Toivo said nothing.
“Maybe it’s because all your unexplained events are tragedies? But all UEs are tragedies! Whether they’re mysterious or ordinary, they’re UEs! Right?”
“Wrong,” Toivo said.
“What, are there happy Ues?”
“Sometimes.”
“For instance?” Asya demanded, filling with venom.
“Let’s have some tea instead,” Toivo suggested.
“Oh no, you please give me an example of a happy, joyous, life-affirming UE.”
“All right,” Toivo said. “But then we’ll have tea. Is it a deal?”
“The hell with you,” Asya said.
They were silent. Below, through the thick foliage of the gardens, through the silvery blue twilight, multicolored lights went on. And the black columns of the thousand-story buildings were covered with the sparks of lights.
“Do you know the name Guzhon?” Toivo asked.
“Naturally.”
“And Soddi?”
“Of course!”
“What, in your opinion, makes these people special?”
“‘My opinion!’ It’s not my opinion. Everyone knows that Guzhon is a marvelous composer and Soddi a great confessor… And in your opinion?”
“In my opinion, they are special for a completely different reason,” Toivo said. “Albert Guzhon, until he was fifty, was an ordinary — but no more than that — agrophysicist without any talent for music. And Bartholomew Soddi studied shadow functions for forty years and was a pedantic, unsociable man. That’s what makes these people special, in my opinion.”
“What are you trying to say? You found intervention in that? People with hidden talents worked long and hard… and then quantity turned into quality…”
“There wasn’t any quantity, Asya, that’s the point: Only the quality changed suddenly. Radically. In an hour. Like an explosion.”
Asya was silent, chewing her lip, and then asked sarcastically, but uncertainly:
“So in your opinion, the Wanderers inspired them, right?”
“I didn’t say that. You asked me to cite examples of happy, life-affirming UEs. There you are. I can list another dozen names — not as famous, though.”
“All right. But why are you dealing with this? What business is it of yours, really?”
“We deal with any unexplained events.”
“That’s what I’m asking: what was unexplained or extraordinary about them?”
“Within the parameters of current concepts, they are inexplicable.”
“Well, lots of things are inexplicable in the world!” Asya cried. “Reeders are inexplicable; we’re just used to them.”
“We don’t consider things we’re used to as unexplained events, Asya We deal with incidents, events. Something hasn’t happened ever in a thousand years, and then it happens. Why did it happen? Unclear. How can it be explained! Specialists are confounded. Then we take note of it. See, Asya, you’re not classifying UEs the right way. We don’t divide them into happy and tragic ones, we divide them into explicable and inexplicable ones.”
“Well, do you think that any inexplicable event carries a threat?”
“Yes. Including happy ones.”
“What threat can there be in the unexplained transformation of a run-of-the-mill agrophysicist into a genius musician?”
“I didn’t express myself accurately enough. The threat isn’t in the event. The most mysterious events, as a rule, are the most harmless. Sometimes even funny. The cause of the event may be the threat. The mechanism that gave rise to the event You can put the question this way: why did someone need to turn an agrophysicist into a musician?”
“Maybe it’s just a statistical fluctuation!”
“Maybe. That’s the point, that we don’t know… Incidentally, note where you have arrived. Tell me, please, why is your explanation any better than ours? Statistical fluctuation, by definition unpredictable and uncontrollable, or the Wanderers, who of course are no bowl of cherries, but who at least in principle can be caught red-handed. Of course, ‘statistical fluctuation’ sounds much more solid, scientific, objective — not those corny, cheap-romantic, banally legendary —”
“Wait, don’t be spiteful, please,” Asya said. “No one is denying your Wanderers. That’s not what I’m talking about. You’ve confused me… you always get me off the track! Both me and your Maxim, and then you go around with your nose drooping, and want to be consoled… Yes, here’s what I wanted to say. All right, let’s assume that the Wanderers are interfering in our lives. That’s nor the issue. Why is it bad? That’s what I’m asking! Why are you turning them into bugbears? That’s what I can’t understand! And no one can understand… Why, when you were changing the course of history in other worlds that was all right, but when someone wants to change your history… Today, every child knows that super-reason is always good!”
“Super-reason is supergood,” Toivo said.
“Well, all the more, then!”
“No,” Toivo said. “Not all the more. We know what good is, though not very firmly. But as for supergood —”
Asya struck her knees with her fists again.
“I don’t understand! I can’t understand this! Where do you get all this presumption of a threat? Tell me. Explain it!”
“None of you understands the premise here,” Toivo said, angry now. “No one thinks that the Wanderers are planning to do evil to earthlings. That is really very unlikely. We’re afraid of something else altogether. We’re afraid that they’ll start doing good here, as they understand it!”
“Good is always good!” Asya said.
“You know perfectly well that that isn’t so. Or maybe you really don’t know? But I’ve explained it to you. I was a Progressor for only three years; I brought good, only good, nothing but good, and Lord,! how they hated me, those people! And they were right. Because the gods had come without asking permission. No one had called them in, and there they were, doing good. The good that is always good. And they were doing it secretly, because they know that mortals would not understand their aims, and if they did understand them, they wouldn’t accept them… That’s the moral and ethical structure of that damn situation! A feudal slave in Arkanara could not understand what communism is, while a smart bourgeois three hundred years later would understand and recoil from communism in horror… Those are the ABCs, which we however don’t know how to apply to ourselves. Why? Because we can’t imagine what the Wanderers could have in mind for us. The analogy doesn’t work! But I do know two things. They came without an invitation — that’s one. And they are certain that we will either not understand or not accept their goals — that’s two. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want that I do not! That’s it!” he said with determination. “Enough. I’m a tired, unkind, careworn man who has shouldered a burden of indescribable responsibility. I have the Sikorski Syndrome, I’m a psychopath and a paranoid. I don’t love anyone; I’m a monster, a martyr, a monoman; I have to be cuddled and soothed… You have to tiptoe around me, kiss my shoulder, cajole me with jokes… and tea. My God, aren’t I going to get any tea around here today at all?”
Without a word, Asya jumped up and went off to make tea. Toivo lay down on the couch. Through the window, just on the threshold of hearing, came the buzz of some exotic musical instrument. An enormous butterfly flew in, circled the table, and settled on the visor screen, spreading its patterned black wings. Toivo, without get ting up, started to reach for the service console, but didn’t reach it and dropped his hand.
Asya came in with a tray, poured tea into the glasses, and sat down next to him.
“Look,” Toivo whispered, indicating the butterfly with his eyes.
“How beautiful,” Asya replied, in a whisper, too.
“Maybe it’ll want to live with us here?”
“No, it won’t.”
“Why not? Remember, the Kazaryans had a dragonfly —”
“It didn’t live with them. It just visited —”
“So this one can visit, too. We’ll call her Martha.”
“Why Martha?”
“What else?”
“Cynthia,” said Asya.
“No,” said Toivo firmly. “No Cynthias. She’s Martha. Martha Posadnitsa. And the screen well call Posadnik.”
***
I am not planning to maintain that this was the exact conversation they had late on the evening of May 8. But then, I do know for sure that they spoke an this topic often, argued, did not agree. And that neither of them could convince the other — I know that for sure, too.
Asya, naturally, was incapable of transmitting her universal optimism to her husband. Her optimism fed on the atmosphere itself, on the people she worked with, the essence of her work, tasty and kind. Toivo had been beyond the limits of this optimistic world, in the world of constant anxiety and tension, where optimism is passed from person to person only with great difficulty, under a confluence of proper circumstances, and not for long.
And Toivo was unable to convert his wife into an ally, to infect her with his sensation of pending doom. His arguments lacked concreteness. They were too speculative. They were a worldview, unconfirmed for Asya. He never did “horrify her,” infect her with his revulsion, indignation, and hostility…
That is why, when the storm broke, they were so unprepared, as if they bad never had these arguments and lights, these ferocious attempts to convince each other.