."
"I hope so," nodded Pop.
That night there was a thunderstorm. The first one that March. First the
hail beat upon the roofs and on the windowpanes, as if thousands of
monsters were spitting out millions of their teeth all at the same time. Then
the rain gushed down, rather like a flood of water pouring out of the sky
down a pipe of immense dimensions. The thunder clapped, then the light-
2.T
rung flashed washing the sky green, an electric green of spark discharge.
The morning after the storm, such a sun came up as had not dawned for a
long time. Grie knew perfectly well that life on earth had no effect
whatsoever on the sun, that the sun could not change overnight and, in any
case, could not grow any younger. And all the same, he saw a young sun
which had nothing in common with yesterday'sthe sluggish sun of
February.
Grie left home at eight-fifteena quarter of an hour before lessons began.
School was five minutes' walk away, and Grie always pushed the school
doors open at one and the same time, twenty minutes past eight. But today
Grie could only just drag his feet along, and at such a pace it would take the
whole fifteen minutes to get to school. If you walk like this, Grie told
himself, you'll get to school after the bell goes or, with luck, while it's still
ringing. Such a thing had never been heard of in their form, and Anna

6
Andreevna would say it was an unusual incident, and certainly called for a
general discussion. Ilia would start it off, and was sure to begin something
like this:
'Personally, Grie's behaviour surprised me from the very first day.'
Then Lana would take the floor and say that she, personally, hadn't
noticed anything out of the way in Grie's behaviour the first day, but soon
she had adopted the same view as her friend, Ilia.
Directly across from the school stood a twelve-storey building, the
Institute of Marine Life.
And facing the main entrance was the El-Monorail tram stopthe
monorail connected the institute with the seashore. Grie did not intend
taking the tram, but a tram happened to stop at the very moment Grie was
passing by. Accidentally, he pushed the 'Ramp' button, and the robot-driver
opened the door dropping the escalator-ramp which in the wink of an eye
whisked Grie into a compartment in the middle of the tram.
It was only forty kilometres to the seashore a ten-minute trip with two
stops. But this was the first time in his life that Grie had travelled forty
kilometres in ten minutes all by himself, and it was not at all like his
previous experiences.
Grie took a seat by the port-hole. There was nobody else in the
compartment, and Grie felt like the most important man on earth. Top
manthe most powerful, whose wishes were carried out the moment they
came to mind. Twice, because he wanted to, Grie pushed the button to stop
the tram: twice, the escalator rolled down to the platform though nobody
was waiting to get on. But there was one thing Grie could not do, prolong or
shorten the stops, because the thirty-second stops between eight and ten in
the morning and five and seven at night were part of the automatic
programming and unchangeable. However, this did not make Grie feel the
less powerful, no more than he would over his inability to stop the sun or
cause an eclipse of the moon.
To the first stop, the track ran through the residential section of the city.
But Grie saw no separate shapes of windows: instead, continually unwinding
before his eyes ran a flashing, glassy ribbon, shimmering, like a road
stretching ahead of a motor-car driver.
After the first stop, factories passed by and an enormous, dense blue sky
which, in the residential section, had appeared only in patches. Sharp against
the north-east sky rose the very smoke-stacks of the factory-museum which
in fine, sunny weather could be seen from the roof-solarium on the building
Grie lived in. Evenings, when it was dark, the stacks blazed with red
lightswarning signals for aeroplanes. Pop had explained to Grie why the
factories had needed such stacks, but all the same he had not understood.
For Pop had once said that by the middle of the twentieth century people had
already invented nuclear reactors and solar accumulators. And even a
century before that, one chemist had said that you could burn paper money
for heating purposes, but burning oil was a crime.
The second stop was also within the city limits. Beyond, right to the shore
itself, stretched the parks and meadows that formed a complete ring round

7
the metropolis. Grie had seen the ring twice from a helicopter and, somehow
or other, both times it had looked like the huge green ring into which the
giant Gilgamesh had locked the toy houses of the toy people. But here, down
on earth, there was no ring at all. There were hundred-metre tall eucalyptus-
trees, giant sequoias and baobabs with enormous trunks. Yet against the
pallid March sky where the horizon-ends vanished into the sea and beyond
the hills, they merely looked like big trees; even the neighbouring maple-like
plane-trees failed to give you a true picture of their natural size. This seemed
strange to Grie, for he was long used to the fact that the size of things could
be apprehended through comparison. Then why did hundred-metre giants
look like ordinary trees, though the plane-treesas tall as six-storey
buildingswere no bigger than a small boy hiding his head on his father's
knees? If he, Grie, stood beside such a tree...! Of a sudden Grie's eyes
widened, as if in fright. But he was far from frightened. He laughed aloud
because he had made an immense discovery all by himself, without Pop's
help: man compared all things with himself, and only then did he really
comprehend their size.
After a moment or two the same inertia, which at start-off had pressed
Grie against the back of the seat, began to throw him forward. There were
the poles of the El-trackat first flashing swiftly by in a haze, like fingers
momentarily chopped across one's line of vision, they then began changing
into vertically set pipes that curved downward and later straightened one
after another till they were strictly parallel, and abruptly stopped. The
loudspeaker announced: "Aquatoria. Last stop."
Three gigantic reservoirsfor whales, walruses and dolphinsstretched
along the shore. In reality, they were part of the sea, strips partitioned off by
a searchlight-lined concrete breakwater which stood a good hundred metres
offshore.
In the nearest reservoir on the right, the one for dolphins, one section was
fenced off as a play-aquatorium for children. It was stocked exclusively with
riding-dolphins who had a word-stock of not less than one hundred words.
In all the twelve years of its existence, there had never been one accident.
Even so, children taking dolphin-rides had to wear life jackets or vests. This
was a precaution in case of the slight likelihood of child or dolphin
momentarily losing his head.
Having donned his life-belt, Grie went to the station hydrophone and
ordered dolphin No. 113 to come into Sector Four.
Half a minute later, dolphin-113, nicknamed Deo, swam into the fourth
sector. Grie was standing near by, about ten metres away, patiently waiting
till the animal swam closer. But Deo did not stir a fin, and Grie waved to
him. Deo had a perfect view of Grie waving his hand, but he made no move.
Angry, Grie called Deo a donkey, and ran to the ramp-dock where the
stubborn dolphin was lazily circling. Running up, Grie saw a raised blue-
lettered Number Three underfoot, and almost tripped over it.
Finally settled on Deo's back, Grie spoke to him long and lovingly, asking
his forgiveness in human language. Now Deo did not understand the
wordsthey were not in his vocabulary. But he could not mistake the

8
intonation. He liked this boy who chattered on and on, holding a portable
hydrophone at his mouth. And without question, Deo carried out his every
command, even though it was far from easy.
Dozens of dolphins carrying children swam swiftly alongside, and every
manoeuvre had to be calculated to the nearest centimetre. When they entered
the south-western quadrant, Deo tore ahead at a speed of thirty kilometres an
hour, almost colliding with a dolphin called Kell. Grie was in raptures, and
Deo was too, such a wise and courteous Deo. 'Zz-zz-z! Tts! Zz-zz!' Deo
whistled, wheezing like an inter-communications buzzer, in his delight.
"I d-don't understand," laughed Grie, in answer. And the dolphin, loving
the game, whistled even more shrilly to amuse the boy.
The water in the aquatorium was heated to 89F but after three hours Grie
began to feel chilled from being so long in the water, despite its warmth.
Deo turned north-west to enter the first sector. At first Grie did not catch on
to the dolphin's manoeuvre, but when they began heading straight for the
ramp-dock, he started beating his heels against the dolphin's sides and
screaming into the hydrophone, insisting he make a wide-angled turn. The
dolphin stopped, waiting patiently for the boy to become reasonable. After
stormily protesting for about a minute, Grie calmed down and spoke to the
dolphin, asking to be put ashore. Again the dolphin slipped through the
water, as softly and noiselessly as if he were made of polished glass. The
water did not even reach the boy's knees, though it had risen before like a
bow-wave. Now it swept back in smooth slipstream.
Climbing up on the ramp, Grie pulled Deo close and pressed his cheek
against the rough head. Then he stood up and made his way along the shore.
At a turn in the path, he looked back, waved, and called out something.
Soon he disappeared and, as before, Deo circled aimlessly in his place in the
first sector, from which all the road could be seen right up to the turning.
It was twelve o'clockthe time school was out. Another five minutes and
Anna Andreevna would march her class into the school cafeteria. The
children ordered their lunch in the short recess following the first lesson.
Later, all they had to do was press a button to get their order. Like all the
others, Grie did this five times a week, every day but Saturday and Sunday.
Except for today. For the first time since he had started school.
Momentarily, Grie had the unpleasant feeling of being cut off and
abandoned, but only for a moment. Before him the glass doors of the
Aquatorium Cafe swung open as silently as the cafeteria doors at school, and
the aromas here were just as appetizing as those he was used to.
Grie finished his lunch in fifteen minutes, and left. As he turned onto a
gravel road he stopped, though there was no reason to, strictly speaking. For
him, all roads led homeward now that it was approaching one o'clock. But
what had seemed so unquestionably and obviously right before lunch, was
no longer so obvious. Grie shuffled from foot to foot, and the gravel dryly
crunched underfoot. A blackbird whistled long and shrill, while the wind
swept through a clump of trees with a hurried whisper, now remonstrating,
now calling to him to follow it, but very softly so that it was only discernible
if he listened hard.

9
 The electric bell rang from the station: the next El-tram was leaving for
town. The whistling of the blackbirds spilled desolately over the grove of
trees. Whistling in answer, Grie walked along the road toward the shade.
The grove was dark and shady, like a room in summer with the light
piercing through a crack in closed shutters. The sounds here were different
toothey clung to their sources, a bird, a tree, or a beetle burrowing its way
beneath dry leaves. Even to the brook incessantly ruminating over
something all along its way, and whose babbling never rose more than an
inch above the surface.
Never before had Grie heard such silence as was here. It was an amazing
silence, not at all like the silence he experienced at home when he was left
alone. Grie raked some dry fallen leaves into a pile near a thuja pine-tree,
and sat down with his back against the soft, resilient trunk. That way it was
more comfortable to listen to the silence.
A blindingly bright disc of sunlight lay at the boy's feet, so bright it
seemed like a visitor from another world. Above the disc rose a transparent
haze, and for a moment the air became frosted over, like a mirror when you
breathe on it. Then, with a kind of amazing quick-change that Grie missed,
the disc suddenly grew as large as an ocean, and over this ocean swirled
coils of steam that were as huge as threatening clouds. The most amazing
thing, though, was that right in the middle of the ocean stood a thuja pine,
which a moment before had stood in the grove, and there he was, Grie,
sitting beneath and leaning against the trunk.
Once Grie imagined he saw a giant wave rising in the distance, on the
horizon, and rushing straight at him. He bent over, ready to dive under it:
but suddenly it was not a wave at all, but a bluish strip of fog running the
whole length of the horizon. The strip hung motionless, while the ocean
heaved monotonously between him and the horizon, sending up countless
geysers that pulsed like the jets of non-synchronized fountains.
Several times Grie clearly saw the head of a gigantic grey snake with two
flat sabre-like teeth. Grie told himself it was utter nonsense, because there
never had been sabre-tooth snakes, but the head appeared again and again,
and every time Grie noticed new details: little, hairy ears, pallid white eyes
as unwinking and elastic as the pupils of a cat, an emerald hood and
monstrous fins like pterodactyl wings.
Grie was not scared. On the contrary, a certain angry strength grew
tumultuously inside him, demanding that he attack the monster at once.
Against this rose a different feeling that cautioned and restrained Grie, so
that reckless anger would not blind him to common sense. The monster
retracted his fins, ready to lunge. Grie's jaw tightened, his breathing became
slow and heavy, his scalp drew taut to the bone.
Fins back, the monster shot up over the waves, and millions of hail-stones
all together showered down on Grie's head. Grie closed his eyes and covered
his head with his arms, but the hail beat hard against his hands, trying to
pierce a way through. The main thing, Grie told himself over and over, was
to open his eyes, he had only to open his eyes and all this would vanish.
When he opened them, neither the ocean nor the grey finned snake was in

10
sight. There was no hail either: all the glade was studded with pine cones as
lustreless as dusty cactus leaves. Grie gathered a fewthey were amazingly
like dwarf sea-urchins. Then he let them trickle from his hands over his
head, but now they were only resilient cones, not like hail-stones at all.
The disc of sunlight still lay at his feet, but to the right of them now
instead of to the left as before. Across the disc scurried some ants, tracing on
it jagged lines resembling those of an international airlines map. At first the
ants seemed absolutely alike, but on selecting two of them at random Grie
could no longer tear his eyes away. For it seemed even these two differed
from each other: one, with a scarcely noticeable brownish sheen, was
slower; the other, as shiny as a black mirror, was bustling with energy. One
would continually stop dead to meticulously inspect his load; the other
dragged his burden point-blank ahead without stopping, not even turning
aside if another ant happened to cross his path, but go right over his
kinsman, load and all. The strangest thing was that his kinsman did not in
the least rebel against this treatment, but would stop arid patiently wait till
the black and shiny ant had got over with his load.
Suddenly Grie heard a shrill buzzing that sounded like a Lilliputian
electric motor. It came from an oak-tree on his left, but however hard Grie
looked he could not discover the source, either near the oak or beside the
thuja; there was nothing but the cyanic-blue air pierced with sunbeams.
Then the buzzing shifted its positionso swiftly one would think no dart
had been madeand hung somewhere over Grie's head. Grie jerked back
his head and caught a glimpse of a golden-grey gleam in the air just as he
was flicked on the nose. At his feet fell an emerald jewel beetle, while the
huge yellow-jacket wasp which had dropped it during an abrupt turn before
landing suddenly rocketed up and away so fast that Grie failed to follow its
night.
The jewel beetle was dead. At least, however much Grie poked at it, the
beetle remained as still as a dead thing insensible to pain. Yet its fuzzy legs
were as flexible as if alive, and the transparent wings under the tough,
horny, armour-like shell were as elastic and moist as a freshly caught
grasshopper's. That, Grie decided, means it's alive and only pretending to be
dead hoping to be discarded. But it was clear as day that the beetle could not
keep up -the pretence for more than a minute, two at the most. However,
when the two minutes were up, even after five and then ten minutes, the
beetle was as indifferent as before, and made no attempt
to escape. Then Grie chose a place where the ants had gathered in such a
tight pack that a needle could not be inserted between them, and dropped the
beetle there. At first the ants shied away from the strange lump that had
fallen like a bolt from the blue, but half a second was enough for them to get
over their fright and they dashed at the beetlenow you could see only a
hill of ants, each fighting to get to the bottom.
Grie waited a minute, but when the beetle must and should have run
away, it remained motionless. Grie chased the ants away with a twig, picked
the beetle up, again flexed and unflexed its hairy legs and partly opened the
horny outer wings to feel the inner ones. Then he put it in his pocket.

11
 The rays of sunshine were as bright as ever, but they all strove to flatten
out on the ground: the angle between them and the ground was now scarcely
30 degrees. Grie knew they would slant earthward with increasing swiftness,
and in two hours would lay completely flat like fallen treesthe March sun
sets quickly after five in the afternoon.
Filling his spare pockets with pine cones, Grie came out on the gravel
road. In twenty minutes he was turning left at a road sign pointing to the
Aquatoria Station.
Grie got back home at six. The doors were wide open, and he went
through all four rooms: there was nobody home. Turning on the telephone-
secretary, Grie heard Anna Andreevna's voice: "Your son did not come to
school today.
Please let me know the reason." Strange, thought Grie, it seems nobody
knows all that I know, not even the smallest detail. Not, Pop, nor Mum, not
even Anna Andreevna, who knows everything in the world according to
Lana.
Putting his cones on the table, Grie pulled out the beetle. In the gloom it
gleamed with gold-green spots fading at the edges. Grie turned on the table
lamp, and violet tones appeared that were not there before. He turned the
beetle over on its back arid pressed its abdomen with a pencil: the abdomen
was soft. Two or three hours after the time of death, it becomes glassy and
brittle, raspy. But perhaps too little time had passed for rigor mortis to set in.
The everyday glasses and dishes were in the dining-room; the crystal
glasses were in Mum's room in the elliptical cabinet. Mum's room was
closer. Grie did not stop to choose, he took the first that came to hand: a rosy
crystal goblet with three diamond-shaped feet. Dropping the beetle in the
glass, Grie looked for a sheet of thick paper, made holes in it, and pressed it
over the vessel. Then he sat at the table and glued his eyes to the beetle.
Once he imagined it stirred its feet. But he was not quite sure: sometimes
things, even those deliberately motionless, begin to come alive when you
look at them hardfirst the edges and the various delicate lines. Grie closed
his eyes and rubbed themno, the beetle was absolutely motionless.
Suddenly Pop's voice spoke from the wall: "Grie, can you hear me? Answer,
can you hear me?"
Only now Grie noticed that his pocket walkie-talkie, which he had hidden
in a drawer three weeks ago, was hanging on the wall. The strangest thing
was that when he had come in he had not noticed it, nor that the red
indicator was lit upthe signal that it was turned on.
"Yes, Pop," cried Grie. "I hear you! I'm home."
"So!" said Pop. "And does Mum know you're home?"
"Mum never called up. But she probably will in a moment."
Pop did not answer. He did not even say his usual 'Good!' which gave
Grie the feeling of security and well-being.
Three minutes later, Mum called. As soon as Grie lifted the receiver and
said 'Hello, this is Grie', Mum abruptly told him he was a good-for-nothing
boy, that he had no heart, that he didn't love his mother and had no pity.
Pop and Mum arrived together. Mum took a tablet, standing up, when Pop

12
brought her a quarter of a glass of water, her usual portion. And Grie
patiently waited for the world to return to normal, to the way it had probably
been for a thousand years. Pop and Mum sat down, but their son stood by
the table. Even if hean ill-bred boyshould lean on the table, for all he
knew they would say: 'Keep your hands at your sides, down the seams of
your trousers!' Grie had long wanted to ask why they said 'down the seams':
you see, his trousers were seamless. But this question always occurred to
him at an awkward moment, when it was impossible to ask any questions.
First, Grie stood close up to the table, but immediately had to take a pace
back, because he couldn't control his right handall by itself, it seemed to
land on the table. It seemed to Grie that Pop was smiling. But this, of course,
was only imagination because Pop's face was harsh, his lips tightly shut, his
eyes ... well, Grie wasn't very anxious to look into them right now. Yet the
first words Pop used were about eyes:
"Grie, look me in the eye."
"I'm looking, Pop," said Grie, turning his gaze on the window.
"Grie," repeated Pop, "look me in the eye!"
Grie tried as hard as he could to look Pop right in the eye, and he probably
would have made it if Mum had not suddenly mixed in.
"As if ho could look his father in the eye! If there was only a little shame
in his own eyes, some sign of having a conscience."
Grie could never understand Mum's tendency to contrast his eyes, tongue
or nose to his own self, using such names as shameless eyes, loose tongue,
long face and so on. Apparently, Pop did not understand Mum at such times
either, because when she started that he would tell her very gently, almost in
a whisper: "Grie and I will come to your room in five minutes."
And this time, it all happened exactly in the same way, with the exception
of one quite new and not too clear sentence of Mum's: "Have it your way,
but you're too liberal with him. It won't lead to any good."

Pop did not reply. He only smiled and slightly raised his brows, and this
made his face look very kindly, so kindly that Grie smiled in response, as if
all the unpleasantness were over.
When Mum left the room, Pop made Grie sit in a chair and tell everything
in detailfirst, why he played hooky from school, and second, where he had
been the whole day.
Grie told Pop what a morning it had been that day, such a sun and such a
sky. No, 'honour bright', he hadn't thought it up beforehand. His legs had
automatically brought him to the Institute of Marine Life, and therewell,
Pop must knowright beside it was the elevated monorail station. And the
railway took him to the seashore, and at the seashore was the aquatorium,
and in the aquatorium were dolphins. And afterwards, when you leave the
seashore, if you turn left there's a grove of trees. Oh yes, Grie had
completely forgotten: on the way to the grove was the Aquatorium Cafe, and
he had had his lunch there.
Pop listened to Grie silently. Pop was a good listener, he did not ask
leading questions, or catch you up on a word, wave his arms or shake his

13
head sadly. Sometimes Grie had a strange feeling: as if Pop were right in
front of him, and then suddenly vanished. That is, not altogether vanished,
but as if he had lost his usual form and become everything that surrounded
Grie. The strangest thing was that at the same time Grie could clearly see
Pop sitting in his chair.
"Pop," said Grie, "that gold beetle we found, is it alive?"
Pop smiled. Now Grie knew that Pop was truly smiling. But he did not
notice the slip he had made, though his father noticed and yet did not correct
his son because, from the moment Grie had talked about the grove, he had
not been there alone but with his father; and they had also found the jewel
beetle together. And his father that day had clearly heard the shrill buzzing
like that of a Lilliputian electric motor. And both of them, father and son,
had thrown back their heads to find where it came from.
Then, without asking permission, Grie ran to the window-sill, grabbed the
goblet with the beetle inside and put it in front of his father.
"Look, Pop. See how flexible the legs are. And the wings are soft. And the
belly's soft. And remember, when we threw it to the ants, it did not try to
escape. Why? Does that mean it is really dead?"
Pop suddenly broke out laughing and Grie toohe always joined in when
Pop laughed.
"No," said Pop. "The beetle is neither dead nor alive: it's in a half-way
state. The hornet or yellow-jacket wasp paralysed the nervous system with
its venom, and at the same time it preserved the beetle's body from
decomposing. Conserved it, so to say, as a meal for its larvae. However, the
beetle retains the minimum of the functions of life. As a matter of fact, it is
simply a 'preserving' process, no more. By the way, people preserve their
food now by a recipe using hornet venom. Even the terminology is
retainedhornetization.
Pop laughed once more, and Grie joined in. But this time Grie stopped
laughing long before Pop did, and began begging his father to calm down.
Grie pulled Pop's sleeve a dozen times before he got results. Finally Pop
stopped, clapped Grie on the shoulder and spoke the words Mum so
detested.
"Shoot, sonny, what's next?"
But Pop could not answer Grie's next question. He even told him straight
out: "I can't answer that one." Then he added: "Nobody else can, either.
Amazing, but it's a fact. We aren't any further ahead than people were two
hundred years ago; we don't even know exactly why the hornet picks on the
jewel beetle, or how it distinguishes its victim from other beetles, especially
as jewel beetles themselves are extremely different in appearance. The oak-
beetle is not a bit like the poplar-beetle, and the gold-pitted emerald beetle is
very much of a white crow in the beetle family."
Grie listened very attentively, and when Pop fell unexpectedly silent,
thinking about something far awayyou could see by his eyes that it was
about something quite remoteGrie suddenly asked whether Anna
Andreevna could explain the behaviour of the beetle-murdering hornet.
"I doubt it," answered Pop.

14
 "I doubt it," Pop repeated, and Grie could clearly hear the voice of his
teacher who would insist to him, Grie, that hornets were guided by instinct,
and that that was quite enough for today, that an exhaustive answer would
be given him when he reached the seventh form at lessons in biocybernetics
and parapsychology.
Pop was still thinking his own, far-away thoughts, which was why he did
not pay attention to Grie's words.
"I don't want to go to school."
Then Grie said it again.
"Pop, I won't go to school."
This time Pop heard him and once more, as he had last summer which
was almost a year ago, he told Grie not to talk nonsense. But Grie repeated it
a third time, and Pop no longer talked about nonsense or acting silly, but
said very strictly that tomorrow they would go to school together.
Then Pop knocked over the goblet: it fell to the floor and the diamond-
shaped feet were chipped off. Mum was extremely irritated, because these
crystal goblets were her favourites. Besides, it was one more piece of
evidence proving how great were the forces of chaos and entropy, and how
swiftly they spread.
"Yes," said Pop, "you're absolutely right. Our forefathers, with their
primitive way of thinking, put it this way: 'When trouble comes in at the
window, open the doors!'"
"Oh, you're always the cheerful one!"
"Not always," Pop objected, smiling, and kissed Mum on both cheeks,
both eyes, both ears and then her foreheadbecause seven is a sacred
number.
Grie could always tell exactly what mood
Anna Andreevna was in. But today, for the first time, he was taken aback.
She was as polite as ever, very courteous, and once even called him 'my
boy', but all of it was oddly different from the usual atmosphere set by habit
and continuing day after day. Anna Andreevna already knew that Grie had
played hookyPop had called her yesterday so she wouldnt worryand
she also knew that Grie did not want to come to school. Though Grie never
guessed that Pop had had a talk with the teacher, would it have changed
things if he had known? After all, he held no grudge against Anna
Andreevna and did not blame he^ for his not liking school. In her place,
there might have been another teacher and just the same Grie would not
have wanted to go to school. Didn't he like Anna Andreevna? That wasn't it:
she was ordinary, like the majority, and lo Grie she was the same as all other
people. Naturally, Ilia and Lana admired her because she was 'so utterly,
utterly special, the best teacher in the world' but Grie found their calf love
merely disgusting. Though Anna Andreevna, as a person, had nothing to do
with it. No, this was quite a different thingquite simply, Grie was bored
during the lessons. Just why he was bored, Grie couldn't have said.
According to Ilia, school was very interesting: today you don't know,
tomorrow you do; today you don't understand, tomorrow you'll understand
everything. But with Grie, for some reason, it was right the other way round:

15
today, things are clear; tomorrow, they're not. And the most surprising of all
was how really good Grie felt when what was clear as day suddenly turned
out not to be; or when something simple became so complicated, so
confusing, that even Pop could not explain it to him, to Grie, nor to himself
either. And besides, they almost never talked at lessons about the most
important thingsthose important things Grie's head was always busy with.
When Grie asked questions, without fail Anna Andreevna referred him to
the future.
"That is learned in the fifth form, this in the seventh, something else in the
tenth. Science, Grie, above all is a system, and it is based on moving from
the simple to the complex."
Pop also said that science was a system. But either Pop's voice was
different, or his eyes werebecause the same words had a different ring
when Pop said them, and the world around did not lose its shine.
"Children," said Anna Andreevna, when the bell rang, "yesterday Grie
played hooky. We won't talk about it now, as to whether it was good or bad.
We shall first hear what Grie has to say."
"Well," began Grie, "I got up, did morning drill, washed, had breakfast
and left home at a quarter past eight. It takes me five minutes to walk to
school, but suddenly I saw an El-tram which goes to the sea...."
"But didn't you ever see it before? If you came across an aeroplane, would
you go off to Africa or Patagonia?"
"Be silent, Ilia," Anna Andreevna checked her.
"To Africa or Patagonia?" Grie repeated.
"I could not come across an aeroplane. A helicopter, yes, but not an
aeroplane."
"Grie," said the teacher, "you're digressing. Tell everything, just as it
happened."
Nobody interrupted Grie again, and he repeated his story of yesterday,
word for word: about the dolphin Deo, about the grove, the ants, and the
beetle-killing hornet. But now it was not simply a repetition, because Grie
remembered Pop's explanations. None of them knew that Grie was weaving
in Pop's words, and it came out as if Grie had known all this from the very
start.
Ilia was the first to raise her hand. Naturally, she said, what Grie had told
them was not without interest. But just think what would happen, she said, if
every schoolchild acted at his own sweet will. Discipline was obligatory for
all, and Grie needn't think we were going to make an exception in his case.
That was all very well long, long ago, when people were still not very wise,
when there were all kinds of princes and princessesbluebloods they called
them. But now everybody knew quite well that all people's blood was the
same colourred.
Then Lana took the floor. First of all, she explained, she fully agreed with
Ilia. But in addition, she wished to voice her indignation at Grie's egoism.
He had cared only about his personal pleasure, and had not in the least
thought about the worry he was causing his mother, father and Anna
Andreevna. Of course, she didn't think Grie did it on purpose, out of spite,

16
but certainly from egoism, because egoism blinds a person to everyone but
himself.
After Lana came Lim, then Ada and Saul. Yes, they said, Grie deserved
severe blame for his act. However, we must not judge Grie, but help him,
because anybody can make a mistakea car runs on four wheels, yet still
overturns.
"I think Lim, Ada and Saul are right," said Anna Andreevna, smiling. And
now it was clear to everybody that she was in a good mood. "Now we will
give the floor to Grie again."
Did he realize what he had done? Yes, he did. Did he understand that he
had worried his parents and Anna Andreevna? He did, and he asked the
teacher's pardon. And at home he would ask his mother and father to forgive
him, but if his classmates insisted he could do it here, in the classroom.
Grie waited a minute. Nobody insisted, and he spoke again: "But I don't
like school, and I will not come to the lessons."
He had scarcely uttered the words about school and the lessons, when Ilia
threw up her hand. But this time the teacher would not let her speak. This
time, she spoke herself.
"If Grie is so stubborn," she said, "we will meet his wishes, children.
From today, Grie is excused from the lessons in the classroom. From today,
he will study on the seventh floor, in a separate room."
And the children remembered the mysterious seventh floor, and the boys
sitting there in loneliness among the electronic machines; and the last, empty
room they had seen when the school year began, about which Anna
Andreevna had said: "But I'm sure nobody will end up here from our form."
"However," Anna Andreevna made a pause, "when Grie honestly
improves and wants to return to us, we'll always find room for him."
A quarter of an hour later, the lift took Grie and his father up to the
seventh floor. They were met by an elderly man with white hair, like the hair
of an albino deer, and with blue eyes so blue they seemed like a piece of
the sky cut out in the form of human eyes.
"Oh, Dean Grigoryevich," he cried happily. "I'm terribly pleased to see
you. And who's this? Your son? Glad to meet you, young man. I'm Gore
Maxovich, and you? Grie? Grigory, that must be. Grigory Deanovich. Glad,
terribly glad, to welcome you here to our empyrean heights. Well, now,
come along into your study."
The old man smiled all the time. And the strangest thing was that Grie
also wanted to smile for some reason; and not just smile, but laughlaugh
till it hurt, like when you romp and roll with a dog on the grass when he
licks you all over, now on the ear, now the nose, now on the mouth. Pop
smiled too. But only at first. Later, when Gore Maxovich began speaking of
a mutual acquaintance by the strange name of Elu-the-Big, Pop slopped
smiling. He merely nodded, and narrowed his eyes now and then. Grie knew
this squint of Pop's wellit always appeared when Pop was dissatisfied
with himself.
"Oh, don't be so modest, Dean Grigoryevich," the older man put in
hurriedly. "Elu-the-Big is magnificent and you, as the designer, should be

17
proud of him. Though the emotional analysis of tests, frankly speaking, does
not come easy to him."
Pop sighed.
"You're much too lenient, Gore Maxovich. At the outside, he is a barely
average teaching-computer."
Gore Maxovich began a despairing protest and, in search of support,
alluded to that far-off time when the respected Dean Grigoryevich, then
Grie's age, sat in this very same room and furiously argued that the
Electronic Teacher-2, or Elu-Two as everybody called it, was over-marking.
"Ah," and Gore raised his finger in reproof, "self-criticism is all very well,
but one mustn't overdo it. No, indeed!"
Grie had stopped by the table in the middle of the room. Pop stood by the
window.
"Sit down," Gore commanded, patting Grie on the head. "And now relate
how you spent the day, yesterday. First, orally, and then write it outhere,
use this paper."
"Whom will I tell it to?" asked Grie.
"To nobody," and the older man shrugged. "If, of course, you don't count
yourself a listener. Your father has probably told you the story of the old
eccentric who talked to himself on the street. 'Say, Mister,' asked one
solicitous youngster, 'why do you talk to yourself?' 'Eh, young fellow,' the
old man answered, 'it's so nice, d'you know, to talk with a clever man.' And
now to work, young Grie," Gore finished, with unexpected severity.
Pop and Gore Maxovich went out: Grie was left alone. At first he was
busy thinking about the jovial Gore, then about Popwho apparently had
invented the machine Elu-the-Big; afterwards about the meeting in his form,
and back to the broken crystal goblet and, finally, about yesterday morning
when there had been just as much sunshine as today. Grie clicked his
tongue, trying to reproduce Deo's voice, but he did not come very close
because the squeaking sound was missingthe somewhat grating creak of a
hard-to-open door.
Now Grie was ready to start his task: but there was something ridiculous
about talking to himself. Come to think of it, what could he tell himself that
he didn't already know? After all, it was he who had seen it all, heard it all,
thought it all out. And he had already told it twice: first to Pop, then to his
classmates.
It was very quiet in the room: the quietness here could be heard like the
silence there in the grove. Grie listened hard: something crackled
monotonously away in Elu-the-Big, who every fifteen seconds gave a click
like a knife blade severing an over dry, brittle recording-tape. Then came a
splutter, and Elu-the-Big gave a clucking sound that was an exact copy of
Deo's delighted chortle. Grie burst out laughing, and told Elu that he could
cluck too, but he could no more talk with him than he could with Deo. Yet if
he could tell Deo about yesterday, the dolphin's eyes would brighten merrily
and he would whistle away in delight like an intercom buzzer somebody had
forgotten to switch off.
"Tss! Tss! ZZ-zz-z!" buzzed Elu.

18
 "All right, then," said Grie, reconciled. "I have to tell it to somebody,
anyhow, and there's nobody else here but you to hear me."
And Grie related once more the story of his amazing day without faltering
even once, not till he got to the very place where the wasp stung his
victimsuddenly it became terribly important to figure out where the sting
was made.
"If it were done on the outer wings, then probably nothing would have
come of it," Grie reasoned aloud. "Because those wings are chiti-nous. So it
has to be done in a soft place. But how does the hornet know it has to sting
the beetle in a soft part of the body?"
With frightening suddenness, a sick anxiety settled on Grie: first he leaned
against the window down below in the school yard, children were
playingthen he started to pace the room, then began tormenting Elu-the-
Big to tell him the answer, and finally called it a stupid dolt and slapped his
hand on Elu's green eye, to boot.
Elu was silent but, almost coincident with the slap, the door opened and
Pop and Gore Maxovich came in.
"What's the matter, Grigory?" cried the old man. "Acting like an ignorant
blockhead! You won't get anywhere taking out your anger on anything that
comes to hand. You must admit, young Grigory, that's no way to behave.
Elu doesn't deserve it. D'you hear how the poor thing gasps?"
Elu-the-Big gasped twice: first long and heavily, especially on the intake,
and then exhaled a short, sharp sigh.
Looking at Grie with blue, amused eyes, Gore Maxovich said it was time
to do the written work. Then he turned round at the door on his way out,
raised a threatening finger and reminded him that anger did not become a
proper man.
Grie finished it toward noon: it took him two hours and a quarter. When it
struck twelve, Grie was surprisedtime seemed to be a variable thing, as if
similar periods of time were of different duration.
"As if time had slopped," he told Pop and Gore Maxovich.
"Maybe it really had?" suggested the older man, seriously, and Grie felt
that ho was far from joking when he said it.
Gore Maxovich neatly folded the sheets Grie had written arid solemnly
opened the door for him.
"You are free, Grigory, until one o'clock. If I had that much time, I should
spend the first half of it in the swimming pool, and the second having lunch
topped off with a ten-minute walk."
"May I, Pop?" asked the boy, uncertainly.
"Grie," his father shrugged, "Gore Maxovich is in charge here. And if he
advised me to go swimming, I shouldn't waste any time."
A minute later, travelling in 'third gear', Grie was already crossing the
school yard.
"Well, and now we'll hear what Elu-the-Big has to tell us. Not hear, but
look, rather," Gore corrected himself.
After turning on the video-screen, Gore muttered at first to himself, then
let out a cascade of 'Hm, Hm's' modulating them from something indistinct

19
to irreproachable articulation, and finally made a pronouncement in the
trumpet voice of an electronic news-despatcher.
"And so, my dear Dean Grigoryevich, for yesterday your son gave out 280
units of information by the Rozov-Anjou scale, instead of the 60 units on the
school programme. That is for oral work. Now, let's see what the written
variant gives us. Aha, aha240. That's without any graphological analysis.
Wait a minute, so another 60. All together, that makes 300."
"Right," replied Dean Grigoryevich, his fingers drumming on the control
board, "but it's absolutely clear that the oral work in textual values is no
worse than the written text, so it contains even more information."
"Exactly," joined in Gore, "though not in the pure, so to say, skeletal
form; but rather in the underlying emotional tones found only in voice
modulation and gestures. The voice, eyes and hands of a person reveal what
he cannot put into words. And Elu-the-Big doesn't take this information into
account. For Elu, the signal lies in the word alone. It knows no difference
between a gifted mime and one of the ancient stone-woman statues of the
steppes."
Cleaving the room diagonally as he strode, Dean Grigoryevich
involuntarily stopped every time he reached the centre, where the diagonals
crossed. Then he marched to the window and looked below for fifteen
minutes, unable to tear himself away. Children were playing in the school
yardlaughing, playing Indians as the custom has been for a century or two,
racing one another and squealing with delight if they won or frowning if
they lost. What would Elu-the-Big say about these children? Nothing: for
Elu they were not information-bearers.
Then Grie suddenly appeared in their midst down in the yard. He was
tearing along at a rocking gallop, imitating a horse. Dean Grigoryevich
smiled. He mused on the fact that the information this boy had given out
yesterday and today had shot an avalanche of ideas into his father's head.
Who knows, he thought, maybe the design of a new Elu will crystallize out
of these very ideas. The mathematician Turing had first spoken of idea-
avalanches a century ago. He believed them to be an exclusive trait of gifted
personalities. But perhaps Turing was mistaken? Most likely he was: in any
case, the time characteristic of this function was absolutely necessary:
children nearly always thought creatively. The thousands of childish
'Why's?' so tiring to an adultrepresented a chain reaction, Turing's idea-
avalanche.
Why don't we give credence to children? What happens to these idea-
avalanches when children grow up? Do they vanish spontaneously or are
they crushed from without? Albert Einstein admitted that he had been a
child much too long.
But you had to stop somewhere. Impossible to believe implicitly in the
quirks of a child. Laziness, idleness, light-mindedness, futile daydreaming
children had these too. But what was laziness in reality? If you discarded all
the moral verdicts, then laziness was nothing but a reluctance on the part of
a system to function in a given direction. Yet top functioning was a natural
state with any normal self-run system. Then why did it set up resistance?

20
Could it be that it was instinctively protecting its personal 'id' from awaited
exposure? Maybe....
"Strange," said Dean aloud, breaking the silence suddenly.
"Nothing strange about it," his companion put in. "In Yasnaya Polyana
there once lived a remarkable old man. But this great man wasn't old, by the
way, when he wrote his small article entitled 'Who Is Teaching Whom?'
which went on to prove that weexperienced know-it-alls learn from
children."
"Right," Dean laughed. "At any rate, the wiser of the barbarian tribe of
adults do. But who can determine the correct borderlines of the truth? The
most difficult thing of all is to stop in time. Formerly, people didn't manage
this so well. And now? I know, you are already picturing Grie here with you,
but...."
"In short," Gore suddenly interrupted, "my old-fashioned grandfather
denned a situation like this more clearly: there's many a slip between the cup
and the lip! Grie must stay here, on the seventh, in a specially programmed
classgetting
ten years of education in seven, plus the green light to follow his
inclinations. But his father's afraid of making ... mm ... mm ... a mistake. He
can't decide whether he should indulge his son's bent or, on the contrary, act
against it." "Yes," nodded Dean. "Your old-fashioned grandfather was right.
I'm not so sure whether this exceptional talent for observing, this sensitivity,
actually is the real Grie. After three yearswhy three?after a year, all this
may vanish into thin air. But the memory of once being extraordinary is not
an easy thing to live with."
"That beats all!" cried Gore. "Then would you kindly tell me whose future
may be foretold by your Elu? Whose destiny has he the right to deal with?
Anyone's, only not your son's! Right? Answer me that, am I right? Then
what the devil is your Elu good for? Nothing?"
"The whole trouble is," sighed Dean, "that Elu is no wiser than you or I.
The school system down through the yearsreservations don't alter the
facthas been based on an absurd axiom: man is standardized, apart from
his merits. So differentiations, with rare exceptions, show up only in the
future, when our schooldays are already a rosy, elegaic and useless memory,
like that of first love. Why, even Elu sees only the past and present, and
those only out of the corner of his eye." Dean burst out laughing. "And as
before, the Greek moiras or the Roman parcae lock us up, and throw the
keys into the future."
"And is that all you can say?" the old man asked dryly. "So first we look
for the keys, and only then decide what to do with our own son?"
"Don't be angry, my dear Gore...."
"Don't you play the fool, Dean. And don't forget what lies between the
lock and the key sometimes a person's whole life."
"And so," Dean added cheerfully, "hail to the masterkey! But don't forget
Gan Brunov, the child wonder, who amused himself with integrals at seven
years of age, but at twenty found himself an ordinary programmist with such
extraordinary conceit that it almost brought him to suicide."

21
 "Fine," said Gore pacifically. "You keep on protecting Grie from a
possible mental drama which is envisaged by the theory of chance and your
life experience. But what will become of the grown man when he suddenly
discovers that he has accomplished ten times less than he could have, and
his father and the school are to blame? You notice, I say nothing of the
interests of society which needs everyday workable units rather than wonder
store-houses of energy."
Turning sharply, Dean Grigoryevich raised his fist as if intending to hit
something invisible standing between him and Gore, but there came a quick
buzzing sound, impatient, insistentand Grie flew in through the opening
door. His face was crimson, and dark runnels of sweat that started at the
temples streaked down to his chin.
"Pop," he cried, "guess who came in first? I didme! And everybody at
the pool was surprised, and asked where I learned to swim like that."
"Everybody who was there?"
"Everybody!"
"Perhaps not everyone? After all, you couldn't see and hear all of them at
once."
"Everybody, Pop, really."
"Well, what do you say to that, Gore Maxovich? Did you ever see such a
dreadful show-off? And just imagine, three months ago this fellow was
accusing his classmates of boasting, which he said was merely a synonym
for stupidity. Grie, tell Gore Maxovich about that little episode."
"Pop, I'm not bragging. It really was that way: everybody was surprised
and asked me questions."
"You don't say," said his father. "In that case boasters are all-seeing and
all-hearing: they have four eyes and four ears like the four cardinal points of
the compass."
Grie dropped his head unhappily and stood quite still until Gore
Maxovich told him to take his seat. Then, before Grie started his lessons,
Gore began thinking aloud, recalling what an incessant boaster Dean had
been, Grie's father. Dean's eyes threatened, a warning finger went to his lips,
his head shookbut Gore was implacable and concluded by saying that
children should know only the truth about their fathers.
"Right, Grie? That's true, isn't it?"
"Yes," Grie answered quietly, not raising his head.
"And then," added Gore, "they will be better than their fathers. For that's
the purpose of progress."

The following day, at a schoolteachers' council meeting, the prior results

of the inquiry were reviewed, and Grie was excluded from the pupils taking
the general curriculum. The same day, he was moved to the seventh floor to
be under the guidance of Gore Maxovich.
That evening Mum laid the table for company. Pop was displeased: there
was no need, he said. It was out of place. But Mum laughed very, very
much, and said it wasn't the Middle Ages, that puritanism and asceticism
had long ceased being virtues. Then the guests arrived. As if in collusion,

22
the women repeated with one accord: "Is this Grie? I wouldn't have known
him. How he's grown!"
Mum told them about his remarkable results, turning each time to Grie
and adding: "Now, don't go getting a swelled head, Grie!"
When the guests had gone, Pop said that laurel leaves were heavy, and
wreaths made of them had broken the neck of more than one.
"Dean," Mum's voice was tender, but a bit reproachful just as it had been
when she raised her glass of champagne to drink to Grie's success yet
scolded him at the same time, demanding modesty. "Dean," she said, "no
sociology and no philosophy. I want to be happy. Simply happy, don't you
see?"
"No," laughed Pop. "I don't see. I'm like the giraffe: on Monday I get wet
feet, and on Friday I see I've caught cold."
Three weeks later, on Tuesday, April 15, Grie played hooky again from
school. He returned home at three in the afternoonhis usual time.
On Thursday night, Gore Maxovich telephoned and asked Dean
Grigoryevich to drop in and see him at school, if possible.
As father and son went to school, each was busy with his thoughtsGrie
wondering if Gore Maxovich would tell Pop about his skipping school, and
Dean Grigoryevich suppressing the temptation to ask his son if he knew why
the teacher had asked him to come.
Gore met them at the doors and, without waste of time, led Dean over to a
table where a huge sheet of paper was spread out, spotted with diagrams.
"Look, my dear fellow, and you'll be simply amazed. Again I see
Aphrodite rising from the foam," he cried noisily, tapping his finger on the
paper. "None but the blind would see here only a broken succession."
Dean Grigoryevich was not blind, but all the same he failed to see an
Aphrodite born of the foam: he saw the curve on Grie's study-graph for the
past three weeks. After the tenth day, the line dropped ever sharper so that
by the sixteenth day it had turned into a plumb line stopping somewhere
between forty and fifty information unitsfifteen units lower than the
average for a first former. But on the eighteenth day, it shot up to a mark of
340 and kept rocketing until the nineteenth day, yesterday, where it rose
another thirty units. The seventeenth day was omitted from the chart.
"Gore Maxovich," Dean exclaimed, "the seventeenth day is missing."
"No," said Gore, pointing a finger at Grie.
"It is only missing on the report chart. Where were you on Tuesday,
Grie?... Did you hear that, Dean? In the entomological gardens. Why did you
want to go there? Amazing! A comprehensive answer, and a very original
one: 'I don't know, I simply wanted to.' Why didn't you tell your father about
it? Aha, clear enough he didn't wish to hurt him. Now, Grie, you go and
take a walk for a quarter of an hour."
Hardly had Grie's footsteps died away at the end of the corridor, when the
itch to declaim left Gore Maxovich. For a minute, they were both silent.
Then the elder man went to Elu-the-Big, and laid his hand over the green
eye.
"These words are not for him," he said. "Though, honestly, I wouldn't

23
hesitate to admit his genius as a pedagogue if only he could speed up the
information-current of my scholars beforehand, if only by one or two weeks.
Why did Grie want to go there, to the entomological gardens? Why only on
the seventeenth day, though his study curve plainly dropped from the tenth?
Why?"
"I don't know, I don't understand at all," whispered Dean. "The symptoms
or signs are there, but no prognosis. Elu is simply an untalented accumulator
of constants. And it was my son who helped me to understand this, my own
son. Intuition guides Grie. But how long will it serve him? Elu shows the
measure of his giftedness. But I must know whether his gifted-ness is stable,
otherwise it is all a mirage, a mirage which may melt away under the first
rays of a rising sun."
"No, Dean, that's not right," cried Gore. "A researcher has no right to put
the question in an 'all-or-nothing' way. And however much you want to see a
thousand per cent guarantee of the future this moment, today, you'll get
nowhere. Maybe your son will manage this, or perhaps only his grandson.
But if your new Elu could see a week, or a month ahead, we would move
forward twice as fast, and more surely."
"Twice as fast, and more surely," repeated Dean mechanically, viewing
the picture which rose before him even before the older man had attacked
him with reproaches and disclosures. This picture had followed him
persistently for a month: a motor car travelling at great speed on salt flats,
the headlights throwing their beams 200 metres ahead; beyond, right to the
horizon, lay only thick darkness. His desire to increase the speed was almost
unbearable, but to do that one had to see the whole road, right to the
horizon.
But how? How could he see all of it? Was it actually in man's power to do
it? What if the moiras and parcae did not represent the brilliant insight of
human intuition at all, but both were only alluring and convenient poetical
images?
Good, let's assume that. Let's assume it's impossible to see the road in all
its details. But it might be possible to determine the direction! You see, the
working of a system in timethat is certainly a direction. But what did he,
personally, know of the system that was called Grie, or about the systems
which, under millions of names, were jumping for joy or were way down in
the dumps, or were playing the fool that very moment on all six continents!
When he designed his first Elu, the President of the Pedagogical Academy
announced at the annual convocation that school had at last put on seven-
league boots. And everybody had applauded his words. As if those same
seven-league boots hadn't been gathering dust for a good fifty years in
museums of astronautics and nuclear physics, even in medical museums!
And nobody had remembered that teaching, as previously, called itself a
science; nobody had remembered, either, that Rabelaisian allegory which
was made by the President of the Academy of Science: when children play
at being mermen or spacemen, it is foolish and inhuman to disenchant
themone should wait till they grow up.
"Odd, you know," said Dean of a sudden, "that teaching, the most ancient

24
of the humanities, is only beginning. And perhaps.... Nostalgia, I guess,
remembering ... Gore Maxovich."
"Dean," said the older man, speaking very sternly, strictly, "stop
complaining, or I'll put you outside the door. After a quarter of a century you
should have, must have, become a man. When you went to school, there was
only Elu-Two, and now we have Elu-the-Big. After him will come Elu-
Maximus, Elu-Magnus, Elu-Ultramagnus and...."
"And that's the purpose of progress," smiled Dean, but his eyes remained
sad. "Just the same, for me, for us ... this is a difficult time; more difficult,
perhaps, than it was four and a half centuries ago for Komensky; three
hundred years ago for the good Pestalozzi."
"No," cried Gore, "it's not...."
The very moment he stepped forward to grip his opponent by his jacket
lapels, Grie opened the door and called out that he was tired of loafing
around in the school gardens, where they stopped you a thousand times to
give a lecture. It was better sitting here with Elu-the-Big. Why was that, why
Elu? Because Elu only says what's right and what's wrong, without jawing
you about it.
"D'you hear that, you doubting Thomas, you!" cried Gore, shaking a
finger at Dean Grigoryevich. "Elu teaches, but doesn't lecture. You fix it so
that hateful old Gore doesn't have to be here at all on the seventh floor, so
that Elu-Magnus and Elu-the-Great will push all this present company out of
here ... Elu-the-Big and old Gore!"
"And time? And..." Dean indicated his son with his eyes. "And him?"
"Don't make a tragedy of it, old fellow!" Again the itch to make a speech
caught old Gore. "What is a tragedy? Only want of faith, only empty want of
faith, and fear!"
Transferring Elu's keys to the orange light, Grie tapped out a story on a
free topic: "The Life and Habits of the Venomous Beetle-Murderer." The old
teacher turned on the signal: 'Quiet! Lesson time.' And busied himself
quietly with the graphic report tables.
At first, Dean Grigoryevich leaned over his son, but after five minutes he
walked over to the window: the school yard and gardens, the playing fields,
were empty. Only the sun below, on Earth, was not empty or meaningless,
but held much. So fantastically much. And as before, when the old teacher
was reproaching him, once more he saw before him the car and the salt flats
lighted for two hundred metres, not more, by the car headlights. But there
was a light far away on the horizona delicate arch, that belted the Earth,
though between the arch of light and the lighted road on the salt-flats lay a
thick and absolute darkness.
Teaching, the most ancient of the humanities, was only beginning.
Apparently, he spoke aloud. Yes, aloud: for the yellow light flared up:
'Routine Broken' and old Gore threatened him with a finger, nodding at
the red signal light: 'QUIET! LESSON TIME.'

25