Boris Strugatsky - Noon - 22nd Century

“Listen, Evgeny,” Kondratev said. “Do they understand what happened to us?”

“Yes, of course,” said Evgeny.

“Well?”

“Hmm,” said Evgeny. “They understand, of course. But that doesn’t help us any. I for one can’t understand what they understand.”

“But still?”

“I told them everything, and they said, ‘Ah, yes: Sigma deritrinitation.’”

“What?” said Kondratev.

“De-ri-tri-ni-ta-tion. With a sigma in front.”

“Trimpazation,” Kondratev muttered. “Did they happen to say anything else?”

“They told me straight out, ‘Your Taimyr came right up to the light barrier under Legen acceleration and sigma-deritrinitated the space-time continuum.’ They said that we shouldn’t have resorted to Legen accelerations.”

“Right,” said Kondratev. “So then we shouldn’t have resorted, but the fact remains that we did resort. Deri-teri—What’s that word?”

“Deritrinitation. That’s the third time I’ve told you. To put it briefly, so far as I understand it, any body approaching the light barrier under certain conditions distorts the form of worldlines extremely strongly, and pierces Riemann space, so to speak. Well… that’s about what Bykov Junior had predicted in our day.”

“Uh-huh,” said Kondratev.

“They call this penetration deritrinitation.’ All their long-range ships work on that principle. D-ships.”

“Uh-huh,” Kondratev said again.

“Under deritrinitation, those same Legen accelerations are especially hazardous. I didn’t understand at all where they come from or what they consist of. Some sort of local vibrational field, plasmatic hypertransition, or something. The fact remains that under Legen interference extraordinarily strong distortions of time scale are inevitable. That’s what happened to us in the Taimyr .”

“Deritrinitation,” Kondratev said sadly, and closed his eyes.

They fell silent. It’s a bum deal, Kondratev thought. D-ships. Deritrinitation. We’ll never get through it all. Plus a broken back.

Evgeny stroked Kondratev’s cheek and said, “Never mind, Sergei. I think we’ll understand in time. Of course, we’ll have to learn an awful lot.”

“Relearn,” Kondratev whispered without opening his eyes. “Don’t deceive yourself, Evgeny. Relearn. Relearn everything from the very beginning.”

“So all right, I’m willing,” Evgeny said brightly. “The main thing is to want to.”

“‘I want to’ means ‘I can’?” Kondratev inquired bitterly.

“That’s it.”

“That saying was invented by people who could even when they didn’t want to. Iron men.”

“Well,” said Evgeny, “you’re not made of paper either. A couple weeks back I met a certain young woman…”

“Oh?” said Kondratev. Evgeny very much liked meeting young women.

“She’s a linguist. Smart. A wonderful, amazing person.”

“Of course,” said Kondratev.

“Let me talk, Sergei. I understand everything. You’re afraid. But here there’s no need to be lonely. There are no lonely people here. Get well soon, Navigator. You’re turning sour.”

Kondratev was silent a while, and then asked, “Evgeny, do me a favor and go over to the window.”

Evgeny got up and, walking noiselessly, went over to the enormous—wall-high—blue window. Kondratev could see nothing out the window except sky. At night the window was a blue-black abyss studded with piercing stars, and once or twice the navigator had seen a reddish glow blaze up—blaze up and quickly die out.

“I’ve arrived,” said Evgeny.

“What’s there?”

“A balcony.”

“And farther?”

“Below the balcony is a pad,” Evgeny said, and looked back at Kondratev.

Kondratev frowned. Even old Evgeny was no help. Kondratev was as alone as could be. So far he knew nothing. Not a thing. He didn’t even know what sort of floor there was in his room, because footsteps made no sound on it. Last evening the navigator had tried to sit up and look the room over, and had immediately fainted. He had not tried again, because he could not stand being unconscious.

“This building where you are is a nursing home for serious cases,” said Evgeny. “The building has sixteen stories, and your room—”

“Ward,” muttered Kondratev.

“—and your room is on the ninth floor. There’s a balcony. Outside are mountains-the Urals—and a pine forest. From here I can see, first, another nursing home like this one. It’s about fifteen kilometers away. Farther in the same direction is Sverdlovsk. It’s ninety kilometers off. Second, I see a landing pad for pterocars. They’re really wonderful machines! There are four of them there now. So. What else? Third, a plaza with flowers and a fountain. Near the fountain there’s a child. By all appearances, he’s thinking about how much he would like to run away into the forest.”

“Is he a serious case too?” the navigator asked with interest.

“It’s possible. Though it doesn’t look like it. So. He’s not going to manage his getaway, because a certain barefoot woman has caught him. I am already acquainted with the woman because she works here. A very charming individual. She’s around twenty. Recently she asked me whether I had happened to know Norbert Wiener and Anton Makarenko. Now she’s dragging the serious case off, and, I think, edifying him en route. And here another pterocar is landing. Or no, it’s not a pterocar. You should ask the doctor for a stereovision, Sergei.”

“I did,” the navigator said gloomily. “He won’t let me have one.”

“Why not?”

“How should I know?”

Evgeny turned toward the bed. “All this is sound and fury, signifying nothing,” he said. “You’ll see everything, learn everything, and stop feeling strange. Don’t be so impressionable. Do you remember Koenig?”

“Yes?”

“Remember when I told him about your broken leg, and he shouted out loud in his magnificent accent, ‘Ach, how impressionable I am! Ach!’”

Kondratev smiled.

“And the next morning I came to see you,” Evgeny continued, “and asked how things were, and you answered with a touch of spite that you had spent ‘a variegated night’.”

“I remember,” said Kondratev. “And I’ve spent many variegated nights right here. And there are a lot of them coming up.”

“Ach, how impressionable I am!” Evgeny quickly shouted.

Kondratev closed his eyes again and lay silent for some time. “Listen, Evgeny,” he said without opening his eyes. “What did they say to you on the subject of your skill in piloting spaceships?”

Evgeny laughed merrily. “It was a great big scolding, although very polite. It seems I smashed through some enormous telescope, but I didn’t even notice at the time. The head of the observatory almost slugged me, but his upbringing wouldn’t permit it.”

Kondratev opened his eyes. “Well?” he said.

“But later, when they learned I wasn’t a pilot, it all cleared up. They even congratulated me. The observatory head, in an access of good feeling, even invited me to help with the rebuilding of the telescope.”

“Well?” said Kondratev.

Evgeny sighed. “Nothing came of it. The doctors wouldn’t let me.

The door opened a bit, and a dark girl wearing a white coat tightly belted at the waist looked into the room. She looked sternly at the patient, then at the visitor, and said, “It’s time, Comrade Slavin.”

“I’m just leaving,” said Evgeny.

The girl nodded and closed the door. Kondratev said sadly, “Well, here you are leaving me.”

“But not for long!” exclaimed Evgeny. “And don’t go sour, I beg you. You’ll be flying again, you’ll make a first-class D-spacer.”