(Pause)
KAMMERER: They have the machine there — allegedly for finding “eccentrics”. They have all the visitors pass through it. Actually, the contraption looks for the so-called T-tooth of the mentogram, a.k.a. the Logovenko Impulse. If a person has a third-impulse system worth initiating, this three-pronged tooth appears in his mentogram. So, you have this tooth.
(Long pause)
GLUMOV: That’s all nonsense, Big Bug.
(Pause)
GLUMOV: They’re tricking you!
(Pause)
GLUMOV: It’s a provocation! They’re just trying to knock me out of the game! Apparently I’ve learned something very important, but I still don’t know myself what it is, and they want to get rid of me… It’s so elementary!
(Pause)
GLUMOV: You’ve known me since childhood! I’ve passed thousands of mentoscopies. I’m an ordinary human! Don’t believe them, Big Bug! Who gives you your information?… No, I ‘m not asking the name… Just think, who could know all that? He must be one of them himself… How can you believe him? (Shouts) I’m not the issue! I’m leaving anyway! But in just that way he can destroy COMCON without firing a single shot! Have you thought about that?
(Pause)
GLUMOV: (in a low voice) What should I do! You’ve probably decided what I’m to do now…
KAMMERER: Listen. Don’t be upset. Nothing terrible has happened yet. What are you shouting for as if they’re creeping up on you with knives? After all, it’s all in your hands! If you don’t want it, nothing will change!
GLUMOV: How do you know that?
KAMMERER: I don’t know anything. I know as much as you do. You’ve just read that thing… The third impulse is only a potential. It has to be initiated… and then that… rising from level to level begins. I’d like to see them try to do it without you wanting it!
GLUMOV: Yes. (Laughs hysterically) You sure scared me, chief!
KAMMERER: You simply weren’t thinking.
GLUMOV: I’ll just run oft! Let them find me! And if they do and start bothering me… tell them I don’t recommend that!
KAMMERER: I doubt they’ll want to talk to me.
GLUMOV: What do you mean?
KAMMERER: You see, we’ve no authority in their eyes. Now we have to get used to a totally new situation. We’re not the ones who set the time for talks or the topic… We’ve lost control over events. The situation is unheard of! Here on Earth, among us, is a force — not just a force, a megaforce! And we don’t know anything about it. Rather, we knew only what we’re permitted to know, and that, you must agree; is almost worse than total ignorance. Not very cozy, eh? Well, I can’t say anything bad about these Ludens, but I don’t know anything good about them either!
(Pause)
KAMMERER: They know everything about us and we know nothing about them. It’s humiliating. Every one of us privy to the situation feels humiliated… Now we have to expose two members of the World Council to keep mentoscopy — only to restore the conversation at the historic meeting at Leonid’s House… And you realize of course that neither the members of the Council nor we want this mentoscopy. It humiliates us all, but what can we do. Even though the chances of success, as you yourself must know, are less than problematic —
GLUMOV: But you have your own agents among them!
KAMMERER: Not among, near them. Among is simply a pipe dream. Mast likely unattainable… Which of them would want to help us? What for? What do they care about us? Eh? Toivo!
(Long pause)
GLUMOV: No. Maxim. I don’t want to. I understand, but I don’t want to!
KAMMERER: Afraid?
GLUMOV: I don’t know. I just don’t want to. I’m a human, and I don’t want to be anything else. I don’t want to look down at you I don’t want people I respect and love to seem like children to me. I know that you’re hoping that the human will remain in me… Maybe you even have reason for hoping. But I don’t want to take the risk. I don’t.
(Pause)
KAMMERER: Well… in the final analysis, that’s even commendable.
[End of Document 23.]
I was certain of success. I was wrong.
I didn’t know you well enough, Toivo Glumov, my boy. You seemed harder, more protected, more fanatical,. if you will.
And finally, a few words about the real goal of my memoir.
My reader familiar with the book “Five Biographies of the Century” will have guessed that the goal is to overturn the sensational hypothesis of P. Soroka and E. Braun, that Toivo Glumov, while still a Progressor on Giganda, fell into the field of vision of the Ludens and was recognized as one of their own. Allegedly, he was transformed by them, moved up to the appropriate level, and sent to me to COMCON-2 as a disinformer and misinterpreter. Allegedly, for five years he did nothing but heat up the atmosphere in COMCON against the Wanderers, interpreting every wrong step, every miscalculation, every careless act of the Ludens as a manifestation of the activity of the hated supercivilization. For five years he led us by the nose, the entire leadership of COMCON-2, and especially his chief and patron, Maxim Kammerer. And when the Ludens were exposed nevertheless, he played out one last tearjerker scene for the trusting Big Bug and dropped out of the game.
I think that any unprejudiced reader, unfamiliar with the conjectures of Soroka and Braun, who has read this far will shrug and say: “What nonsense; what a strange idea. It contradicts everything I’ve read.” As for the prejudiced reader, the reader who knows Toivo Glumov only from Five Biographies, I can make only one recommendation: try to look. at the material dispassionately; don’t sprinkle spices into the Luden problem, which has become rather bland by now.
I have no argument that the story of the Big Revelation contains many blanks, but I maintain with full responsibility that the blanks have nothing to do with Toivo Glumov. And with full responsibility I maintain that all of Soroka and Braun’s clever theories are simply nonsense, yet another attempt to scratch the left ear with the right hand from beneath the left knee.
As for the “final tearjerker scene,” there is only one thing that I regret and for which I berate myself m this day. I did not realize — old thick-skinned rhino that I am — I did not sense that I was seeing Toivo Glumov for the last time.
[End of Document 24.]
SVERDLOVSK, TOPOL II, Apt. 9716
TO M. KAMMERER
Big Bug!
I was visited by Logovenko today. The conversation lasted from 12:15 to 14:05. Logovenko was convincing. Essence: it’s not as simple as we imagine it all. For instance: it is maintained that the period of stationary development in humanity is coming to an end, the epoch of shocks (biosocial and psychosocial) is coming, and the main goal of Ludens in retaliation to humanity is, it turns out, to be on guard (like “the catcher in the rye”). At the present time, 432 Ludens live and play on Earth and in the cosmos. I was offered the chance to become the 433rd, for which I must appear in Kharkov at the Institute of Eccentrics the day after tomorrow, May 20, at
10:00.
The enemy of the human race whispers to me that only a real idiot would refuse a chance to develop superconsciousness and power over the universe. This whisper I can quell without great effort, since I am a man who is not interested in prestige, as you well know, and cannot bear elitism in any form. I won’t hide that our last conversation fell deeper into my soul than I would have liked. I do not like feeling myself a deserter. I would not have hesitated in my choice for a second, but I am absolutely certain that as soon as they turn me into a Luden, nothing (nothing!) human will remain. Admit it, deep in your heart you think the same thing.
I will not go to Kharkov. I have thought everything over these last few days. I will not go to Kharkov first of all because that would be a betrayal of Asya. Secondly, because I love my mother and honor her. Thirdly, because I love my comrades and my past. Transformation into a Luden would be the death of me. It is much worse than death, because for those who love me, I would remain alive, but unrecognizably different. Haughty, smug, self-confident. And on top of that, eternal, probably.
Tomorrow I am going off after Asya to Pandora.
Farewell, and I wish you luck.
Yours, T. Glumov 18 May 99
REPORT COMCON-2
No.086/99 Urals-North
Date: 14 November 99
FROM: S. Mtbevari, Inspector
THEME: 081 “The Waves Extinguish the Wind”
CONTENTS: Conversation with T. Glumov.
According to our instructions, I am reconstructing my conversation with former inspector T. Glumov, which occurred in the middle of July of this year. Around 17 o’clock, when I was in my office, I received a videophone call, and T. Glumov’s face appeared on the screen. He was merry and animated, greeting me boisterously. He had gained a little weight since the last time I had seen him. The conversation went approximately like this: