The beer came. Noonan took a sip, watching over the head of foam as Valentine examined his mug with a look of distaste.
“You don’t like it?”
“I usually don’t drink,” Valentine said hesitantly.
“Really?”
“The hell with it!” Valentine moved the mug of beer away from him. “Why don’t you order me a cognac in that case.”
“Rosalie!” Noonan called out, finally cheering up.
The cognac arrived. Noonan spoke.
“But you really shouldn’t go on like that. I’m not talking about your picnic—that’s too much—but even if we accept the version that this is a prelude to contact, I still don’t like it. I can understand the bracelets and the empties. But why the witches’ jelly? The mosquito mange spots and that disgusting fluff?”
“Excuse me,” Valentine said, taking a slice of lemon. “I don’t quite understand your terminology. What mange?”
Noonan laughed.
“That’s folklore. Stalkers’ slang. Shop talk. The mosquito mange spots are areas of heightened gravitation.”
“Ah. Graviconcentrates. Directed gravity. That’s something would enjoy talking about for a couple of hours, but you wouldn’t understand a thing.”
“Why wouldn’t I? I’m an engineer, you know.’
“Because I don’t understand it myself. I have systems of equations, but no way to interpret them. Witches’ jelly, is that colloidal gas?”
“The very same. Did you hear about the catastrophe at the Currigan labs?”
“I heard something about it.”
“Those idiots put a porcelain container with the jelly into a special room, highly insulated and isolated. That is, they thought it was isolated. And when they opened the container with manipulators the jelly went through metal and plastic, like water through a sieve, and outside. And everything it touched also turned into jelly. Thirty-five people were killed, more than a hundred were crippled, and the entire building was destroyed. Did you ever go there? Marvelously equipped place! And now the jelly has seeped down into the basement and the lower Boors. Some prelude to contact.”
Valentine made a face.
“Yes, I know all that. But you must agree, Richard, that the visitors had nothing to do with it. How could they have known about the existence of our military-industrial complexes?”
“They should have known,” Noonan insisted.
“Their answer to that would be that the military-industrial complexes should have been done away with a long time ago.”
“That’s for sure. That’s what they should have taken care of, if they’re so powerful.”
“You mean you’re suggesting interference in the internal affairs of the human race?”
“Hmmm,” Noonan said. “I guess we’re going too far. Let’s drop it. Instead, let’s go back to the beginning of our discussion. How will it all end? Well, look at you, for instance, you’re a scientist. Are you hoping for something fundamental to come out of the Zone, something that will alter science, technology, our way of life?”
Valentine shrugged.
“You’re barking up the wrong tree, Richard. I don’t like to indulge in empty fantasizing. When the subject is something serious, I prefer to revert to healthy careful skepticism. Based on what we’ve already received, a whole range of possibilities is raised, and I can say nothing specific about it.”
“All right, let’s try another approach. What do you think you’ve already received?”
“You’ll find this amusing—very little. We’ve unearthed many miracles. In a few cases, we’ve even learned how to use these miracles for our own needs. A monkey pushes a red button and gets a banana, pushes a white button and gets an orange, but it doesn’t know how to get bananas and oranges without the buttons. And it doesn’t understand what relationship the buttons have to the fruit. Take the so-so’s, for example. We’ve learned how to use them. We’ve even learned the circumstances under which they multiply through a process similar to cell division. But we still haven’t been able to make a single so-so. We don’t know how they work, and judging by present evidence, it will be a long time before we will.”
“I would put it this way. There are objects for which we have found uses. We use them, but almost certainly not the way the visitors use them. I am positive that in the vast majority of cases we are hammering nails with microscopes. But at least we’re using some things—the so-so’s, and the bracelets to stimulate life processes. And the various types of quasibiological masses, which have created a revolution in medicine. We have received new tranquilizers, new types of mineral fertilizers, a revolution in agriculture. But why am I giving you a list! You know this at ]east as well as I—I notice you wear a bracelet. Let’s call this group of objects beneficial. It can be said that mankind has benefited from them in some degree, even though it should never be forgotten that in our Euclidean world every stick has two ends.”
“Undesirable applications?”
“Precisely. Say the use of so-so’s in the defense industry. But that’s not what I’m talking about. The action of every beneficial object has been more or less studied and more or less explained. Our technology is holding us up In fifty years or so we’ll know how to make them ourselves and then we can crack nuts to our hearts’ content. It’s more complicated with the other group of objects—more complicated because we have found no application for them, and their qualities within the framework of our present concepts are definitely not understandable. For instance, the magnetic traps. We know that they’re magnetic traps, Panov has proven it very wittily. But we don’t know the source of such a powerful magnetic Field and what causes their superstability. We don’t understand a thing about them. We can only weave fantastic theories about properties of space that we never suspected before. Or the K-23. What do you call it? The pretty black beads that are used for jewelry?”
“Black sprays.”
“That’s it, the black sprays. That’s a good name. Well, you know their properties. If you shine a ray of light into one of those beads, the transmission of the light is delayed and the delay depends on the bead’s weight, size, and several other parameters. And the unit of light coming out is always smaller than the one entering. What is this? Why? There is a wild theory that the black sprays are gigantic expanses of space with properties different from those of our space and that they became curled up under the influence of our space.” Valentine sighed deeply. “In short, the objects in this group have absolutely no applications to human life today. Even though from a purely scientific point of view they are of fundamental importance. They are answers that have fallen from heaven to questions that we still can’t pose. Perhaps Sir Isaac wouldn’t have figured out lasers, but he would at least have understood that such a thing is possible, and that would have influenced his scientific outlook greatly. I won’t go into detail, but the existence of such objects as the magnetic traps, the K-23, and the white ring has invalidated most of our recently developed theories and has brought forth completely new ideas. And there is still a third group.”
“Yes,” Noonan said. “The witches’ jelly and other goodies.”
“No, no. Those fall either into the first or second category. I’m talking about objects that we know nothing about or have only hearsay information. The things that the stalkers stole from under our noses and sold to God knows who, or have hidden. The things that they don’t talk about. The things that have become legends or semi-legends. The wish machine, Dick the Tramp, and the jolly ghosts.”
“Wait a minute! What are those things? I can figure out the wish machine, but… .”
Valentine laughed.
“You see, we have our own shop talk, too. Dick the Tramp—that’s the hypothetical wind-up teddy bear wreaking havoc in the old plant. And the jolly ghost is a type of dangerous turbulence that occurs in some parts of the Zone.”
“First I’ve heard of it.”
“You understand, Richard, that we’ve been digging around in the Zone for twenty years but we don’t even know a thousandth of what it contains. And if you want to talk of the Zone’s effect on man. … By the way, it looks as though we’ll have to add another category, the fourth group. Not of objects, but of effects. This group has been shamefully neglected, even though as far as I’m concerned, there are more than enough facts for research. And you know, sometimes my skin crawls, Richard, when I think about those facts.” Zombies,” Noonan said.
“What? Oh, no, that’s merely puzzling. How can I put it—at ]east, that’s imaginable. I mean when suddenly for no reason at all things start happening, nonphysical, nonbiological phenomena.”
“Oh, you mean the emigrants.”
“Exactly. Statistics is a very precise science, you know, even though it deals with random occurrences. And besides, it’s an eloquent and beautiful science.”
Valentine seemed to be tipsy. His voice was louder, his cheeks were red, and his eyebrows had crept up high over his dark glasses, wrinkling his forehead into a washboard.