Athos. 11/05/99
[End of Document 17.]
Mac!
1. Glumov, Toivo Alexandrovich was taken into control today. (Registered 8/05).
2. Also taken under control today:
— Kaskazi, Artek 18 student Tehran 7/05
— Mauki, Charles 63 mari-technician Odessa 8/05
Laborant
11 May 99
[End of Document 18.]
This must be strange, but I can hardly remember my feelings when I got that amazing missive from Laborant. I do remember one sensation — like an unexpected and vile slap in the face, for no reason, for nothing, out of the blue, when you don’t expect it, when you’re expecting something else. A childish hurt, tearful – that’s all I remember, and that’s all that’s left from what must have been an hour that I spent with my mouth wide open and staring straight ahead.
I must have had thoughts of betrayal and treason. I must have been enraged, embittered, and disappointed because I had worked out a definite plan of action, with a part for everyone, and now there was a hole in the plan and no way of plugging it up. And bitterness, of course, there was desperate bitterness, of loss, the loss of a friend, an ally, a son.
And most probably there was a temporary blackout, chaos not of feelings but of the debris of feelings.
Then gradually I regained control and went back to reasoning — coldly and methodically, the way I had to reason in my position.
The wind of the gods raises storms but it also fills sails.
Reasoning coldly and methodically, I found a new place for the new Toivo Glumov in my plan on that muggy morning. And that new place seemed to me then to be incomparably more important than the old one. My plan acquired a long-range prospect, and now we could attack instead of defend ourselves.
On that same day, I reached Komov, and he gave me an appointment for the next day, the twelfth of May.
On May 12, early in the morning he saw me in the President’s office. I gave him all the materials I had gathered by then. The conversation lasted five hours. My plan was approved with insignificant changes. (I cannot maintain that I managed to fully overcome Komov’s skepticism, but I did manage to interest him without any doubt.)
On May 12, when I came back to my office, I sat for a few minutes with the tips of my index fingers at my temples, in the manner of Honti scouts, thinking lofty thoughts, and then called in Grisha Serosovin and gave him an assignment. At 18:05, he told me that the assignment was completed. Now all we had to do was wait.
On the morning of the thirteenth, Danya Logovenko called.
WORKING PHONOGRAM
Date: 13 May 99
INTERLOCUTORS: M. Kammerer, head of UE Department; D. Logovenko, deputy director of the Kharkov Branch, IMI
THEME X X X
CONTENTS X X X
LOGOVENKO: Hello, Maxim, it’s me.
KAMMERER: Greetings. What do you have to say?
LOGOVENKO: I say that it was cleverly done.
KAMMERER: I’m glad you like it.
LOGOVENKO: I can’t say that I like, it much, but I have to credit an old friend. (pause) I understood it all to mean that you want to meet with me and speak openly.
KAMMERER: Yes. But not I. And maybe not with you.
LOGOVENKO: You’ll have to talk to me. But if not you, who, then?
KAMMERER: Komov.
LOGOVENKO: Aha! So, you’ve made the decision…
KAMMERER: Komov is my direct boss now.
LOGOVENKO: Ah, so that’s it, . All right. When and where?
KAMMERER: Komov wants Gorbovsky to be part of the conversation.
LOGOVENKO: Leonid Andreyevich? But he’s on his deathbed…
KAMMERER: Precisely. Let him hear it all. From you.
LOGOVENKO: (after a pause) Yes. I see the time has come to talk.
KAMMERER: Tomorrow at 15:00 at Gorbovsky’s. Do you know his house? Near Kraslava, on the Daugava River.
LOGOVENKO: I know it. Until tomorrow. You have everything?
KAMMERER: Everything. Till tomorrow.
(The conversation lasted from 9:02 until 9:04.)
[End of Document 19.]
It’s amazing that for all its pushy energetic scrupulousness, the Luden group never bothered me about Daniil Alexandrovich Logovenko. Yet Danya and I go back a long way, to the blessed Sixties, when I, a young, devilishly energetic COMCONite, was taking a special course in psychology at Kiev U.; where Danya, then a young and devilishly energetic metapsychologist, was my practicum teacher, and in the evenings we dated charming and devilishly spoiled Kiev girls. He obviously thought more of me than the other students; we became friends and saw each other regularly for years. Then our studies separated us, we saw each other less frequently, and in the Eighties stopped seeing each other completely (until the tea at my house just before these events). He was very unhappily married, and now I know why. He was unhappy in general, which I can’t say about myself.
In general, everyone who seriously studies the era of the Big Revelation tends to believe that he knows perfectly well who Daniil Logovenko was. What a delusion! What does someone who has read even the most complete collection of Newton’s works know about Newton? Yes, Logovenko had played an extremely important role in the Big Revelation. The Logovenko Impulse, Logovenko’s T-program, the Logovenko Declaration, the Logovenko Committee…
But what was the fate of Logovenko’s wife; do you know that?
And how did he end up in the courses of higher and anomalous etology in the city of Split?
And why in the year 66 did he zero in on M. Kammerer, energetic and promising COMCONite, of all his students?
And what did D. Logovenko think of the Big Revelation — not lecture, or declare, or proselytize, but think and feel in the depths of his inhuman soul?
There are many such questions. I can answer some of them accurately. I can make suppositions about some. And for the rest, there are no answers and never will be.
REPORT COMCON-2
No.020/99 Urals-North
Date: 13 May 99
FROM: T. Glumov, Inspector
THEME: 009 “A Visit from an Old Lady”
CONTENTS: Comparison of the lists of people with the inversion of the Penguin Syndrome with the Theme List.
On your orders I made up a list from all available sources of cases of the inversion of the Penguin Syndrome. I found only twelve cases, and I managed to identify ten. Comparison of the list of identified inverts with the T-List gave cross-reference on the following:
1. Krivoklykov, Ivan Georgievich, 65 psychiatrist, Lemba base (EN
2105).
2. Pakkala, Alf-Christian, 31 builder operator, Anchorage, Alaska.
3. Io, Nika, 48 fabric designer, Irawadi factory, Phyapown.
4. Tuul, Albert Oskarovich, 59 gastronome, whereabouts unknown. (See report No.047/99, S. Mtbevari.)
The percentage of cross-references of the list seems incredibly high to me. The fact that Tuul, A.0., belongs on three lists is even more astonishing.
I feel it necessary to call your attention to the full list of people with the Penguin Syndrome inversion. The list is attached.
T. Glumov
[End of Document 20.]
DOCUMENT 21: Kraslava, Latvia
“LEONID’S HOUSE” (KRASLAVA, LATVIA).
14 MAY 99. 15:00
The Daugava River near Kraslava was narrow, fast, and clean. The sandy strip of beach showed yellow near the water and led to a steep sandy slope that reached the fir forest. On the gray-and-white-checked landing square overhanging the water, multicolored flyers parked carelessly baked in the sun. All three of them were old-fashioned machines now used only by old men born in the last century.
Toivo reached for the glider’s door, but I said. “Don’t. Wait”
I was looking up to where amid the firs stood the cream-colored little house from which the stairs, made to look like silvery weathered wood, zigzagged along the cliff. Someone dressed in white was slowly descending the stairs — a stout, almost cubic man, clearly very old, clutching the railing with his right hand, going step by step, one foot at a time, a sunspot flickering on his large smooth pate. I recognized him. It was August-Johann Bader, Paratrooper and Pathfinder. A ruin of a heroic era.
“Let’s wait for him to go down,” I said. “I don’t want to meet him.”
I turned away and looked in the other direction, across the river, at the other shore, and Toivo also turned away tactfully. So we sat until we could hear the heavy creak of the steps and the heavy, whistling wheeze and other inappropriate sounds; something like sobbing, and the old man passed the glider, scuffing his feet along the plastic, and appeared in my field of vision. Reluctantly, I looked at his face.
Up dose, his face seemed totally unfamiliar to me. It was deformed by grief. The soft cheeks sagged and shook, the mouth hung open, and teats flowed from the puffy eyes.
Hunched over, Bader approached the ancient yellow-green flyer — the most ancient of the three, with idiotic protuberances on the hood, with ugly visor slits for the old-fashioned autopilot, with dented sides and tarnished chrome handles — he approached, threw open the door, and with a grunt or a sob climbed in.