"Yes," said Roman. "An hallucination is not a fit object of discussion.

It's too simple. We are not children or old wives. I don't wish to be an agnostic. What was that idea you had, Eddie?"

"I had? Ah, yes, there was one. Also a primitive one, basically.

Matrixats."

"Hmm," Roman said dubiously.

"And how's that?" I asked.

Eddie explained reluctantly that besides the doubles with which I was familiar, there also were matrixats-- absolutely accurate copies of people and objects. In contradistinction to the doubles, the matrixat was identical with the original in structural detail. It was impossible to distinguish one by the usual methods. Special equipment was required and, in general, that was a highly complicated and demanding undertaking. In his own time Balsamo received his magister-academician degree for the proof of the matrixat nature of Philippe Bourbon, known popularly as the "Iron Mask." This matrixat of Louis XIV was created in the secret laboratories of the Jesuits with the aim of seizing the French throne. In our time, matrixats were made by the biostereographic method a la Richard Segure. I didn't know then who this Richard Segure was, but I said at once that the matrixat concept could only explain the extraordinary similarity of the parrots. And that's all. For example, it continued to be incomprehensible where yesterday's dead parrot had gone.

"That's true enough," said Eddie. "And I don't insist. Especially since Ja.n.u.s has no connection whatsoever with biostereography."

"There you are," I said more boldly. "In that event it would be better to suggest a trip into the described future. You know? The way Louis Sedlovoi does it."

"And then?" said Komeev, without any special interest "Ja.n.u.s simply flies into a science-fiction novel, takes a parrot there, and brings him back here. When the parrot dies, he flies to the same page and again . . . it then becomes understandable why the parrots are similar.

It is one and the same parrot and you can see why it has this science-fiction vocabulary. And furthermore," I continued, feeling that I wasn't doing so badly, "This could also explain why Ja.n.u.s asks the same questions all the time: each time he fears that he has returned on the wrong day... . I think I have explained it all quite nicely, no?"

"And is there such a science-fiction novel?" asked Eddie with a show of curiosity. "With a parrot in it?"

"I don't know," I said honestly, "but there are all kinds of animals in those starships. Cats and dogs and children . . and, anyway, there is a vast science-fiction literature in the West. You can't read it all...

"Well, to begin with, a parrot out of Western science-fiction would hardly speak Russian," said Roman. "But the main point is that it's altogether incomprehensible how these cosmic parrots-- even granted they come from Soviet S-- F-- could be acquainted with Korneev, Privalov, and Oira-Oira...

'I won't even mention," Victor said lazily, "that it is one thing to transport a real material body into a world of ideas, but quite another to transport an idea-world body into the real world. I doubt that there is an author who created a parrot image suitable for transference into the material world."

I was reminded of the semitransparent inventors and couldn't find a rejoiner.

"However," Victor continued charitably, "our Sasha here is exhibiting definite signs of promise. One feels a certain n.o.ble madness in his ideas."

"Ja.n.u.s wouldn't incinerate an ideal parrot," said Eddie with conviction. "An ideal parrot cannot even rot."

"And why, anyway," Roman said suddenly, "why are we so inconsistent?

Why Sedlovoi? Why should Ja.n.u.s repeat Sedlovoi's activities? Ja.n.u.s has a line of investigation.

Ja.n.u.s has his own area of problems. Ja.n.u.s involves himself in the investigation of parallel dimensions. Let's take that as a point of departure."

"Let's," I said.

"Do you think that Ja.n.u.s was successful in establishing communications with some parallel dimension?" asked Eddie.

"Communications he established them some time ago. Why not suppose that he has gone further? Why not suppose that he is now working on the transfer of material bodies? Eddie is right. There must be matrixats, because the guarantee of complete ident.i.ty is absolutely necessary. The transfer conditions are selected on the basis of the experimental situation. The first two transfers were unsuccessful: the parrots died. Today the experiment was apparently successful. . .

"Why do they speak Russian?" asked Eddie. "And why, again, does the parrot have such a vocabulary?"

"It means that a Russia exists there, too," said Roman. "But there they are already mining rubidium in Ritchey crater."

"It's all too farfetched," said Victor. "Why parrots in particular? Whynot dogs or guinea pigs? Why not just tape recorders, in the final a.n.a.lysis?

Also, how do these parrots know that Oira-Oira is old, and that Korneev is an excellent worker?"

"Rude," I prompted.

"Rude, but excellent. And where, after all, did the dead parrot disappear?"

"You know what?" said Eddie. "This won't do. We are working like dilettantes. Like the authors of amateur letters: 'Dear scientists-- it is now two years that there are underground thumps in my bas.e.m.e.nt. Please explain how they originate.' We need a systematic approach. Where is your paper, Victor? We'll write it down at once."

So we wrote it all down in Eddie's beautiful handwriting.

In the first place we took it as a postulate that what was happening was not an hallucination; otherwise the whole thing would be dull. Next we formulated questions which the sought-for-hypotheses would have to answer.

The questions were divided into two groups: the "parrot" group and the "Ja.n.u.s" group. The latter was introduced at the insistence of Roman and Eddie, who declared that they sensed, with their innermost innards, a connection between the idiosyncrasies of the parrot and of Ja.n.u.s. They could not answer Korneev's question as to the physical meaning of the concepts "innards" and "sensed," but underlined that Ja.n.u.s himself presented a most curious subject for investigation, and, also, that an apple does not fall far from the apple tree. Inasmuch as I had no opinion of my own, they were in the majority and the final list of questions looked like this.

Why did parrots number one, two, and three, observed on the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth respectively, look so much alike that we a.s.sumed them, in the beginning, to be one and the same? Why did Ja.n.u.s burn the first parrot, and also probably the one before number one (number zero) and of which only a feather remained? Where did the feather go? Where did the second (expired) parrot go? How to account for the strange vocabularies of the second and third parrots? How to explain that the third parrot knew us all, although we had seen it for the first time? ("Why and of what did the parrots die?" I would have added, but Korneev growled, "Why and for what reason is a bluish color the first sign of poisoning?"-- and my question was not included.) What did Ja.n.u.s and the parrots have in common? Why did Ja.n.u.s not remember with whom and about what he conversed on the previous day. What happened to Ja.n.u.s every midnight? Why did Ja.n.u.s-U have the strange habit of talking in the future tense, while nothing of the sort had been observed with Ja.n.u.s-A? Why, finally, were there two of them, and whence, actually, came the belief that Ja.n.u.s Poluektovich was one, person in two manifestations?

After that we thought laboriously for some time, constantly consulting the list I kept hoping that a n.o.ble madness would again descend upon me, but my thoughts scattered, and the more I thought, the more I tended to the viewpoint of Sanya Drozd: that in this Inst.i.tute, anything at all, and worse than that, happened regularly. I understood that this cheap skepticism was simply the result of my ignorance of and unfamiliarity with the categories of thought a.s.sociated with a changed world, but I couldn't help it. All that had happened, I reasoned, was truly remarkable only if one considered the three or four parrots as being one and the same. They were actually so close in their resemblance that at first I had been led astray. That was only natural. I was a mathematician, I respected numbers, and their coincidence, especially of six digits, was automatically a.s.sociated by me with the coincidence of the numbered object. However, it was clear that it could not have been one and the same parrot. In that case the law of cause and effect would have had to be abrogated, and I was not about to renounce that law for the sake of some scruffy parrots, some of which had already expired. But if it was not the same parrot, then the whole problem became more shallow. All right, then, the numbers coincided. Then again, someone had thrown out the corpse unbeknown to us. What else was there? The vocabulary? So what aboutthe vocabulary ... ? For sure there was a very simple explanation.

I was about ready to give a speech on this theme when Victor suddenly said, "Fellows, I think I am beginning to see!"

We didn't say a word, we only turned toward him in a simultaneous rush.

Victor got up.

"It's as simple as a pancake," he said. "It is trivial. It is flat and ba.n.a.l. It's not even of sufficient interest to converse about."

We were getting up slowly. I had the same feeling as in reading the last pages of a gripping mystery novel. All my skepticism somehow evaporated instantly.

"Countermotion!" stated Victor. Eddie sat down.

"Countermotion?' said Roman. "Let's see - aha.,.." He twisted his fingers. "So . . - uhuh . . . and -if so? Yes, it's understandable why he knows us all. - - Roman made a wide welcoming gesture. "It means they come from there."

"And that's why he asks what he talked about yesterday," Victor picked up, "and the science-fiction vocabulary, too!"

"Will you wait!" I howled. The last page of the mystery was writ in Arabic. "Hold it! What countermotion?"

"No," said Roman with regret, and at once you could tell by Victor's expression that countermotion wouldn't work out. "It doesn't fit," said Roman. "It's like a motion picture. ... Imagine a motion picture...

"What motion picture?" I yelled. "Help!"

"Movies in reverse," explained Roman. "Do you understand?

Countermotion."

"Dog c.r.a.p," said Victor, all upset, and lay down on the sofa with his nose in his crossed arms.

"True enough, it doesn't fit," said Eddie, also crushed. "Don't get excited, Sasha: it doesn't work out anyway. Countermotion is simple movement in time in the opposite direction. Like a neutrino. But the problem is that if the parrot was a countermover, he'd be flying backward and instead of dying he'd be coming alive. - . - But, generally, it's a good idea. A parrot-countermover would indeed know something about s.p.a.ce. He would be living from the future and into the past. And a countermoving Ja.n.u.s could not, in fact, know what happened in our 'yesterday.' Because our 'yesterday'

would be his 'tomorrow.'

"That's the point," said Victor. "That's what I thought: why did the parrot say that Oira-Oira was 'elderly'? And how did Ja.n.u.s so cleverly and in detail foretell, on occasion, what would happen on the next day. Do you remember the incident on the polygon, Roman? It all suggested strongly that they were from the future "Listen. Is it really possible-- this countermotion?" I said.

"Theoretically it is possible," said Eddie. "After all, half the matter in the universe is moving in the opposite direction in time. Practically no one has worked in that field."

"Who needs it, and who could stand it?" Victor said gloomily.

"Granted, it would be a wonderful experiment," noted Roman.

"Not an experiment, but a self-sacrifice," growled Victor. "Whatever you may think, I feel there is something involving countermotion in all this. - . - I feel it in my innards."

"Ah, yes, the innards!" said Roman and we all were quiet.

While they were silent, I was feverishly adding up all the practical evidence. If countermotion was theoretically possible then theoretically the suspension of the law of cause and effect was also possible. Actually, the abrogation of the law was not involved as it remained in effect separately both for the normal world and for the world of the countermover. - . - And this meant that one could still postulate that there were not three or four parrots, but only one and the same. What results? On the morning of the tenth it was lying dead in the petri dish. Afterward it was burned to ashes and scattered on the wind. Nonetheless, on the morning of the eleventh itwas again alive. Not only not burned to ashes, but whole and unhurt. True, it expired in the middle of the day and again wound up in the dish. This was devilishly important! I felt it was devilishly important-- the petri dish - . - the uniqueness of place - . - on the twelfth the parrot was again alive and begged for sugar. - - - This was not countermotion, it was not a film running backward, but there was something of countermotion in it. ... Victor was right. -- - For the countermover the sequence of events was: the parrot lives, the parrot dies, the parrot is burned. From our point of view, if details were discarded, it came out exactly in reverse: the parrot is burned, the parrot dies, the parrot lives. - - - It's as though the film had been cut in three places and was shown with the third piece first, then the second, and finally the first piece. - . . There were some kinds of breaks of discontinuity - . - discontinuity interruption. . - points of discontinuity.

"Fellows," I said, my voice feeble. "Must countermotion be necessarily continuous?"

For a while they did not react. Eddie smoked, blowing clouds at the ceiling, Victor lay motionless on his stomach, and Roman stared at me vacuously. Then his eyes widened.

"Midnight!" he said in a fearsome voice.

They all jumped up.

It was as though I had just driven in a decisive goal in a championship soccer game. They were all over me, smacking me on my cheeks, they pounded me on my neck and shoulders, they threw me on the sofa and fell down themselves.

"Genius," howled Eddie.

"What a head," roared Roman.

"And here I thought we had an imbecile in you!" added the rude Korneev.

Then we quieted down and everything proceeded as smooth as b.u.t.ter.

First Roman announced, out of a clear blue sky, that now he understood the mystery of the Tunguska meteorite. He desired to impart it to us at once and we concurred gladly, paradoxical as this might sound. We were not in any hurry to approach that which intrigued us the most. No, we were in no hurry whatsoever! We were gourmets.

We did not attack the delicacies. We inhaled the aroma, we rolled up our eyes and smacked our lips, we rubbed our hands, we stalked around, we antic.i.p.ated....

"Let us finally shed a true light," began Roman in an ingratiating tone, "on the snarled problem of the Tungus marvel. Prior to us, this problem has been tackled by persons absolutely devoid of imagination. All these comets, antimatter meteorites, auto-exploding nuclear ships, various cosmic clouds, and quantum generators-- it's all too ba.n.a.l, and consequently far from the truth. As for me, the Tungus meteorite was always the ship of cosmic wanderers and I always supposed that it could never be found on the site of the explosion simply because it was long gone. Until today, I thought that the fall of the Tungus meteorite was not the landing of a ship, but its departure. And even this roughed-out theory explained a great deal.

The concept of discrete countermotion allows us to finish this problem once and for all.

"What did happen on the thirtieth of June, 1908, in the region of Podkammenaia Tunguska? About the middle of July of the same year, the ship of the aliens entered circ.u.msolar s.p.a.ce. But they were not the simple, artless aliens of science-fiction novels. They were countermovers, my friends. People who had arrived in our world from another universe where time flows in the opposite direction of ours. As a result of the mutual interaction of the opposite time flows, they had become converted from ordinary countermovers, who perceived our universe as a film running backward, into countermovers of the discrete type. The nature of such discreteness does not concern us at this time. What is of significance is another aspect of the matter. The important thing is that in our universelife for them became subject to a definite rhythmic cycle.

"If you a.s.sume for the sake of simplicity that their unit cycle was equal to an Earth day, then their existence would look like this from our point of view. On the first of July, let's say, they live, work, and eat just as we do. But exactly at, say, midnight, they and all their equipment pa.s.s not into the second of July, as we ordinary mortals do, but into the very start of June the thirtieth; that is, one moment forward and two days backward, if you consider it from our viewpoint. Exactly the same way, at the end of June thirtieth, they pa.s.s not into the first of July but into the very beginning of June the twenty-ninth. And so forth.

"Finding themselves in close proximity to Earth, our countermovers discovered to their amazement, a.s.suming they had not discovered it previously, that the Earth was performing strange leaps in its...o...b..t, which leaps made astrogation extremely difficult. Further, finding themselves above the Earth on the first of July, according to our calendar, they observed a huge fire in the very center of the gigantic Eurasian continent, whose smoke they had previously seen-- on the second, third, and so on of July in our time. The cataclysm in itself interested them, but their scientific curiosity was thoroughly aroused, when on the morning of the thirtieth of June-- in our time-frame-- they noticed that there was not even a vestige of any fire at all and a serene sea of green taiga was stretching below them. The intrigued captain ordered a landing in the very same place where he had observed the day before-- in his time-frame, and with his own eyes-- the epicenter of the fiery catastrophe. From that time on everything proceeded as expected. Relays clicked, screens flickered, planetary engines (in which k-gamma-plasmoin was exploding) roared."

"How's that again?" asked Victor.

"K-gamma-plasmoin. Or, say, mu-delta-ionoplast. The ship wrapped in flames fell into the taiga, and, naturally, ignited it. It was precisely this scene which was observed by Karelinsk peasants, who subsequently entered history as eyewitnesses. The fire was awful. The countermovers looked tentatively outside, were intimidated and decided to wait it out behind their fire-resistant screens and alloys. Until midnight they listened with trepidation to the fierce roaring and crackling of the flames, and exactly at midnight everything became still. And no wonder. The countermovers entered their new day-- the twenty-ninth of June on our calendar. The courageous captain, with infinite precautions, decided about two hours later to exit the ship and saw magnificent conifers calmly swaying in the brilliant light of his searchlights. He was immediately subjected to attack by clouds of bloodsucking insects, known as mosquitoes and midges in our terminology."

Roman stopped to catch his breath and looked around at us. We liked it very much. We antic.i.p.ated, how, in the same way, we would crack open the mystery of the parrot.

"The subsequent fate of the couutermover wanderers," continued Roman, "should be of no interest to L15. It may be that, on about the fifteenth of June, they quietly and noiselessly, using noninfiammatory alpha-beta-gamma-anti-gravitation this time, took off from the peculiar planet and went home. Maybe they all perished, poisoned by mosquito saliva, and their cosmic ship remained stuck on our planet, sinking into the abyss of time, and the Silurian Sea, where trilobites crawled over its wreck.

Neither is it impossible that sometime in 1906 or possibly 1901 a taiga hunter may have stumbled upon it and told his friends about it for a long time afterward. They in turn, even as they should, didn't believe him worth a d.a.m.n.

"In concluding my modest presentation, I will permit myself to express my sympathy for the courageous explorers who attempted in vain to discover something worthwhile in the region of Podkammenaia Tunguska. Mesmerized by the obvious, they were interested only in what happened in the taiga after the explosion and none of them were interested in what had happened before." Roman coughed to clear his throat and drank a mug of the water-of-life.

"Does anybody have any questions for the lecturer?" inquired Eddie. "No questions? Fine! Let us revert to the parrots. Who is asking for the floor?"

Everybody asked for the floor. And everyone started speaking. Even Roman, who was slightly hoa.r.s.e. We tore the list with questions out of each other's hands and crossed out one question after another, so that, in less than half an hour, there was constructed a thoroughly clear and scrupulously detailed picture of the observed events.

In 1841, in the family of a landlord of moderate means, who was also a reserve lieutenant in the army, by the name of Poluekt Chrisanovitch Nevstruev, there was born a son. He was named Ja.n.u.s, in honor of a distant relative by the name of Ja.n.u.s Poluektovich Nevstruev, who had accurately predicted the s.e.x and also the day and even the hour of the infant's birth.

This relative, a quiet, retiring old man, moved to the reserve lieutenant's estate soon after the Napoleonic invasion and lived in the guest house, devoting himself to scientific endeavors. He was somewhat peculiar, as is appropriate for a scientist, with many idiosyncrasies, but became attached to his G.o.dson and didn't leave him for a minute, constantly feeding him knowledge of mathematics, chemistry, and other sciences. It could be said that there was not a single day in the life of the younger Ia.n.u.s without Ja.n.u.s the elder, and it was probably due to this that he didn't notice what was a subject of wonder to others: that the old man not only grew no older, but to the contrary, became apparently stronger and more vigorous. Toward the end of the century the old Ja.n.u.s introduced the younger into the final mysteries of a.n.a.lytical, relativistic, and general magic. They continued to live and work side by side, taking part in all the wars and revolutions, suffering with stoic courage all the reverses of history, until they came finally to the Scientific Research Inst.i.tute of Thaumaturgy and Spellcraft.

To be honest, this whole introductory part was entirely a fictional invention. About the past of the Ja.n.u.ses we knew but one fact: that J.P.

Nevstruev was born on the seventh of March, 1841. How and when J.P.

Nevstruev became the director of the Inst.i.tute was completely unknown to us.

We didn't even know who was the first to guess, and gave away, the fact that Ja.n.u.s-U and Ja.n.u.s-A were one and the same man in two persons. I learned of this from Oira-Oira and believed it because I couldn't understand it.

Oira-Oira learned it from Giacomo and also believed because he was young and exalted. A charwoman told it to Korneev and Korneev then decided that the fact itself was so trivial as not to merit any examination. Eddie, on the other hand, heard Savaof Baalovich and Feodor Simeonovich talking about it.

Eddie was then a junior technician and generally believed in everything except G.o.d.

And so, the past of the Ja.n.u.ses appeared extremely hazy to us. But the future we knew quite accurately. Ja.n.u.s-A, who was now busier with the affairs of the Inst.i.tute than with science, would, in the near future, become entranced with the idea of practical countermotion. He would devote his life to it. He would acquire a friend-- a small green parrot named Photon, which would be a gift to him from famous Russian cosmonauts. It would occur on the nineteenth of May of either 1973 or 2073-- that's how the foxy Eddie deciphered the mysterious number 190573 on the ring. Most likely, soon after that date, Ja.n.u.s would attain his goal and convert into countermovers both himself and the parrot, who would, of course, be sitting on his shoulder begging for sugar. Precisely at that moment, if we understood anything at all about counter-motion, future mankind would be deprived of Ja.n.u.s Poluektovich; but in return, the past would acquire two Ja.n.u.ses, since Ja.n.u.s-A would turn into Ja.n.u.s-U and would begin to glide backward on the axis of time. They would meet every day, but it would never enter the mind of Ja.n.u.s-A to suspect anything out of the ordinary because he had become accustomed, from his cradle, to the kindly wrinkled face of his relative and teacher. And every night, exactly at midnight, exactly at zero hours, zero-zero minutes, zero-zero seconds, and zero-zero tertia*, localtime, Ja.n.u.s-A would transit, as we all do from today's night into tomorrow morning, while Ja.n.u.s-U and his parrot, in that same moment equal to a micro quantum of time, would transit from our present right into our yesterday's morning.

That was why the parrots one, two, and three were so similar: they were simply one and the same parrot. Poor old Photon. Perhaps he had been overcome by old age or maybe he had caught a cold in the draft and had flown to his favorite balance in Roman's laboratory to die. He died and his aggrieved owner made him a fiery funeral and scattered his ashes to the wind, doing so because he didn't realize how dead countermovers behave. Or perhaps precisely because he did know. Naturally, we viewed this as a movie with reversed sections.

On the ninth, Roman finds the remaining feather in the furnace.

Photon's corpse is already gone; it was burned tomorrow. On the morrow, the tenth, Roman finds it in the petri dish. Ja.n.u.s-U finds the corpse and burns it then and there in the furnace. The feather, which escaped cremation, remains in the furnace to the end of the day; and at midnight jumps into the ninth. On the morning of the eleventh, Photon is alive, although already sickly. The parrot expires before our eyes under the scales (on which it will be so happy to sit now) and the simple-souled Sanya Drozd puts it in the dish, where the deceased will lie till midnight, will jump into the morning of the tenth, will be found there by Ja.n.u.s-U, burned and scattered to the winds, but its feather will remain to be found by Roman. On the morning of the twelfth, Photon is alive and well and has an interview with Korneev, asking for sugar; but at midnight the bird wilt jump into the morning of the One-sixtieth of a second. eleventh when it will sicken and die, and will be placed in the petri dish; but at midnight it will jump into the morning of the tenth, will be burned and scattered, but a feather will remain behind, which at midnight will jump into the morning of the ninth, will be found by Roman and thrown in the wastebasket. On the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth, and so on, much to our joy, Photon will be happy, talkative, and we'll be spoiling it, feeding it sugar and pepper seeds, while Ja.n.u.s-U will be coming around to inquire whether he is interfering with our work. Employing the word-a.s.sociation technique, we should be able to learn a great many curious facts from him concerning the cosmic expansion of mankind and, doubtlessly, our own personal futures.

When we arrived at this point in our discussion, Eddie suddenly became gloomy and announced that he didn't appreciate Photon's insinuations about his, Amperian's, untimely demise. Korneev, to whom any empathetic tact was foreign, remarked that any death was inevitably untimely and that nonetheless we'd all get to it sooner or later. Anyway, Roman said, it was possible the parrot loved him more than anyone else and remembered only his death. Eddie understood that he had a chance to die later than all of us and his mood improved.

However, the talk about death channeled our thoughts into a dismal direction. All of us-- except, of course, Korneev-- began to feel sorry for Ja.n.u.s-U. Truly, if one thought about it, his situation was horrible. First, he represented an example of tremendous scientific selflessness, because he was practically deprived of the possibility to exploit the fruits of his labor. Further, he had no bright future whatsoever. We were moving toward a world of reason and brotherhood, and he, with each pa.s.sing day, went toward b.l.o.o.d.y Nicholas, serfdom, the shooting on Sennaya Square, and-- who knew?-- maybe toward all kinds of repressive governments and torture. And somewhere in the depths of time, on the waxed parquet floor of the Saint Petersburg Academic de Science, he would be met on a fine day by a colleague in a powdered wig-- a colleague who for a whole week had been scrutinizing him peculiarly-- and who now would exclaim in surprise, throw up his hands, and mutter with horror in his eyes, "Herr Neffstroueff! How can it be? Fwhen yesterday they printed in 'Notices' that you hat pa.s.set away from a stroke?"

And he would have to tell of a twin brother and false reporting, knowingfull well and understanding only too correctly what that conversation meant.

"Cut it out," said Korneev. "You are too maudlin. In return for all that he knows the future. He's been there, where we still have a long way to go. And he may know exactly when we will all die."

"That's a completely different matter," Eddie said sadly.