But I did not use my prerogative. I didn’t have the strength for that, either.
“Dispersions,” I repeated. “That’s convincing.”
I must have sounded a false note, because Toivo suddenly raised his white lashes and stared at me.
“Is that all?” I asked immediately.
“Yes,” he replied. “That’s it.”
“Fine. Let’s wait for the experts’ results. What are you planning to do now? Go to bed?”
He sighed. Barely perceptibly. A less controlled person in his place would have been insolent. But Toivo said, “I don’t know. I’ll probably go do some more work I have to finish the head count today.”
“The whales?”
“Yes.”
“Fine,” I said. “Whatever you want. But tomorrow, please leave for Kharkov.”
Toivo’s white eyebrows went up, but he said nothing.
“Do you know what the Institute of Eccentrics is?” I asked.
“Yes. Kikin told me.”
Now I raised my brows. Mentally. Damn them all. They were out of control. Did I have to warn each one every time to watch his tongue? This wasn’t COMCON-2 but a clubhouse…
“And what did Kikin tell you?”
“That it’s a branch of the Institute of Metapsychic Research. They study the limits and beyond the limits of the human psyche. It’s chock full of weird people.”
“Right,” I said. “You’re going there tomorrow. Listen to your assignment.”
I formulated his assignment this way. On March 25, the Institute of Eccentrics in Kharkov was honored by the presence of the famous Wizard from the planet Saraksh. Who was the Wizard? He was without a doubt a mutant. Moreover, he was the lord and master of all mutants in the radioactive jungles beyond Blue Snake. He had many amazing abilities, including the fact that he was a psychocrat. What was a psychocrat? That was the general term for creatures capable of subordinating someone else’s psyche. Besides which, the Wizard was a creature of extraordinary intellectual power, one of those sapiens who need no more than a drop of water to conclude the existence of oceans. The Wizard came to Earth on a private visit. For some reason the thing that interested him most was the Institute of Eccentrics. Perhaps he sought others like him; we don’t know. The visit was planned far four days, but he left after an hour. He went back to Saraksh and vanished in his radioactive jungles.
Up until that point, my introduction to Toivo Glumov was the truth and nothing but the truth. Now came the pseudoquasi part.
During the last month, our Progressors on Saraksh at my request have been trying to enter into communications with the Wizard. They have been failing. Either we had insulted the Wizard somehow here on Earth, without knowing it, or one hour was enough for him to get the needed information about us. Or else something happened that was specifically ‘Wizardy’ and therefore unimaginable for us. In short, he had to go to the Institute, find all the materials on the study of the Wizard, if there were any, talk to everyone who dealt with him, and find out if anything strange had happened to the Wizard. For instance, did they remember anything he might have said about Earth and about people? Did he commit any acts that passed without notice then but were now seen in a new light?
“Is everything clear?” I asked.
He gave me another quick look.
“You did not say which theme my trip falls under.”
No, it wasn’t a flash of intuition. And I doubt that he had caught me pseudoquasying. He simply could not understand how his chief, who had such serious information relating to the penetration of his hated Wanderers, could get sidetracked.
I said, “It’s the same theme. A Visit from an Old Lady.”
(Actually, it really was. In the broad meaning of the word. The broadest.)
For some time, he was silent, noiselessly drumming his fingers on the desk Then he spoke, almost apologetically.
“I don’t see the connection…”
“You will,” I promised.
He said nothing.
“And if there is no connection, all the better,” I said.
“He’s a Wizard, understand? A real Wizard, I know him. A real Wizard from fairy tales, with a talking bird on his shoulder and all the other accoutrements. And he’s a Wizard from another planet, yet. I desperately need him!”
“A possible ally,” Tolvo add with a weak interrogative intonation.
There, he explained it to himself. Now he would work like the damned. Maybe he would even find the Wizard, which, to tell the truth, I doubted.
“Bear in mind,” I said, “that in Kharkov you will represent yourself as a worker of the Big COMCON. That’s not a cover; Big COMCON really is looking for the Wizard.”
“All right,” he said.
“Is that it? Then go. Go, go. My best to Asya.”
He left, and at last I was alone. For several blissful minutes. Until the next videophone call. And in those blissful moments I decided for sure: I had to go to Athos. Immediately, because once he went in for surgery, I would have no one nearby to whom I could go.
COMCON-2 Sverdlovsk To Kammerer.
Director of the Biocenter TPO Gorbatsky.
In answer to your query of 6 May
You are being led by the nose. Such a thing cannot be.
Pay it no mind.
Gorbatsky
[End of Document 5.]
DOCUMENT 6: Fleming to Kammerer
DOCUMENT 7: Burgermayer to Kammerer
DOCUMENT 8: Glumov Memorandum: Theme 009: “A Visit From an Old Lady”
COMCON-2 to Kammerer.
From Fleming
Maxim!
I know everything about the incident in Little Pesha. The case, in my opinion, is extraordinary and enviable. Your boys posed very precise questions, which we should all answer. That’s what I’m doing, dropping everything else. When something becomes dear, I’ll be sure to let you know.
Fleming
Lower Pesha. 15:30
P.S. Maybe you’ve learned something through our channels? If you have, let me know immediately. For the next three days, I’ll be in Lower Pesha.
P.P.S. Could it be the Wanderers after all? Damn it, wouldn’t that be fine!
Kammerer
[End of Document 6]
The EMBRYOMECHANICS Manufacturing Society
Directorate
Earth, Antarctic Region, Erebus
A 18/03/62
Index: O/T: KK 946239
Code: SKTs-76
BURGERMAYER, ADOLF-ANNA,
GENERAL DIRECTOR
S-283, 7 May 99
To: COMCON-2 Urals-North, EU Department
Code: SR3-23
CHIEF OF ACCIDENT DEPARTMENT M. KAMMERER
Contents: Reply to your query of 6 May 99.
Dear Kammerer!
Regarding the characteristics of modem embryophores that interest you, I can report the following:
1. The general mass of exuded biomechanisms is up to 200 kg. Their maximum number is 8. The maximal size of a single unit can be determined by the program 102 ASTA/M, R, Rsh K/, where M is the mass of the original material, R the density of the material, Rsh the density of the environment, and 1 the number of exuded mechanisms. The correlation with high accuracy is performed in temperature ranges between 200 and 400 K and in pressure ranges of 0 to 200 SE.
2. The time for the development of the embryophore is an uncharacteristic number that depends on many parameters, which are all totally under the control of the initiator. However, for the fastest-acting embryophores there is a lower limit of time for development, which is approximately one minute.
3. The time of existence of now-known biomechanisms depends on their individual mass. The critical mass of a biomechanism is Mo = 12 Kg. Biomechanisms whose mass M does not exceed M, theoretically have limitless life spans. The time of existence for biomechanisms with a greater mass decreases with the growth of mass on the exponent, so that the time of existence of massive models (around 100 kg) cannot exceed several seconds.
4. The goal of creating a fully dissolving embryophore has existed a long time, but unfortunately it is still far from being resolved. Even the most modern technology is helpless to create shells that could fully become part of the development cycle.
5. Microscopic biomechanisms in general have high mobility (up to 1,000 times their own size per minute). As for 6led models, the record holder for now is model KS-3, “Hoppity,” which can develop directed and stimulated speeds of up to 5 m/sec.
6. It can be maintained with complete accuracy that any of the existing biomechanisms will react acutely and unambivalently (negatively) to a natural biofield. That is built into the genetic system of every biomechanism — and not out of ethical considerations, as one might think, but because any natural biofield with an intensity of more than 0.63 GD (the biofield of a kitten) creates irreparable glitzes in the signaling network of a biomechanism.
7. Regarding energy balance, the release of embryophores or biomechanisms with the parameters described in your query would undoubtedly have led to a violent release of energy (an explosion), if the picture you described is at all possible. However, that picture, as follows from what was written above, is totally fantastic given the present level of scientific and technological capabilities.