The Time Wanderers Part 13

DOc.u.mENT 25. Sverdlovsk: Topol II, Apt. 9716 to M. KammererS. Mtbevari: The Waves Extinguish the Wind

DOc.u.mENT 26: M. Kammerer: Theme 060 T. Glumov, Metagom WORKING PHONOGRAM.

Date: 16 May 99 INTERLOCUTORS: M. Kammerer, head of UE Department; T. Glumov, Inspector.

THEME: X X X.

CONTENTS: X X X.

GLUMOV: What was in the gaps?

KAMMERER: Bravo. What self-control you have, kid. When I realized what was what, I chewed the walls for a half-hour.

GLUMOV: So what was in the gaps?

KAMMERER: No one knows.

GLUMOV: What do you mean no one knows?

KAMMERER: Just that. Komov and Gorbovsky don't remember what was in the gaps. They didn't notice any gaps. And it's impossible to restore the phonogram. It's not simply erased, it's destroyed. The molecular structure is changed on the parts of the grid with gaps.

GLUMOV: A strange manner of negotiating.

KAMMERER: We'll have to get used to it.

(Pause) GLUMOV: Well, and now what?

KAMMERER: For now we don't know enough. In general, I see only two possibilities. Either we learn to coexist with them, or we don't.

GLUMOV: There's a third possibility.

KAMMERER: Don't go off half-c.o.c.ked. There is no third possibility.

GLUMOV: There is! They don't p.u.s.s.yfoot around us!

KAMMERER: That's not a conclusion.

GLUMOV: It is! They didn't ask permission of the World Council! They've been working secretly for many years transforming people into non-people!

They're performing experiments on people! And even now, when they've been exposed, they come to negotiations and allow themselves to -- KAMMERER: (interrupting) What you want to suggest can be done either openly -- and then humanity will be witness to a totally disgusting violent act -- or secretly, vilely, behind the back of public opinion?

GLUMOV: (interrupting) That's all talk! The point is that humanity should not be the incubator for non-humans and certainly not a testing field for their d.a.m.ned experiments! Excuse me, Big Bug, but you made a mistake.

You should not have let Komov or Gorbovsky know about this. You've put them in a stupid position. This is COMCON-2 business; it's fully within our competence. I think that it's still not too late. Let's take this sin upon our souls.

KAMMERER: Listen, where did you develop this xenophobia? It's not the Wanderers, not the Progressors you hate.

GLUMOV: I have the feeling that they're worse than the Progressors.

They're traitors. They're parasites. Like those wasps that lay their eggs in caterpillars.

(Pause) KAMMERER: Go on, go on. Let it all out.

GLUMOV: I won't say any more. It's useless. I've been working on this case for five years under your supervision, and I've been blundering about like a blind puppy all those years. Could you at least tell me now: where did you learn the truth? When did you realize that they're not Wanderers?

Six months ago? Eight?

KAMMERER: Less than two.

GLUMOV: Doesn't matter... Several weeks ago. I can understand that you had your own considerations, and you did not want to let me in on the details; but how could you hide the fact that your objective had changed?

How could you let me make a fool of myself? Before Gorbovsky and Komov... I get a chill whenever I think of it!

KAMMERER: Can't you accept that there might have been a reason for it?

GLUMOV: I can. But it doesn't make me feel any better. I don't know the reason and can't even imagine it... And I don't see that you're planning to ever tell me that reason. No, Big Bug, I've had enough. I'm not good enough to work with you. Let me go, because I'll leave anyway.

(Pause) KAMMERER: I couldn't tell you the truth. At first I couldn't tell you the truth because I don't know what we could do with it. I don't know what to do with it now either, but now all the decisions are someone else's to make...

GLUMOV: Don't justify yourself, Big Bug.

KAMMERER: Be quiet. You won't get me mad. Do you love the truth so much? Then you'll get it. All of it.

(Pause) KAMMERER: Then I sent you to the Inst.i.tute of Eccentrics and had to wait some more -- GLUMOV: (interrupting) What does -- KAMMERER: (interrupting) I said be quiet! It's not easy to tell the truth, Toivo. Not cutting up the truth, the way young people like to do, but serving it up to someone like you... green, confident, all-knowing, and all-understanding. Be quiet and listen.

(Pause) KAMMERER: Then I got a reply from the Inst.i.tute. The answer floored me.

I had thought that I was showing routine forethought, but it turned out...

Listen, you just read the transcript. Didn't anything seem strange in it to you?

GLUMOV: Everything is strange in it.

KAMMERER: Come on, pay attention. Read it again, but carefully, from the very beginning, from the heading. Well?

(Pause) GLUMOV: "Only for members of the Presidium..." What does that mean?

KAMMERER: Well? Well?

GLUMOV: You let me read a doc.u.ment that was top security... Why?

KAMMERER: (slowly and almost ingratiatingly) As you have noticed, there are gaps in this doc.u.ment. So, I'm nurturing the hope that when your time comes, out of friends.h.i.+p, and for the old times' sake, you'll fill those gaps in for me.

(Long pause) KAMMERER: That's how the whole truth looks. In the part of it that concerns you. As soon as I learned that they were sorting at the Inst.i.tute of Eccentrics, I sent all of you there, one after the other, on various idiotic excuses. It was simply a measure of elementary caution, understand?

So as not to leave the enemy the slightest chance. To be sure... no, I still wasn't sure... To know for sure: that among my staff there were only humans...

(Pause) KAMMERER: They have the machine there -- allegedly for finding "eccentrics". They have all the visitors pa.s.s 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-p.r.o.nged 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.n.a.lysis, that's even commendable.

[End of Doc.u.ment 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 leaders.h.i.+p 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 dispa.s.sionately; 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 Doc.u.ment 24.]

SVERDLOVSK, TOPOL II, Apt. 9716TO 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 Inst.i.tute 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-2No.086/99 Urals-North Date: 14 November 99 FROM: S. Mtbevari, InspectorTHEME: 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: GLUMOV: Where's the chief gone to? I've been trying to reach him all day, to no avail.

I: The chief's away on business. He won't be back for a while.

GLUMOV: That's too bad. I need him desperately. I'd really like to talk to him.

I: Send a letter. They'll forward it.